The Complete Guide To WordPress // Themes

Welcome to the fifth week of my Complete Guide To WordPress blog course.

Here’s what we’ve covered so far:

• Week One: Why should you move to WordPress?
• Week Two: Which host should you pick?
• Week Three: Installing your WordPress Blog.
• Week Four: Pointing your domain to WordPress

This week we’re going to talk about finding and customising your theme.

Open your WordPress dashboard and click onto ‘Themes‘ under Appearance.

Here you can either upload a theme you’ve bought or browse the catalogue of free themes.

I’ve seen one that looks decent, so I’m going to Install it. It’s called ‘Kale’.

You can then ‘activate it’ or click ‘live preview‘.

If you click ‘live preview‘, it will take you take you to the customisation page where you can edit the theme and see the changes instantly.

I’ve made a few changes to the header image and blog name.

This theme gives me lots of options to play with featured posts and sliders. As I only have two posts right now, I’m going to turn it off.

Different themes will give you different customisation options, so play around until you’ve found what you are happy with.

You can usually change colours of text/backgrounds, add headers, change how posts are laid out on your main page, customise your slider and more.

This is what the site currently looks like:

If you are wanting to buy your own theme, it’s important to know what want before parting with your cash. There are a lot of themes on Etsy and it’s worth having a look at a few before buying. My theme came with a bundle of 8 on special a special offer on Etsy which I think is a bargain.

Most themes average between £20-50. Custom themes are a lot more expensive so I wouldn’t get your heart set on that unless you’re willing to part with at least £600!

Next week I’ll be showing how you can make your own header for free!

See you next week!