Issues when changing Wordpress theme

Hi,
I am having some difficulties when changing theme in wordpress from the default twenty twelve theme to another.

When I view my blog entires I see that they have become messed up. The font is different, and the alignment of photos is very different than before, making the blog post unreadable.

I have gotten in touch with the maker of the new theme (photocrati) and he had a look at it and said there’s no easy fix. I’ll just have to go through each post, one by one and fix them. This will require a lot of time, but I would do it if I thought it was the best solution.

The problem is that after modifying a couple of them, so that they render correctly on the new theme, I noticed that they don’t stay that way, if I change to another theme within the new package that I got. There are 15 in total (from photocrati). They are all quite similar, they just have subtle changes.

I’d be very grateful if anyone could tell me if it is normal or not to have such issues when changing theme?

I would love to know what precautions should I take when inserting images and formatting text as I write the post? in order to avoid these issues.

Also, as an aside. I have been playing around with a new theme instead which I really like called Lensa. I would love to use it, but I cannot get my blog posts to render neither of the homepage or the blog page I created. I have set it up in Settings->Reading to render on the blog page, but the posts won’t appear. If I set it for them to appear on the home page, it still does not work. I have spent a few hours trying to figure it out long with some googling, but no luck so far.

Incidently, I also have the same issue with the blog post formatting with the lensa theme, just as with the photorati theme.

My website is www.thestrayphotographer.com At the time of writing I have the default 2012 theme from wordpress activated, but I suppose I’ll be chopping and changing as I try to sort these issues out.

I’d be really very greatful for any advice.
Many thanks

Frankie,

Themes typically have their own CSS files associated with them. When you install the theme, the CSS file is also installed and that affects your content. All you have to do is change the line of code in your CSS file that has to do with your posts and it should fix all of them. You can modify any other CSS that has changed styling as well.

If you had your theme up and running I could tell you where to look for that specific code but you have the default one running so I can’t. Let me know if you need any other help.

Best,

Shawn

Hi Shawn,
Thanks for getting back to me. I suspected that it had somthing to do with CSS.
I can enable the Lensa theme for you to have a look at when you want but trouble is that the blog posts dont display on the blog page. I’ll also have to send you on a URL to view a post.

Previously I was looking around in looking in appearance -> edit css to see if I could find anything.In the dashboard for the 2012 theme, but it is empty.
Do you know where the CSS is located in the default 2012 theme? Would I just be able tp copy the part related to font and styling and paste it into the new theme, thus eliminating the problem?

Many thanks for the help.

No problem Frankie,

Your CSS should be under appearance->editor and then look for style.css near the bottom of the page. Not sure if you are familiar with using an FTP program instead of editing in the WP backend but its usually a lot easier to find what you are looking for using a code editor.

At any rate, do you have any coding experience? If you are willing to learn its really not that difficult to make these simple changes. I like to use the Chrome browser and the elements panel to identify what code is causing elements to have a certain style on the page. If you look at your web page in Chrome, hover your mouse over the element that you want style information for, right click and select “inpsect element”, the elements panel will appear at the bottom of your screen. You will notice that by hovering over the HTML in the panel that elements on the screen above will be highlighted. If you select an html element, corresponding CSS will be shown in the panel to the right. You can even make changes right in the browser to see how they would appear if they were live (note that they are only changing for you and not permanently).

Let me know when you have the theme up and running and I would be happy to help you identify the CSS that needs to be changed.

Best,

Shawn