Wordpress Themes

Wordpress Themes allow you to quickly and easily customize the way your site looks and how you organize content. Making your Wordpress site unique to you is an important step in establishing how you want to present yourself online--think of it like the front yard and facade of a house. There are hundreds of themes to choose from and you don't need to know anything about building websites or coding to use them.

To change your Wordpress theme, you must install it and then activate it. Only one theme can be active at a time, and your activated theme is the one that will determine how your site looks.

Installing and Activating New Themes
Select "Appearance" and then "Themes" on your Dashboard sidebar.



Your Themes page displays all the themes you have installed in your Wordpress site under the "Manage Themes" tab and allows you to search for more under the "Install Themes" tab. The theme that is currently active on your blog is displayed at the top of the "Manage Themes" tab.



Select "Install Themes," and then search for a new theme using the keyword search or by selecting elements you want your theme to have.



"Preview" shows you what the theme will look like once it's activated. "Install Now" adds the theme to your "Manage Themes" tab so you can activate it.



Once you've installed your new theme, return to the "Themes" page and scroll down until you find the theme you want to activate. "Live Preview" allows you to see what the theme will look like on your personal Wordpress page.

Basic Theme Customization
Every Wordpress theme has a unique set of attributes that you can customize to determine what your home page, blog posts, and child pages look like. Some themes are highly customizable while others are more static, but all of them have the same basic set of customization options. This article uses the default Wordpress Twenty Twelve theme as an example.

To access the options of the theme you have activated, click on "Appearance" on the lefthand sidebar menu of your blog's Dashboard, just like you did to install a new theme. From there, click "Customize" under the blurb about your activated theme, which will take you to the following page:




 * To the right is a preview of your blog, which will display any changes to your blog as you make them.
 * The first drop-down menu provides information about your current blog theme.
 * The "Site Title & Tagline" menu allows you to change the title that displays at the top of your blog and the short tagline underneath it.
 * The "Colors" menu allows you to change the color of your blog's background and the text in your site title and tagline.
 * The "Background Image" menu lets you upload a background image from your computer, or from a library of images you have previously uploaded to your Wordpress Media Library.
 * The "Static Front Page" menu gives you the option of displaying a static page as either the front page of your blog, or on the posts page of your blog, instead of displaying your most recent posts. You can select the static page you wish to display from a drop-down menu of pages you have already created.
 * Learn more about creating pages in Wordpress <--edit to head to internal page header about Pages

Once you have completed your basic customization, make sure to click "Save & Publish" at the top of the menu.