272 | Navigating Blog Themes and Plugins: A Guide to WordPress for Bloggers with Lisa Graglia

Bree: Hello, blogging babes! Friends, in this episode, there is a moment where I was like, Ooh, I don't even say this on the podcast. My Spidey senses are tingling. That's the only way I knew to describe it. But I was like, somebody listening to this is going to be so pumped to hear this. So get ready friends.

Maybe that's you. I am chatting with Lisa. She is the blog theme designer over at Empress themes, and you can actually head to impress themes. com slash thrive pod to get 15 percent off all of her themes and plugins. And they are designed specifically for bloggers. These aren't blog themes or just themes that are like for Anybody could use it or like Coaches or digital product shops.

They're built specifically for Bloggers. And I feel like that's sometimes really hard to find. Anyways, we dive into chatting about websites and blog themes, and she has so much good advice on how to make your blog run more smoothly and how to avoid tech issues. So it's a super fun and really helpful conversation that we had, and I can't wait for you guys to listen.

So let's dive in.

Welcome to the thrive podcast. If you're a blogger influencer. Found the show for you. I'm Brie Pear, your host and blogging coach here to help you take your brand to the next level. At Thrive, our mission is to equip bloggers and influencers with practical tactics and strategies that can transform your brand to give you the lifestyle you want.

We offer tutorials, workshops, and a supportive community to accompany you on your journey. I created the thrive podcast to give you simple, actionable steps that you can use to drive real results in your business. I also wanted to give you a peek behind the curtain of others in the industry that you look up to.

Our guests share strategies they've used to grow revenue streams that are working for them and insider info you won't find anywhere else. Now let's get ready to thrive.

Hello, Lisa. Welcome to the show. I'm really excited to chat with you about all things web design, blog design. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited to chat some more. I can't wait to hear about all the things and just learn from you. I mean, we all have to make our, we don't have to, but we all want to make our blogs look beautiful.

And you help everybody do that and reduce like the yucky tech issues that we all seem to see. struggle with at one point or another. So, um, before we dive into all of that, can you just tell everybody about your business and where they can find you online?

Lisa: Yeah. So, uh, my name is Lisa and my business is impress themes.

Uh, you can find me at impress themes. com and that's where I sell WordPress themes and plugins for lifestyle bloggers. Yay. And they're beautiful. Oh my goodness. Thank you so

Bree: much. You guys run and check them out. So I mean, tell me, how did you get into designing themes for bloggers?

Lisa: Yeah. So it actually goes kind of far back, back in 2010 and the early odds of blogging.

I, um, I started my own lifestyle blog as a hobby and I redesigned it. Every month it seemed it was ridiculous because there just weren't as many options as there are now.

Bree: Yeah.

Lisa: And the more I, you know, played around with my design and the more questions I started getting from fellow bloggers and it just kind of naturally evolved into starting a business where I was doing custom design work for bloggers.

And then in 2017, I had gotten to the point where, you know, My custom projects were getting more and more technical, more and more complicated, and therefore more and more expensive. And I still wanted to be able to help bloggers who were just starting out. So I took the knowledge and skills that I had gained from working on custom projects and translated that into themes for bloggers so that it could be more accessible for bloggers at any stage of their journey.

Bree: That is so cool. I love that. I definitely remember like playing around with, you know, oh my gosh, like you're like, I changed how it looked all the time. I felt like I was doing that too. Like you're always tweaking things and wanting to look so good for your audience. And that fact that you took that and turned it into a business.

Yeah.

Lisa: It was Really, you know, I get the drive of bloggers to make everything look a certain way because aesthetics are so important in every facet of our life. So of course, like our online presence has to Match what, you know, we want to portray to the world and how we want it to look. And it's just, you know, marrying that technical piece with, with trying to get it to look just right.

That can get very tricky for people. Absolutely.

Bree: So what makes a good theme? Because I know there's, there's good themes and there's bad themes. So what makes a good theme? And you guys, actually, before we, like, go in further into theme, if there's anybody that's, like, tech struggling, and they're like, okay, Bri, hold on, break it down.

What is the theme aspect? Can you just tell everybody, like, really quickly, okay, here's what a theme is?

Lisa: Yeah, so Basically a WordPress theme is a website template. It's you install it and that is, it controls how your website looks. So your content is always going to be separate from the design. So no matter what WordPress theme that you choose, that's going to change the overall look and feel of your design and it's going to put your content into it.

Does that make sense? Kind of makes sense. Yep.

Bree: Absolutely. That's perfect. It's not going to affect your content, uh, like the writing at all, but it affects how your blog look. Exactly. So what makes a good one?

Lisa: First of all, I always tell bloggers, first and foremost, you need to be clear on what

So I think a lot of bloggers don't really stop and think about, okay, what purpose is my blog design going to serve? And so you're just looking around for themes and trying to find something that's pretty, and you're not necessarily paying as much attention to the features that are going to serve you the most.

So I always say first and foremost, you need to have an understanding of What features you want in your theme, because that is what's really going to vary from theme to theme and what you're not going to be able to change yourself as easily fonts and colors. These days are a lot easier to change in your theme.

And so if that's your, like, one hold up, definitely do your research on that theme. And. It's very likely that that theme has built in options that you can swap out your own colors and your fonts. And WordPress is, WordPress itself is making a lot of strides in making these features more available to the average person to change without code.

So you're going to keep seeing more and more themes that have that capability. Whereas, Certain layouts, certain features aren't necessarily going to be available on every theme. So I think that's the best place to start when you're looking for A WordPress theme and choosing the right one for you. And then of course, make sure that you're looking at the shop policies and the reviews, the testimonials, and make sure that you're getting the support that you need and that people have had good experiences.

With that particular shot, because there's so many to choose from that you're, you know, you're not necessarily sure what you're getting into until you really do your research.

Bree: Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, looking at the reviews, that's something I've been so bad about in the past. I'm just like, Oh, that looks pretty.

Let's go with that one. And then I install it and I'm like, Oh, it doesn't do this. Or it doesn't have this functionality, like you said, of like making sure, like. I knew what I wanted my site to do, but I would just look at like, Oh, what's pretty? And let's run with that. And then I install it and it doesn't do what I need.

So I'm like starting all over again and spending more money instead of doing what you just told us all to do. I knew you a while back ago. Can you tell?

Lisa: I think as bloggers, we have shiny object syndrome too. So. Yes. I think, you know, it's unrealistic to expect a theme to do everything that you want it to do without, you know, getting that custom work done.

And not everybody needs custom work. You can definitely get a theme 80 to 90 percent of where you want it to be. And that's going to serve you really, really well. So I definitely encourage people to really be thoughtful in their buying process and, you know, look for something that you think you can stick with for a while and don't necessarily get so caught up in.

Oh, shiny object syndrome, it's time to change my theme.

Bree: Yes, I would say like the goal is like you want to pick a theme that's going to last as long as possible, right? You want it to last At least a couple years.

Lisa: Yeah, definitely. Because, and you can't account for everything, um, as things change in the future, you know, your brand is going to evolve over time, but you can reasonably, you know, make a theme work for a good amount of time so that you're just not constantly spending all of your time redesigning your site and then not actually blogging.

Bree: Yes, exactly. We're all limited on time anyways. So speaking of like some of those tech issues that were, you were talking about and different, you know, problems, uh, they're very exhausting. And, you know, when it comes to running a blog, that's one thing I hear like complaints about in our community is like, Oh, like I'm trying to do this on my website.

I can't figure it out. So how do you go about helping people with tech issues and even just like. Let's avoid them all together.

Lisa: Yeah. Um, for me, the thing that I see in my support desk all the time, 90 percent of the time your issues are going to come from updates. So if things are, if you were to just build an, a straight HTML website, like there are websites that I built in high school that would probably work just fine.

Still work just fine because they're just HTML, but the challenge with WordPress is that they're constantly updating the platform and then the plugins are going to update accordingly and your themes are going to update accordingly. So you have to really. Keep track of where those changes are happening and that's going to enable you To figure out the source of the issue So when i'm troubleshooting with customers, i'm always looking for the last thing that changed And looking at okay.

So what updates? What plugins just updated and if there's I was gonna say it

Bree: always

Lisa: seems

Bree: like a pesky Plug in that breaks something.

Lisa: Yeah, and what I find is What happens with bloggers is you know, there's so many plugins out there And so what you'll do is you'll try a bunch of different plugins to get the exact feature that you're looking for but But then we tend to leave those other plugins installed on the site.

So when you're searching for a plugin, you want to be really clear about what purpose it needs to serve and then go back. And get rid of all the other ones that you tested, because when you're having multiple plugins that you're not using, or that serve the same purpose, that's really when you're going to run into issues.

That's when you're going to have conflicts between these plugins, or issues. Plugins that have the same features that your theme already has. That's when things tend to conflict and break. So really be paying attention to what the overall picture of your blog is and what you have installed and how it all works together is really important.

Mm hmm

Bree: for sure. Are there any plugins? I feel like there's been a couple in the past I'm not gonna name names, but a couple in the past that maybe Get like automatically installed or like it makes it seem like oh, this is the most magical thing that does everything You need to have it. Are there any that you recommend?

Like this is bulky. You don't need it.

Lisa: So I would say when you A lot of, a lot of web hosts in particular will install their own plugins that they've like partnered with other companies or things like that. So when you're first getting started, it's definitely important to go through those plugins and make sure that they're actually things that you need.

One big culprit is WooCommerce, which WooCommerce In and of itself is a great plugin, but the vast majority of bloggers don't need it. And the thing that I see a lot, particularly in the blogging industry is themes that are built to work with WooCommerce will recommend WooCommerce. Just to say, Hey, heads up, this works with WooCommerce, but people take that as this needs to be installed when it actually doesn't.

So you want to pay attention to WooCommerce specifically, like if you take one thing away from this. Check your plugins and see if WooCommerce has been installed. If you're not running a shop, you don't need WooCommerce. And you scared me for

Bree: a minute. Cause I was like, I'm, I'm switching over to WooCommerce.

I'm like, is something wrong with it?

Lisa: WooCommerce is a great plugin. If you are. Adding e you're not selling e-commerce to your site if you're not, if you're not using it. It is a very resource intensive plugin. I mean, you're, you're running e-commerce off of it. Of course it's gonna require more resources, it's gonna have more files and things like that.

Um, and it's gonna have more updates. So that's just one more plugin update that you don't even need to be. You know, paying attention to because you're not using the plugin. So that's one that I see a lot with any plugins that have like the pop up wizard when you install like the, the setup wizard, be very careful when you're.

going through the setup wizard because a lot of them will get to a screen where it will say, you know, install all of these other plugins that are from the same company and people just, you know, fly through the, the setup wizard and they don't even realize that this plugin has installed three other plugins that they don't need.

Um, so those would be the two biggest things.

Bree: I like to keep my plugins running as lean as possible. Yes. Is that like your advice? Like you, just as few as possible that you need.

Lisa: Yes. And I am a big proponent of setting a goal. A task in your calendar every month, every quarter and going through your plugins, making sure that you're still using all of them.

And anything that you're not sure about, take the time to research and see, do I really need it? Um, because another thing that comes up with bloggers is if you switch themes. You may have theme specific plugins that aren't necessary for the theme that you're using. You may have installed Google Fonts to use with your last theme and then your new theme has it built in.

Things like that come up all the time and those are things that you can easily get rid of and not have to worry about the updates and then not have the chance of them. You know, potentially conflicting or breaking your sites, right? And it's going to save you

Bree: storage space too. When it comes to absolutely.

Yeah. That's one of the first things. Whenever my host is like, Hey, we're getting a little bit up there. I'm like, Oh, let me go make sure I cleaned out my theme or my, well, yeah, I've had, I've had old themes sitting in there and I'm like, what is this even doing here? I don't need. 12 themes running right now.

Lisa: Absolutely. You do want to keep the WordPress, uh, 2024 theme or whatever the latest, like 2020, whatever theme you want to keep that installed because In the event that something happens with your theme, you can switch back to the default theme, um, and that'll help you troubleshoot. But other than that, get rid of any themes that you aren't using.

Bree: Okay, good to know. This podcast is sponsored by our friends at Link Whisper. Did you know that it's important to add internal links to your blog posts? By adding links within your blog post that goes to other pages on your blog, you're not only going to see updates. Boost in your page views by your followers, clicking those links.

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Are there any other things that bloggers overlook when it comes to choosing a theme?

Lisa: So I would say. You know, we, we did talk about how important it is to get clear on your goals when choosing a theme. Um, the thing that I see people get tripped up with, especially, I actually, this only applies to new bloggers, um, new bloggers come in with the expectation.

Oh, my site's going to look exactly like the theme demo, but the problem is you don't have any content yet. So. Where your theme demo has a list of posts, well, you don't have posts yet to show, um, and some themes come with demo content. I have actually been against that for a long time, going to start adding that because I, I do recognize it's just easier for people to help them visualize and set up the theme.

Um, but. My word of caution against that is one, you're adding content that you're just going to delete anyway, because it's not your content. It's just there for demo purposes. And then two, you're really better off going ahead and Setting it up with your own content because realistically, you know, if you've picked a theme that has a more complex layout and is meant to serve you in the long run, you're not going to be able to start off with that more complex layout because you don't have, you know, categories yet that you need to be pointing people to.

You don't have, you know, products that you're ready to You know, share affiliate links for and things like that. You don't have all of these sections that you actually need to get started with. You just need to get started with your blog posts. And so you need to start with a more basic layout and then work your way up to that more complex layout that has the different features that, you know, point people to in the direction that they need to go.

Bree: Yeah, it's, I, I remember doing that and setting a new one up and it's so hard cause you're like, Wait, there, there's nothing or it looks sad and like there's nothing, all these things are missing. It doesn't look like beautiful and filled out like the demo and it's like, well, I haven't written those yet and I haven't written that content and I haven't imported all my, you know, pictures yet.

So I love that advice. It's something so good to remember as you're getting started that it's going to take some time to get your content rolling and that's okay.

Lisa: Yeah, and I think that can apply to existing bloggers as well. When you're setting up a new theme, there's A lot to set up and it can be really overwhelming.

So start with the most essential items, get those in place, and you can list out everything that you want to do with your website and just tackle it one thing at a time, instead of, you know, trying to get it to look perfect in one sitting and getting frustrated that it's. so long or it's not looking the way you want it to, you can kind of give yourself a break, give yourself a chance to rest and review what actually needs to be done.

Bree: And it does take time. I mean at the time that this podcast is coming out, we will have like Just relaunched our website with all brand new branding. You know, five years later, we finally decided to update our branding. And that was one thing I had to do is cause like I made a massive list of like all of our pages and all, you know, at Britain.

Gosh, when you're rebranding, it touches everything, you know, your emails, your funnels, your, Oh my Lord, all the things. Right. And so I had to make a list and then I realized I have to edit this list because there's no way I could get it all done by, you know, our deadline of when we wanted to relaunch, there was just too many things.

And so I had to like, Oh, Okay. Let's say like, these are the most important pages for launch. And then, okay, these ones can come later and it's okay. Like just knowing like, what are the essential ones that my audience is going to be looking at immediately versus what are ones that they're not going to miss or even know They're not there right now that we can update and add as we go.

So, cause it's a, it does, it takes time and you don't want your website just on pause. Yeah. And that's

Lisa: a, that's a smart approach too. And you can always, I did the same thing when I redesigned my own site last year, I still have things sitting on my to do list. And the more I look at them, I'm like, Is this really essential?

So you can kind of you know Cut down on some of your task lists that way too because if it's taking you that long to get to it Maybe it's not as important as you originally thought it was

Bree: Yeah, absolutely All right. I want to jump back to Plugins real quick. So like after we've edited plug down plugins down and everything, but you also have I've created some plugins, so I'd love to know, like, what are those and why did you make them?

Why were they so important to

Lisa: you? For the reasons that we've already discussed, plugins have been kind of demonized, especially in the blogging industry. I think, you know, it's been, you know, Really hammered in, limit the amount of plugins you use, limit the amount of plugins you use. And, uh, the, the misconception there is that whether that functionality comes from a plugin or a theme, it doesn't really matter.

It's all the same code. It's just a different place to put it. And so really the, where you get into problems with plugins is when you're adding too many and you're not paying attention to what you're adding. to your site or you're choosing a plugin that maybe has way more functionality than you actually need.

So you have to weigh is this one piece of functionality that you want worth all the extra things that it's adding. So my approach to plugins was to keep it As simple as possible, and they each serve one small purpose that adds functionality to your site that may not be available in the theme that you choose because not all, you know, in fact, Very, a very small set of themes are actually built specifically with bloggers in mind, specifically with lifestyle bloggers in mind.

You know, so many of the themes out there these days are built for people who are starting service based businesses with blogs or things like that, or having digital downloads. And there's nothing wrong with that. It just doesn't necessarily do what a lifestyle blogger who's doing affiliate marketing would Needs it to do.

So that's where my plugins fill in the gap. I have a shop, the post plugin that basically gives that shop, the post functionality that you get in some affiliate platforms, you can get it straight into WordPress, which means that you can use whatever affiliate program that you want. And the benefit of putting that in a plugin versus a theme is that.

That information is always there for you. That's going to stay with you from theme to theme to theme, um, versus it being tied into just the one theme that you're already using and then when you switch, you potentially lose all that data. Oh, yeah,

Bree: for sure. Oh my gosh. I love that. What other plugins do you have?

Because that right there, I'm already know, like, I can just, I have these like spidey senses. I'm like, Oh, I know that somebody right then was like, Oh, I need that.

Lisa: Yeah, so I have, um, a grid plugin, which just allows you to display your posts in a grid format with a With filtering functionality. So basically it just automatically takes the subcategories that you assign to a parent category.

So if you set up a travel parent category, and then you put different locations, like organized by, um, country, you can have a filter menu that shows posts by the different countries. So that's the grid plugin. LinkedIn profile is. Basically for adding a link and profile page to your site. And like I said, a lot of, a lot of themes for lifestyle bloggers are starting to include that.

And that in I, in that case, you know, if you're. Theme includes it. That's a great option, but there's still a lot of themes that aren't including that functionality. So, and the same with our boutiques plugin, which is basically allows you to take your affiliate shopping widgets and organize them into tabs so you can have an affiliate shopping widget for home, for beauty, for style.

All on the same page and just organize those a little better.

Bree: Very nice. As many, uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's like a catch 22, right? It's like you want the page views, right? And so you want people to click around on your site, but sometimes there is certain functionality where it's like, this is going to be so much more user friendly if my people don't have to keep loading a brand new page every single time they want to see something different.

Lisa: Yeah, and it does have spot a spot where you can add shop by Instagram or you can add links to different retailers that you shop or things like that. So yeah, that is, it really depends on if you want to have that page view or not. And I think on mobile these days, it's a little bit more user friendly to not have the page reload, especially if people are on the go.

So yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bree: Oh my gosh. Amazing. Okay, can you just remind everybody before we wrap this up where they can go and find all these plugins? Find your themes?

Lisa: Yeah. So actually I have a special link for podcast listeners and that's going to be in the description ImpressThemes. com slash ThrivePod. So if you go there, you'll automatically get 15 percent off the entire shop.

Bree: Oh my gosh, you are so amazing. And you guys will make sure that is in the description of this podcast too. If you want to just click it, go check it out, go get some shopping done and. Yeah. I feel like, I don't know, we're rebranding over here. You guys, if you're, if it's, if it's time, go check out her stuff, check out the plugins, check out the themes.

I just love that you've built plugins specifically for bloggers. And I think that's what makes the most sense when shopping for a theme. Rather than, like you said, so much that I'm seeing is like those service based or like for coaches or different things and it's not built for blog focused. I love that all yours are, so.

Thank you so much. You should go check them out. Thanks, uh, thank you for being here and for sharing all this with us. Um, It's been so much fun to get, have a techie chat with you and just share all of that helpful information with our audience.

Lisa: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's been so fun.

Bree: It has been. You guys, thanks for listening. Go check out Lisa and Impress Themes and we'll see you back here in a few days for a new episode. Thank you for listening to the Thrive Podcast. For resources mentioned in today's episode, head to thrive together. blog. And if you're a blogger or influencer looking for a community that is ready to cheer you on and be a resource to help you grow, be sure to join the thrive blogging community on Facebook.

If you love this episode, I would be so honored if you subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast app and give our guests some love over on social media until next time, keep thriving.