Update Your WordPress Blog on a Budget with Pretty Darn Cute Design

This post contains affiliate links.

Since the start of this blog, I have updated its theme 3 times in 5 years. While some people are resistant to change, I embrace it readily, and I probably would have done more blog design work in that time span if I had an unlimited budget!

Because the digital world changes so quickly, it’s important that your blog design look and feel current. That being said, you can spend a small fortune on blog design, with some custom design packages approaching $1,000! The good news is that there ARE ways to give your blog a clean, contemporary design without breaking the bank!

Pretty Darn Cute Design

On my last blog redesign I decided to purchase a WordPress Theme from Pretty Darn Cute Design. Purchasing a pre-designed WordPress theme is a great way to get an attractive design without the price tag of custom design. When I started searching through pre-designed WordPress themes, I found it so overwhelming!

I decided to refine my search by choosing more feminine site designs, and I stumbled upon Pretty Darn Cute Design. I loved their pre-designed themes. They are all clean, modern and not full of extra design elements that I don’t want or need. I chose the Pretty Happy theme and customized it to fit the header and color scheme I wanted.

Customizing a Pretty Darn Cute Design WordPress Theme

Just because you are purchasing a pre-designed WordPress theme doesn’t mean that you can’t customize the theme to your blog’s color palette, header, sidebar, etc. If you are intimidated by the mere idea of tinkering with your blog’s theme, you can always choose the 24 Hour WordPress Theme Setup Package offered by Pretty Darn Cute Design.

All you need to do is let them know what colors you want to use, if you have a header image you want to be inserted, and a few other things and they will get everything set up on your site with the new theme in just 24 hrs.

I chose this option for initial set up, and I was very pleased with the service I got (including back and forth emails to get it just the way I wanted). Everything was done in less than a day!

Since I have taught myself how to get into my css (cascading style sheet) and adjust formatting style and options on my own, I have since made some other adjustments. It’s actually not as hard as it seems to make these changes on your own, but you want to make sure that when you make changes to your css, you copy and paste the original coding in case you need to go back and fix something if you make a mistake!

If you feel up to teaching yourself css and beginner blog design elements, there are some great resources out there. Here are a few that I have found to be very helpful:

• Marianne from Design Your Own (Lovely) Blog has a site full of amazing tools and cheat sheets to help you learn how to design your blog using css. I have also purchased and used her book: Blog Beautiful: 50 Tips + Fixes to Make Your Blog Glow. It was super helpful, and I still use it as a resource.
• Web developer site W3schools.com has a css tutorial that has a lot of helpful info on learning css and how to use it to change design elements. I love that it has a little practice area for you to try it out yourself and see how it works!
• CoSchedule created a great roundup of free tools you can use to create graphics for your blog, whether it’s a header, headshot or blog graphic.
• Creative Bloq assembled a very comprehensive list of helpful WordPress guides and tutorials.

If you feel like your blog needs a facelift to take it to the next level, check out some of the above tools and sign up for my FREE e-course: Give Your Blog a Mini Makeover. Don’t be afraid to dive in and teach yourself how to design your own blog!