Chez Jay: Rebranding in Progress

This sign is from a famous restaurant located on Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue called Chez Jay, I’ve never eaten there and actually this post has nothing to do with this restaurant, it’s to do with my rebranding efforts here on Roving Jay and this is the only image I could find in my photo library that could pass as a “rebranding” image.

Ever since I started blogging here I’ve used the same WordPress Theme and I actually use the same theme on some of my other websites. But I’ve periodically switched out the blog header as part of my rebranding efforts.

Blog Headers Over the Years

Here’s the evolution of my headers over the years.

My Roving Jay Logo was incorporated into my header

Art Deco inspired Header

ROVING JAY Nomadic Adventures in Wonderland Header — Dropped the “Expat” and started using “Nomadic”

HEADER NOMAIC ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND — My new theme needed a different header dimension – so called for another change

New Header — I changed my theme again … which means a new header. I love that I’m going simpler.

If you’re planning on changing your WordPress theme there are a couple of key considerations.

What elements are important to you?

When you’re searching for new themes you can choose what elements are the most important. I wanted to make sure I had the option of adding my own header (some themes don’t) and I also wanted a side-bar on my front page.

The new theme I’m using, PR Pin Theme, had both of the elements I wanted. There were a couple of other “pin” like themes that I actually like better, but none of them had the side bar – and for me that is a deal breaker. Especially now that I’m getting more active on Instagram and I wanted to add my feed to my blog.

The only thing I don’t like about my new theme is that it doesn’t include a blog excerpt under the image on the home page. I’ve written to the theme developer to see whether there’s an option I can change to add it. If not, then I could get a developer to create a Child Theme and add the Excerpt option to that.

Designing your header

If you haven’t already discovered Canva it’s a free design tool that allows you to use templates to create your images, or you can define images with your own custom dimensions. I created my original headers in Photoshop but that’s really overkill based on the simplicity of my header designs – so now I’ve switched to Canva for most of my design tasks.