14 DAY TRIAL // With millions of people (still) blogging and more starting, it's important that you stand out in some way, especially if you're sharing a blogging platform with millions of other people.
The best way to stand out is with great content, of course, but equally important is to make a good first impression and then to keep people coming and enjoying your site.
This is why a great theme is important. WordPress.com has plenty of themes to choose from and more added regularly. But even so, you may want to customize them before you apply them to your blog to get rid of the stock look.
WordPress.com has introduced a brand new customizer, WordPress 3.4 users will be getting it as well, which enables users to tweak themes and see how the changes affect their blogs without actually applying the theme to the live site, until they're done customizing.
"The customizer provides a live preview as you play with Appearance settings, and can be used to customize a live preview of a new theme before you activate it, or to make changes to your existing theme," WordPress explained.
"It allows you to edit the site title and tagline, custom headers and backgrounds, navigation placement, front page selection, and other options that vary by theme. It works with both free themes and premium themes," it added.
You can take the new customizer for a spin for yourself to see it in action, WordPress has a short overview on how it works in the blog post.
There are more changes to the theme system along with the new customizer, also making their way to WordPress 3.4, like the ability to choose a header image from your existing Media Library, rather than having to upload one from your computer.