Breaking away from templates
The development of a blogging community usually has a couple of stages. In the first stage, bloggers discover the power of the medium, particularly its ability to help them distribute their ideas. The second stage is when the community begins to attach the same importance to presentation as it does to expression.
Uganda's blogosphere is still in the first stage. The same Blogger and Wordpress templates litter the nexus, undermining the distinctiveness of each blog. This is not surprising really because most bloggers care more about what they say than how their site looks. And those who do care, often do not know how to do anything about it, which is why some web developers are able to make a living by designing templates and selling them to bloggers.
With the next stage, we should hope to see the emergence of new designs that add that extra bit of flavour to the experience of being on a blog. It probably won't happen everywhere, but a sign that it is happening somewhere will be nice.
Reader comments
Benge and the folks at Nodesix are working to help people get out of the box.
I agree with you there. The problem is (well, if you can call it that) if you are keen on getting your own template, chances are you'd have to do your own hosting. The benefits; New look and you probably get to have a more sensible domain name, the demerits; the hosting fees and such... and there's also the issue that few do in fact know how to go about hosting these things. Then again, Nod 6 is offering cheap hosting, let's see where that goes.
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