Ghost Shell | Pipdig WordPress Theme Review

Recently I had a little revamp of my blog and as part of it bought a new WordPress theme. I’ve seen so many people on Twitter talk about the Pipdig WordPress themes so that was one of the places I looked at and eventually bought from. I’ve heard so much hype about Pipdig that I’ve actually avoided it because of that. But after buying one of their themes I was pleasantly surprised by how good it turned out to be.

PIPDIG WORDPRESS THEME REVIEW

Pipdig is a UK based company which creates blog themes for Blogger and WordPress blogs (self-hosted blogs, not WordPress.com). They make nicely designed affordable blog themes. At least among the people I follow on Twitter, they are the place to go for a new blog theme. Pipdig also offers a number of services along with their blog themes like free installation and set-up guides. They will also do a full blog transfer which costs around £150.

Like I said before Pipdig was a website I’ve seen so many people talk about and I’ve avoided it for that reason. Though their themes are really nice they tend to all look pretty similar. To the point where you can go onto a blog and immediately tell if the blog is using a Pipdig theme. This was something which put me off but for reasons, I will soon explain I decided to go wild and buy a Pipdig theme.

BUYING FROM PIPDIG

Buying a blog theme from Pipdig was a very simple process. I bought the theme, the zip file was instantly emailed to me which I then uploaded to my WordPress panel. Pipdig does offer a free installation if you need that but it’s so easy you really shouldn’t unless you have no tech knowledge whatsoever.

You can trust me when I say the process is easy because I am more than happy to complain when my blog isn’t working right.

Getting the theme set up right is a long process. It would probably be much easier if you’re starting on a totally new install of WordPress. Each blog theme works slightly different when it comes to little things like menus and widgets.

Before the social media menu at the top of the page was a menu. This had to change because Pipdig runs that through a plugin. There are certain plugins you have to have for the Pipdig WordPress theme to work right. But it also has custom widgets so you can create that really lovely sidebar which every blogger and their mum seems to have.

WHY I CHANGED THEMES

I changed themes not so much because I really wanted a PipDig theme. But more because it got to the point where I hated what my blog looked like so much I didn’t want to use it. Okay so a little backstory, I transferred to a self-hosted blog in August of 2017. Around that same time, I decided to do a little rebrand of my blog. At the time I liked what I had done but I wasn’t totally happy with it. The only problem was I couldn’t tell what it was that I didn’t like.

Over the last year at college, I have done a lot of branding projects. Branding isn’t just making a logo or a blog header. It’s about deciding how you want to portray yourself, in this case, it was about how I wanted to come across through my blog. And the logo and header didn’t match how I wanted to brand myself.

Fortunately, over the last year, I have done a huge amount of personal branding work. I have a portfolio now and business cards and though everything looks slightly different, there are also similarities. That is because I have one concept which all the designs are based off. And that concept came from how I see myself and how I want to appear online.

When I did that old blog rebrand I thought I should use blue in the colour scheme as my blog is called BluChickenNinja. But when I decided to get a new theme I was at the point where I literally never wanted to see that shade of blue ever again.

Now I’m back to loving how my blog looks, you may notice there is almost no blue in sight. Apart from a few hyperlinks which are more a turquoise than blue. And my lovely new blog header which took me all of five minutes to create because I spent most of the last year doing the really complicated branding stuff.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE DESIGN

I really like the PipDig blog themes. The specific theme I chose was called Ghost Shell. I love the grey color scheme. This works really well with the branding which I have already done. The monochrome colours in the design make my photographs really pop.

One thing I don’t really like about the PipDig themes is how everything feels quite crammed together. I like a lot more white space in my designs (white space being space where there isn’t anything). I think I’m going to go back and play with the CSS just so the page doesn’t feel as crowded. But overall I do love how it looks.

FINALLY

I have to admit I was wrong about the Pipdig WordPress themes. They are worth all the hype I see on Twitter. And at £30-40 they are also cheaper than the last theme I had. Yes, the themes still look pretty similar, but buying a license for a PipDig theme also means you are allowed to make slight modifications to it. But honestly, if you’re looking for a new blog theme Pipdig is one to consider.