How to Customize your Blog on Wordpress

You probably think your blog looks rather dull now, don't you? Don't be afraid, I'll show you how to modify your look and feel in this stage, along with a number of other fun hints and hints for personalising your blog. Everybody has a different vision of what his blog should look like.

WordPress is one of the great things about WordPress that you can modify the whole look and feel of your website with just a few mouse clicks. With WordPress you can create your own website with just a few mouse clicks. What's more, you can also create your own website with WordPress. Below are just a few WordPress samples that are totally free (click on an illustration to enlarge): Page laysouts are called "themes" in WordPress.

Topics steer the overall look of your blog. In order to modify your topic, click on the "Appearance" register card in the navigation bar on the right. You' ll see that several topics are already on your blog: This is a basic, clean-looking topic that can work for almost any kind of blog.

Except if you have a very custom designed blog in mind, I suggest that you first use one of these pre-installed designs. In our example we use the topic "Twenty Twelve". To enable the topic in your blog, move your mouse over the topic and click the "Enable" icon.

You' ve just modified the whole look of your blog with just one click! Unless you're a big fan of the topics pre-installed with your blog, don't be afraid. In order to have a new look, click on the "Appearance" register card in the navigation bar on the right. Then you will be forwarded to the topic-finder.

You have many different ways to find a topic that you like. If you find one you like, move your cursor over it and click the bluish "Install" icon. When the design is in place, click "Activate" to enable the design in your blog. In order to see your new topic in Action, visit your website and take a look!

Next stage in this lifecycle is to build a simple navigational menus so that your visitors can find important areas of your website quickly by simply click on the link in the menus. Click the Look tabs in the menus to the right of your blog Admin area. We' re going to make a new main menue name.

Type this name in the Name field, and then click Make Me Select. We can now begin to add the desired elements to this list. In our example I will first add a hyperlink to the homepage of my blog. Then you have to type in the "link text" the text that should appear in the menue for the links to your homepage.

I' ll call this hyperlink "Home". After entering your web address and your text, click on "Add to menu". Let's first append another point to the navigational tool. I' m going to be adding a hyperlink to a page I previously made. Click the Pages section of the File Navigator window in the Main Window to launch.

I want to put a page on the menue named "Contact Me", so I will check the box next to this page and then click "Add to Menu". I then click on "Save Menu" to store the changes I just made. After I have finished creating my menus, I need to create the menus for my blog.

This example shows how to include the main menus in the "Primary menu" area. And now that you have your blog's fundamental look and feel and your own navigational tools, you can further customize things to your own taste. Go to the Aussehen tabs in the menus to the right of your blog Admin area.

Click on "Customize". You will then be taken to a monitor showing your blog home page on the right, with the Customize option panel on the Left. Important: If you are using a different design than the one I use for this example, your fitting choices may slightly differ.

You can make a number of adjustments from this monitor. In this section you can modify the subtitle and subtitle displayed at the top of your blog. It is also possible to completely delete them by clearing the "Show heading text" check mark. Allows you to modify the text colour of your headline and the wallpaper colour.

Allows you to insert an additional picture to your headline. Notice that each topic has a different recommended picture format for the headers. To use an imagery as a backdrop instead of a full colour, you can do this in this section by simply submitting the desired imagery.

Here you can select which of your navigational options you would like to use. It must have already been set up, which I will show you in an early stage on this page. Widget's are various elements that you can include in your Blog side bar list. In this section, you can insert and delete Widget to your side bar list.

Click on "Widgets" and then on "Main Sidebar" to launch. Here is a listing of the Widget currently used in the Main Window. As you can see, we have three widgets: Or you can see how these 3 Widgets appear on your website by looking in the right side bar.

As you can see, the Find Widget created a query field, the archive widget displays a month-by-month history of my postings, and the meta widget displays a large number of my blog entries. And now that I've taken out all those widgets, I'll be adding a few that I like.

First, I'll be adding the Recent posts widget, which creates a link to my latest postings in the sideline area. We have a wide range of other Widgets that you can choose to include if you want, so don't hesitate to discover them. Plug-ins are extra utilities that you can include in your third-party WordPress blog.

You can find literally anything in your blog with free blogging plug-ins. Plug-ins are available for making contacts, attaching links to your website, or improving the website's exposure to popular websites. The Jetpack brings a lot of easy-to-use functions to WordPress, such as the possibility to include pictures in your page bar menu, post your post on Facebook and see how many persons have been visiting your blog.

The first time you start your blog, it's important that you modify your credentials so they know who's posting your blog. Click on the "Users" register card in the navigation bar on the right. Click on "Edit" under your name. You should at least edit your email address and your alias on the Account Detail page.

This is the common name that will appear on all your postings, so keep this in mind when making your selection. Just enter any name in the "Nickname" field and then select the same name in the drop-down list next to "Show name as". If you wish, you can also modify your e-mail adress.

And every and every times you add a new blog entry to your blog, you create a new page with a distinct URI. Your preferences for your U rl name are called "Permalinks". In order to modify this preference, browse to the "Settings" page in the navigation bar on the right, then click on "Permalinks".

Once you have completed this stage, you should have a working and appealing blog. Let's move on to the funny part - posting your blog!