Hey hey! Who is ready for some FUN today? I know the set up of WordPress.org and Bluehost is more technical and not so much fun as what we are going to do today in my opinion (although, wasn’t the step by step guide pretty easy? Check it out here if you missed it). Today we’re going to take it to the next step and walk through How to Select, Install, & Customize Your WordPress.org Theme.
Alright, you ready? Of course you are 🙂
How to Select, Install, & Customize Your WordPress.org Theme
So in case you’re wondering what the heck a “theme” even is, lemme give you a quick rundown. A theme is essentially the appearance of your blog, which can include things like colors, fonts, headers, number of columns, etc. You want to select a theme that will achieve what you want your blog to do and that matches your personality and style. There are literally thousands of themes you can choose from and so many free ones you can install right through WordPress.org. There are paid ones too. Just find you one you connect with and I think that’s the most valuable thing to do. The great news is you can see demos of the sites before you activate on your own.
Step 1: Select Your Theme
Be sure that you are logged into your WP Dashboard. Remember last week I shared anytime you want to login to your dashboard you can go to “http://yourblognamehere.com/wp-admin”. I recommend bookmarking this page for ease!
Then, scroll down on the sidebar on the lefthand side of your dashboard to where you see “Appearance“. Hover over that and you’ll see another menu pop-out. Click “Themes“. At the top of this page, you should see “WordPress.org Themes“. Click that.
A page will appear that has all of the available themes you can choose from, and you can sort them out by Featured, Popular, Latest, Premium (these are the paid ones), and you can also search in the search bar for something specific. For example, I typed in “lifestyle blog” just to see what kinds of themes generated from that search. See below:
Pages upon pages populated from the search. Hopefully you don’t struggle too much with decision-making, because this part might be tricky for you 🙂
If you see one you like, you can view more by hovering over the image and you will see “Details & Preview” pop up.
You can select that to see a preview version of the theme.
For example, I selected the “Juliet” theme here to see a preview, see below. The lefthand side gives some information about the theme and then the righthand side is a live demo version where you can kind of click through to see what it has to offer in terms of layout. This helps you get a good feel for what theme you want.
Step 2: Installing Your Theme
Once you select the theme that you think best suits you, your personality, style, and needs, then you can either click the blue “Install” button on the theme preview page, or you can go back out to the themes main page and click Install there. The installation will begin automatically. Once the installation is complete (it should only take a few moments) then you will see the “Activate” button appear. The theme will not be applied to your blog until you click “Activate“. See below.
Clicking the Activate button will apply the theme to your blog.
Step 3: Customizing Your Theme
This is fun, right?! Now you can customize. Each theme will be different, so really the best way to figure out what you want within that theme is to play around and test things out.
To customize, you will go back to that “Appearance” section in your WP dashboard on the lefthand side of your menu, then click “Customize“. That will open up a toolbar on the left hand side and your live blog on the right hand side. You can make changes here to make things the way that you want them including font, color, etc. here. You will see the change take effect on the right hand side, but it will not save unless you press “Save”.
Once you get everything the way you want it, you’re ready to write your first blog post for the world (or your mom, whatever!) to read. And don’t worry about committing to a theme, you can always change your theme if you decide you don’t like it later on down the road. There are a few variables to think about if you’re going to change an existing blog with different posts, pages, and widgets to another theme to ensure you don’t lose any of that, but when you’re just starting out, if you pick a theme and decide a couple of days later you don’t actually like it, that’s fine. Don’t fear the commitment 🙂
So yeah, like I said, now you’re ready to write your first blog post! I will be covering all the details about writing your first blog post next week, so be sure to check back and I’ll walk you through every step and what all those little icons in your text box mean, plus, I’ll give a few of my favorite tips to share your posts to get more traffic. See you then!!
xo,
Bess
In Case You Missed it:
Omg as soon as I can take a breather, I am so going to do this.
yay!!! I know. it can be hard to find the time!! I am trying to make it a little easier on everyone 🙂 xo