Quick WordPress Websites for Beginners: Step 4
Customizing your Theme
Next we are going to talk about customizing your WordPress Website.
Almost everyone who installs their own WordPress theme will at least want to customize the header. How you do this will be dependent on the theme in question. Then you may want to customize other parts of your theme like the sidebar, the footer and the colors.
Many themes will come with settings that allow you to customize the entire site making it completely unnecessary for you to have any previous coding or design experience. I highly recommend these if you are a beginner. The default WordPress theme is actually a great beginner theme. You could also have a look at your options for a Custom Designed Premium Theme by ADH Enterprise, as they will often have many customization options.
The best thing about buying premium themes is that they almost always come with user support as well as forums and files to make installation and customization easy for you.
Other items to customize:
Sidebar - Many people will want to remove the 'Meta' information that is added to some WordPress themes by default. You may also want to add other elements such as an email opt-in and RSS Feed info to your sidebar. The easiest way to make changes to the sidebars is to use widgets. Almost all new themes are 'widget-friendly'. You simply click on 'Widget' under 'Appearance' in the left menu of your WordPress software to see what options you have for customizing with widgets.
Background Color – Again, some free and premium themes let you change the background color within the theme settings. Others may require some custom coding. I recommend you go with the ones that don't require coding. I know how to custom code but I'll always choose the easier path if you let me. There are also many themes out there that now offer various color options. This would mean that you don't need to make any color changes yourself and can use the theme 'as is'.
Important Information About Permalinks
Changing permalinks is very important, almost crucial, to your search engine results. Please make sure you do this step every time you set up a new website or blog!
The first thing you do is go to 'Settings' > 'Permalinks'. Then, under 'Custom Structure' enter whatever custom structure you choose.
What that does is change your website page and post links from a bit of meaningless code to actual WORDS. If this doesn't make sense right now just follow the steps anyway, you'll thank me for this tip later!
Here's the one I use:
/%post_id%/%postname%/
The permalink structure only uses numbers for your blog posts, not your pages. Pages will show up like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page-title
If you use that permalink it will make your website post URLs show up with a number ID and words. For example, a real page on my site with this is setup is:
http://www.Yourdomainname.com/1059/how-to-start-your-own-blog/
The neat part about this is that you don't NEED the words. You can just use the numbers and people will get to your post. So for the example above, all you'd need is this link:
http://www.marketersmojo.com/1059
This is handy because it really shortens your blog post URLs and is great for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
You can enter other Permalink structures if you prefer such as this one:
/%postname%/
That one will simply show up with your post words.
There are other pre-set permalinks you can choose and some advanced options to add categories if you choose to get into this more. Check WordPress.org if you want to really study up on permalinks.
WordPress has gotten really advanced in the way you can customize it over the last few years. When I first wrote this report you largely had to customize a WordPress theme by digging into the css and php files. That's not always a challenge the typical beginner is ready to take on.
But now there are so many easy ways to customize WordPress. Depending on the theme you choose you may never have to touch the theme files at all.
Next we are going to talk about customizing your WordPress Website.
Almost everyone who installs their own WordPress theme will at least want to customize the header. How you do this will be dependent on the theme in question. Then you may want to customize other parts of your theme like the sidebar, the footer and the colors.
Many themes will come with settings that allow you to customize the entire site making it completely unnecessary for you to have any previous coding or design experience. I highly recommend these if you are a beginner. The default WordPress theme is actually a great beginner theme. You could also have a look at your options for a Custom Designed Premium Theme by ADH Enterprise, as they will often have many customization options.
The best thing about buying premium themes is that they almost always come with user support as well as forums and files to make installation and customization easy for you.
Other items to customize:
Sidebar - Many people will want to remove the 'Meta' information that is added to some WordPress themes by default. You may also want to add other elements such as an email opt-in and RSS Feed info to your sidebar. The easiest way to make changes to the sidebars is to use widgets. Almost all new themes are 'widget-friendly'. You simply click on 'Widget' under 'Appearance' in the left menu of your WordPress software to see what options you have for customizing with widgets.
Background Color – Again, some free and premium themes let you change the background color within the theme settings. Others may require some custom coding. I recommend you go with the ones that don't require coding. I know how to custom code but I'll always choose the easier path if you let me. There are also many themes out there that now offer various color options. This would mean that you don't need to make any color changes yourself and can use the theme 'as is'.
Important Information About Permalinks
Changing permalinks is very important, almost crucial, to your search engine results. Please make sure you do this step every time you set up a new website or blog!
The first thing you do is go to 'Settings' > 'Permalinks'. Then, under 'Custom Structure' enter whatever custom structure you choose.
What that does is change your website page and post links from a bit of meaningless code to actual WORDS. If this doesn't make sense right now just follow the steps anyway, you'll thank me for this tip later!
Here's the one I use:
/%post_id%/%postname%/
The permalink structure only uses numbers for your blog posts, not your pages. Pages will show up like this:
http://www.yourdomain.com/your-page-title
If you use that permalink it will make your website post URLs show up with a number ID and words. For example, a real page on my site with this is setup is:
http://www.Yourdomainname.com/1059/how-to-start-your-own-blog/
The neat part about this is that you don't NEED the words. You can just use the numbers and people will get to your post. So for the example above, all you'd need is this link:
http://www.marketersmojo.com/1059
This is handy because it really shortens your blog post URLs and is great for social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
You can enter other Permalink structures if you prefer such as this one:
/%postname%/
That one will simply show up with your post words.
There are other pre-set permalinks you can choose and some advanced options to add categories if you choose to get into this more. Check WordPress.org if you want to really study up on permalinks.
WordPress has gotten really advanced in the way you can customize it over the last few years. When I first wrote this report you largely had to customize a WordPress theme by digging into the css and php files. That's not always a challenge the typical beginner is ready to take on.
But now there are so many easy ways to customize WordPress. Depending on the theme you choose you may never have to touch the theme files at all.
