Wordpress is a powerful, free blogging platform. It comes in two flavors: hosted on Wordpress.Com or on your own server (which can, for development purposes, be run on your own computer using a web server such as XAMPP). While the hosted version of Wordpress does offer a small number of free themes which can be used to change a blog's appearance, this article focuses on the full version of Wordpress (version 2.8.3).
Questions answered in this article will be the following:
- What is a Wordpress theme?
- Which sites offer free, high-quality Wordpress themes?
- How to download and install Wordpress themes
- What kind of themes are best-suited to which kinds of websites?
- How to customize ready-made Wordpress themes
- When to spend money on premium or original Wordpress themes
Themes determine the appearance of a Wordpress blog. This includes the blog's layout, menus, logos, and color schemes, among other things. Because Wordpress uses PHP (a server-side programming language, meaning that it runs on the server where the blog resides) in conjunction with XHTML (the most standards-compliant version of HTML, the mark-up language used to create web pages) and CSS (cascading style sheets, which set rules for how the web page will be "styled"), most of what makes up a Wordpress theme is the CSS style sheet, followed by graphics used in the web design and a few template files containing the XHTML and PHP code. This can be scary to a person with little or no experience in coding for the web, but fear not... hundreds, if not thousands, of ready-made themes are available online for use with Wordpress, and many of these were created with user customization in mind.
Where can I find free themes?
There are plenty of websites that offer Wordpress theme downloads. To start with, try searching the themes directory on Wordpress.Org. New themes are uploaded every day, and they can be searched by keywords or viewed by popularity, newest submissions, or most recently updated. Clicking on a theme's thumbnail will bring up a quick info page about that theme, including a star rating given by users. From this page, the theme can be previewed full-size and downloaded.
A quick Google search may also bring up many websites where Wordpress themes not submitted to the official website may be downloaded free. Lots of them are blogs dedicated to reviewing or listing top Wordpress themes, including graphic design ezines. Smashing Magazine, for example, has a few popular blog postings (100 Excelent Free WordPress Themes, 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven't Seen, 21 Fresh, Usable and Elegant Wordpress Themes, 30 Free High Quality Wordpress Themes) listing some of the best, premium-quality free themes on the 'net, although some have unfortunately become outdated as the artists took them down.
I suggest finding a number of themes that have the right look for your blog and installing them. This is because some themes might be broken or will not work well with your particular blog's contents and needs. Getting a few themes allows you to experiment a bit to get just the right one.
Download & Install Themes
There are two methods of downloading and installing Wordpress themes. The more traditional way, which will work with themes from all over the Internet, is to download the .zip package for the website. From there, unzip on your computer, then upload to your web server. Each theme goes under its own folder, located in the wp-content/themes folder for your blog. Once the files are there, log-in to the dashboard (admin area) and look on the left-hand toolbar. Click on "Appearance," which brings up the "themes" page. You should find your new theme there. Clicking "activate" will make that the theme for your blog. Other themes will remain in your theme gallery for later use.
Another method of putting up a new theme is to download and install it directly from the dashboard. This is a new feature of Wordpress 2.8. All themes available on Wordpress.Org are searchable and previewable from your dashboard, with some extra search features, and you can click to have them install instantly to your blog. With this, there is no longer any need to use FTP when installing new themes, so long as Wordpress's official website has them.
Choosing the Best Theme
- For personal blogs, any theme will do, and many themes have content-specific designs for all interests, whether it's music, video games, cooking, etc.
- Wordpress blogs make great virtual writers' desks. Try using a clean, simple theme with one side-bar. Be sure that the colors and fonts for that theme will not burn your eyes after hours of reading!
- Magazine-style blogs are great for creating ezines. These can look like online newspapers or edgy design or music mags.
- Themes are also available for those looking to make some money. These themes may advertise themselves as "Adsense ready" or "SEO ready."
- Need a theme that's easy to tweek and customize? Try looking for "simple" or "sandbox" themes.
Found a theme that looks great, but the colors are not quite right? Log into your dashboard, go to "Appearance," and then click on "editor." Click on "style.css" and look for the style rules that set up colors. This may take some searching, but the names of elements and rules are in plain English, luckily. Colors will be set in hexadecimal code, which looks like a pound sign followed by a combination of six letters and numbers. Copy and past these into a graphics program's color selector to see what color the code is for, then change the color to what you would like. Copy and paste the hexadecimal color code back into the style sheet. Save and check the results on your blog. It may take a few tries, but once used to the process, changing colors is not too difficult, even with little programming experience.
To replace images, such as a logo, look for that image in the code of any of the template (that is, .php) files (other than function.php, which is not a template) and replace it with the URL for your new image. Be sure to also change things like "width" and "height" to the new graphic's dimensions. For logos, the best bet is to look in the "header.php" file, which is where all of the theme's top-of-page stuff goes.
Determining what goes in the side bar(s) is easier. The "widgets" menu under "Appearance" determines which widgets will be used where, if at all. Standard widgets that come with Wordpress include archive menus, search forms, etc. These are the typical items that are shown in the sidebars of most blogs. Want more things in your sidebar, like pictures, advertisements, or Twitter feeds? Go to "Plugins" and click on "add new" to search for and install new widgets directly from your dashboard. You should find all you need there.
About Premium Wordpress Themes
When running a professional website for a business that will not necessarily be in blog form, you may consider purchasing a Wordpress theme. The benefit of premium themes is that they often come with their own customization panel under "Appearance" that show when the theme is active, plus the creator will tend to offer assistance in setting up and using the theme. It is advisable to first exhaust the free options before considering a premium Wordpress theme, unless the project has a big budget, in which case, get a web designer to do some original work. Premium themes are not unique, just nicer and more feature-rich. Premium themes run from about $30 to $100 on average and can be purchased from such sites as StudioPress or Press75, for example.
Source article: online blogging bloggers and Blogger Reviews and Free Blog Sites and News Blog and Famous Blogger
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