The last time I did a theme reboot or change my blog theme/layout was early this year when I installed a customized version of Magazine News. I liked my previous theme/layout, but it didn’t really work out as I expected it to be and I also grew tired of it. I spent a good amount of time scanning and browsing currently available free and premium WordPress themes and after narrowing my options and weighing things out, I was able to decided on which theme to use.

JaypeeOnline has a fresh new theme and it’s called “Fresh News”. I purchased this theme from WooThemes during their Halloween Special promo where they offered three themes for the price of one. Although Fresh News is not a new theme, I’ve always liked it ever since it was released by WooThemes. Now that I have it, I just wish that I had purchased this theme earlier.

It took a while for me to finish customizing the Fresh News theme because it uses a lot of built-in functions, includes and other files that my previous themes didn’t have. I had to go through the code and familiarize myself with the theme structure. I’m glad that as a WooThemes customer, I have access to the support forum where I was able to ask help with some of the customization. The forum admin and Woo Ninjas (moderators) were very friendly, helpful and prompt in answering my questions and replying to my support threads.

As you can see, the layout has changed a lot from the previous theme. Previously, there were three columns that had two sidebars and a bottom bar. Now, it only has two columns and no bottom bar. I’ve dropped some plugins like the Page-Navi which I don’t need anymore, Post-Ratings because I feel like its not serving its purpose and MyAvatars because Fresh News already has built-in Gravatar support. I also got rid of some scripts/widgets like FeedBurner (RSS readers), TopBlogs and Ratified. I thought about also removing the Entrecard widget but I decided to keep it for now.

Anyways, this layout and all the stuff you see here are not yet final. It’s still a work in progress so it means I could still change some parts of it and add/remove stuff. There are some stuff that I plan on adding that I’m sure would be useful for both you, my regular readers and the visitors. Also, I would really appreciate it if you can help me by pointing out bugs, errors or typos that you might find in any part of the blog. Comments, suggestions and feedback are also much welcome. You can leave a comment here or contact me.

So what do you think about the new theme/layout? Do you think its better than the previous one? Why or why not? What are the things you think I should change or improve? I value your opinion. Thanks for your time and have a nice day!