The basic site
Here’s my basic site before I do anything to it.
Note that there is no real styling, and there is a post there already. And if you look at the menu bar under the banner image, there are two pages: Home (the page we’re on) and About. There’s also a tagline, "Just another WordPress blog"
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to get rid of that "Hello world!" post, make the tagline more interesting, and how to install a theme for your site.
Go to your dashboard
If you’re logged in to WordPress you should see a row of buttons at the top of your screen. Go to My Blogs, then hover over your blog’s title and select "Dashboard". Note the other options that are available here, and that you can run more than one site.
Select "Posts"
In the menubar on the left, click on "Posts" to reveal the panel. You can use this to manage existing posts, create new ones, or manage your categories and tags. Click the top option, "Posts"
View your posts list
There should only be one post here at the moment, unless you’ve added more. Many people don’t bother removing the "Hello world!" post from their blogs but you really should – it just looks unprofessional if you don’t.
Deleting "Hello world!"
Just hover over the post you want to delete and a hidden set of options will appear. Click on the red "Trash" command, and the post will be deleted.
Creating a test post
Now having deleted a post we’re going to create a test post. This is to give you an idea of how it’s done, but also allow us to preview some of the themes we’ll be looking at later. This post will be deleted so don’t worry about what goes in it. You will need an image to upload, anything will do so long as it is a JPG, GIF or PNG.
1. Now add a title for the post. This is very important – a lot of people make posts with no titles and it’s bad!
2. Then type anything you want, it doesn’t matter. I’ve used some dummy text that graphic designers use and I’ve included it below so you can copy and paste it if you wish.
When you’ve finished typing, click at the front of your text so the cursor is at the start. We’re going to insert an image next, and it will appear wherever the cursor is.
3. Then click the "insert image" button
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Here’s my draft post with the photo I uploaded at the top. You can resize the window to see more of your entry by dragging the bottom right hand corner, When you’re happy with it (and remember this is a test – you can delete it later so don’t spend too much time on it) click the blue "Publish" button.
Changing the tagline
If you do a Google search for "Just another wordpress blog" you’ll see that it’s rather popular. That’s because so few people bother to change this default setting. To do this, go to the "Settings" menu on the left side of the screen (click "Settings" if you can’t see the options below it) then click "General".
The General Settings panel
This is where you change many of the most basic settings for your WordPress site.
Change the Tagline
Click in the tagline box and replace it with something far more relevant, such as "Interior design from Scotland" – keep it succinct and professional but make sure it reflects your character. It can be witty, irreverent, plain and simple. Just make sure it’s spelt correctly!
While you’re here, change your timezone if necessary, and any other settings you want. This is also where you change your site’s title.
Check your changes
If you go back to your blog you should see the changes you made. Don’t worry if the image you inserted is too big – this is just a test! And you should hopefully see that your tagline has changed. But I’m not happy that the image is quite small, the top banner image isn’t mine, and really it all looks rather boring.
So now let’s change the way our site looks.
The Appearance menu
Go back to the dashboard and click on "Appearance", then select "Themes".
Selecting a theme
The free WordPress hosting comes with several free themes. If you know CSS you can restyle these to suit your needs (the Design Studies blog is a slightly modified free theme, for example) and if you want to push beyond the basic settings you can pay extra for outside hosting and buy a professional theme or create your own. But for now, best to stick with the free themes and leave all that for another day (or year).
My current theme is Twenty Ten. Underneath you will see a random selection of themes that are available. You can click "Refresh" to get a new selection, or view them all alphabetically.
Previewing themes
Under each theme there is a brief description and the ability to preview it. Clicking "Preview" brings up a window showing what your blog will look like in that theme. Write down the names of any you think are potential winners (it’s sometimes difficult to find them later!) and keep looking.
For this site I’m looking for something that shows my photos off at their best. Bear in mind you can change the size of images in individual posts, but I’m looking for a theme that might do that automatically.
There’s a little "X" in the top left corner which closes the preview and returns you to the theme choice page.
This is Monotone. It seems to be quite close to what I’m after, but it doesn’t appear to let me have a banner image at the top (look for "custom header" in the theme description), which I might prefer to have. But I like the fact the photo is big, and that the theme automatically picks out a colour that matches it.
I’ve gone with Duotone for now. It’s simple, and on reflection maybe it’s not a problem I can’t have a banner image as I want my photographs to speak for themselves.
The finished blog
So there were are. My site is styled to my liking. I could get advanced and begin altering the CSS (cascading style sheets – the code that determines the layout and colours) and I want to add a few widgets. But for now, this is fine.
