I spent the last couple of days fiddling with the design of my blog, tweaking some things, adding a few features I’d disabled before.

Mainly, I just consolidated the tabs and changed my theme to WordPress.org’s free Serenity.

I like the color and the header image, although I might replace them in the future. Also, the widgets seem to line up with my previous theme.

I tested about fifty themes and wasn’t happy with any of them entirely.

What I’m looking for is something with a lot of customizability – something that allows you to tweak the color, font size, page template, and commenting, and much more.

But I want the flexibility along with simplicity of use. If I have to get into the code to change things, that’s not good. I also don’t need gizmos right now. I just want a sleek, minimalist, but attractive site.

Serenity is not perfect on several counts, but it’s better than my previous theme, which had glaring red fonts that I couldn’t change.

If any one has any recommendations for WordPress themes good for the tech-deficient, I’d welcome them.

Remember, I’m looking for flexibility, lots of widgets, and customizable colors, font-sizes, and page-templates.

Among the ones I tried, Thematic seemed to have the most options. I also tried Twenty Twelve, Writr, Clutterless, Icy, Mantra, Khakhi Traveler and dozens of others. It was quite tedious and eventually I went back to my first choice.

I tend to like gray, cream, tan, blue-gray, gray-green, and black. Neutrals with a cool, quiet look and low glare.
No fluffy colors or images. I don’t mind script in the header, but generally I want something plainer and simpler in the main design. Nothing ultra-modern. I prefer images of nature to abstract designs. Also, I don’t like large headers at all, but the page shouldn’t be so small it’s unreadable. I don’t need grid designs, as I don’t run multiple images or columns.