WordPress themes do more than just change the look of your blog. A carefully-chosen theme can enhance usability, affect findability, and potentially boost reader satisfaction. I’ll explain. Moments ago, I followed links from WordPress’s theme selection page to Chris Pearson’s blog. Chris designed Pressrow and Cutline. I chose Cutline because of its apparently high readability. Just look at the overall page balance. Doesn’t each blog entry seem to just float off the page to your brain? Then, I started to notice the feature-rich options, two of the most basic being:

• controlled image layouts
• formatted block quotes and pullquotes

For example, Cutline’s demo page displayed images quite well. I use images to reinforce or illustrate blog entries as often as I can.

Lastly, Chris’s Cutline demo page includes incredibly informative blog entries on how to maximize the use of these and other features.

I’m noting the blog stats prior to my switch to this theme. I’ll let you know what I discover after a few weeks on Cutline.

Chris has also written some highly informative entries on how to increase your blog’s visibility. Hold on tight, because Chris Pearson is taking us for a ride on the Cutline!