So, about 10 years after last using WordPress, I once again have a blog.

When I set this up ten years ago, my hosting provider offered, like, 6 possible themes. So I chose the one with the most green in it, obviously. It was wild and wacky and mildly over the top, and the font was awful… but since there is literally nothing I could do about it, I just kind of accepted that my blog would have to look lame.

This time, it seems my hosting provider has completely revamped their offering. It’s now possible to actually update WordPress (so I don’t have to work around bugs that were actually fixed years ago), and you can install any theme you want now.

The trouble is, wading through the literal hundreds of available themes, I’m really struggling to find anything that looks even remotely how I want it to look. Huge numbers of themes have all-caps headings, which I hate. Almost every single theme uses only sans serif fonts, which I greatly dislike. And they all seem utterly devoid of colour, providing only black text on a plain white background, and maybe a choice of 3 inappropriate header or background images.

There’s a nice big “Customisation” button right there, but I only get to change one, maybe two colours. I can’t seem to change anything else.

To be clear, many of these theams would be great if I was trying to build a sleek, glossy magazine, or a coffee website for hipsters. But I can’t seem to find anything that looks formal, and I am severely struggling to find anything some decent serif fonts in it.

Given that all the themes appear to be 100% identical except for slightly different fonts and font sizes, I’m not sure why I even need a theme in the first place. Why can’t I just select the fonts I want from a giant list?

Maybe I should ask Stack Exchange…

The whole experience is incredibly frustrating. This is my blog, it should look how I want it to look!