Out of the thousands of themes available for Wordpress you are bound to find one you love. While my next article will help you learn how to change a theme if you have never done so and want to, this article will focus on what to remember once you do pick and apply a new theme for your blog.

Once you pick a new theme, there are a few very important steps to take to make a seamless transition. Many of us overlook an item or two and end up missing a few days of stats and advertising dollars.

1. The sidebar is gone. Most of us add things to our sidebar, be it advertising, widgets, text, links, etc. Once you get a new theme, the old sidebar you customized will be replaced. Unless you are using pure widgets for your sidebar you will have to manually edit your new sidebar file. This is usually a great time to do some blog clean up and get rid of unneeded items and clutter.
2. Your Stats and Feed Flares. If you use Google Analytics, feedburner, etc. Any website stats sites or programs there is usually a piece of code you had to add to your files, usually in the header or footer. When you pick a new theme these files are not used so you will have to transfer your codes to the new theme files in order for your stats program to continue tracking your visitors. This also applies to Google Webmasters Tools. If you are a user of this you will need to reapply the tracking code or uploading the file to your new theme to make sure the site stays verified.
3. Plugins Cleanup. Now is the time to check your plugins, add in the code to the new theme to make some work, and also go through and see if you still need or use the plugin. Some you will not need because of features of the new theme, and most you will have to transfer the code- for instance- any comment plugins that you need to add lines to the comments.php file of the new theme to make the plugin work.
4. Advertising Update. If you are running ads, be it single ads or google adsense you will need to not only apply them to the new theme, but manage the colors and layout to fit the new design. This is also a good time to re-evaluate if the ads are working on your site and try new ad placements.
5. RSS Feeds and Subscription. Once you have the new design up you will want to check the rss subscriptions, try subscribing to your site and make sure you replace the rss links with feedburner links if you use them. Also, if you use feedburner, make sure to update the rss addresses in the header.php file to be your feedburner address.
6. Test, test, test! When you get your new theme up and running you will want to test the actions, like searching, see if the results come up the way you want them, click on a category and test the formatting, try out commenting and other plugins to be sure they blend and display the way you want them to.
7. Browser Check. Check in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, ask friends to check using other browsers and operating systems. Do your best to get it to look uniform on all browsers. This could make or break a new theme you like.
8. Take your time. Test, test, test, before you spend 3 hours changing plugins and options, change a little and test, then change a little more, nothings worse than spending hours on a theme that refuses to work in most browsers or that does not take changes well. This is your blog, make sure the new theme works for you and your topic.
9. Tell People. Once the theme is up and running, post about the change, listing new features and asking for feedback and bug reports. Your readers are the best source of information and their opinion and advice can help your readership if you listen and reply.