How I Did My Research

My research was pretty basic, but time consuming and challenging, particularly because there's a lot of variables and not much prescriptive guidance that I found actionable. Here's what I did: * Searched for patterns. I could recognize when a template looked and felt good, but I couldn't reliably figure out why. To fix this, I filled my head with as many patterns as I could by evaluating hundreds of blogs, then evaluating thousands of templates and then by spiraling down around the vital few variables (once I figured out what they were.)
* Set up multiple test beds. I setup multiple test sites for testing with users. Each test bed was a full blown blog with theme, so that I could do fast comparisons between theme A and theme B.
* Tested with Wordpress. I've done testing before with Community Server and Blogger, so this time I focused on Wordpress.
* Evaluated free templates. I explored multiple, free template galleries to build a foundation for recognizing effective blog theme patterns. I tried to find templates that were actively used, so I could see live implementations.
* Evaluated templates you buy. I ended up buying various blog theme packages so I could explore them too, to see if I could find any clear quality differentiations.
* Modeled from effective blogs and bloggers. I evaluated the top 100 bogs in Technorati. I also explored lots of blog examples that my friends sent during my research.
* Created a focus group. I selected a subset of my users that were able to provide multiple rounds of in-depth feedback. This helped tons and I can't thank them enough!
* Used the Internet Explorer Development Toolbar. The toolbar helped me quickly analyze various blog themes on live sites and then tweak my own. See Alik on using the IE Development Toolbar.