Maybe they’ve seen someone else’s blog and think that that’s the sort of blog design they want. Yet when they come to find a free WordPress theme, they can’t find anything that really fits the bill. Or, when they’ve downloaded and installed a theme they think they like it doesn’t really behave the way they want.

This can be very frustrating and time-consuming (trust me – I’ve been there!)

Now, this isn’t a problem if you are a gifted designer AND you know the quirks of WordPress inside out AND you have good color sense AND you know how to code php and css and html – you can simply sit down and create your own theme.

But what about the rest of us?

Let me tell you how I designed the theme for this blog.This is a design that I created myself and it’s unique – no other blog in the blogosphere looks quite like this one. It took me a couple of hours of playing around to get it how I wanted but I didn’t have to do any coding or testing or tweaking. All I had to do was click and drag some shapes and colors.

I used Artisteer which is a design package that lets you design your own blog themes. It has numerous options for page layouts, color combinations, fonts, backgrounds, graphic effects – and it has a nice library of photos you can use as header images. Or you can upload and use your own images, if you want.

Artisteer is serious fun. You can design as many blog themes as you like and you can change your mind and edit the ones you’ve already designed. It’s easy and satisfying to create your own themes and you don’t have to know anything technical at all to design something that is exactly what you want.

All Artisteer themes generate correct, validated HTML and CSS that conform to web standards. Oh, and it also designs basic web pages and Joomla and Drupal (whatever they are …)

Check out Artisteer now – and get creative!

But what if you want to have another page displayed as your ‘home’ page? This might be a general description of what your blog is all about, or it might be a hub page giving links to resources in your blog, or it could even be your ‘About’ page.

If you want your WordPress blog to display the same page every time someone visits your URL, all you have to do is change your settings.

First of all you have to write and publish the page that you want displayed.

Then to make this page appear first, click on ‘Settings’, ‘Reading’ and look for the radio button that says ‘Front page displays’. There will be a drop down box and you can select the page that you want displayed.

Then click on ‘Save Changes’ and you’re done!

Yes – follow these steps and it should be straightforward.

1. Find out what your blog’s existing header image is called and find out its dimensions. The easiest way to do this is to display your blog in your browser and right-click the header. Depending on your browser, you want to click ‘Properties’ or ‘View background image’ or something similar which will let you see more information about the image. Note the filename of the image and its dimensions.
2. Now you need an image that you want to use instead. Open the image file in PhotoShop or Elements or some other image processing software. Crop and/or resize it to make it the same dimensions as your blog’s header. Then save it somewhere on your computer with the same name, and in the original image format (.jpg, .png, .gif), as the original header.
3. Then you’re going to upload your image to overwrite the one on your blog. Go into your FTP program, log in and navigate to your blog’s WordPress files. To find the header file, drill down to:
   • wp-content
   • themes
   • [your blog's theme]
   • images
4. You should see the image file in the file list there. It would be a good idea to rename this file so that if there is a problem you can rename it back to what it was. Now simply upload your amended image in place of the original header.

Now display your blog (you may need to refresh your browser). If the images displays OK, congratulations!

If the above routine doesn’t work, check that you’ve done everything properly. If there is any problem it probably means that your theme’s author designed the theme in a non-standard format.  The best way to proceed is now to visit the author’s blog (link in the footer) and ask how to change the header. There’s a good chance that someone has already asked the question and your answer may be there.

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Thanks!

First of all, what is a CMS? The letters stand for ‘Content Management System’ which is a fancy way of saying ‘website’. Yes, you can make a WordPress blog look and feel like a traditional website. A WordPress blog doesn’t have to look like a blog at all.

How? Well, first of all you need to decide what you want your CMS to look like. This is no different from designing a website. On some paper, sketch out what your front page will look like, where you want your navbars and where those navbars will lead. On a traditional website the navbars will likely lead to other static pages. So, make a list of the pages you’ll need to create.

Then choose an appropriate theme. If you’re using a free theme from WordPress, choose something minimal and simple. It’s easier to add features to a theme than take them away.

The front page of your blog will probably be a static page, one that is always displayed as the landing page of your site. This page could be a hub page with links to other pages, just like a conventional website, if you like.

Many themes have tabs or buttons that navigate to pages. If you’re going to have a lot of pages it will be better to avoid a theme that has a horizontal menu of pages because you’ll likely run out of horizontal space. If you’re going to have a lot of pages put your navbar vertically down one side.

You’ll soon find that there are a lot of ways you can do this. The easiest is to use a ‘Pages’ widget. This will automatically update as you add another page. You can specify the order of pages down the list if you want. And you can organise your pages into a hierarchy by specifying parent pages.

Strip out all the bloggy looking widgets from your sidebars. But be prepared to be open to ideas because WordPress provides some very powerful and flexible ways you can harness widgets to do what you want. Categories is one example.  By applying one or more categories to a page you get an alternative and more intuitive way of navigating your blog.

And if posts and comments are not appropriate, then you don’t have to include them. Just organise your blog as a network of pages and you’ll be fine.

The great beauty of WordPress is that, as you add pages, it automatically updates menus and links. You’ll never have to worry about broken links again and your CMS will grow gracefully as you add ever more pages. That’s got to be worth it!

Here are the top five reasons for using WordPress as your web platform:

1. It’s the lowest cost way to get a web presence. You only have to spend a few bucks on a domain and get a hosting account and you’re in business. The WordPress software is free, the blog themes (design templates) are free and the plugins are free. And you don’t have to pay a web designer to get it up and running for you.
2. It’s the quickest way to get a web presence. The design work has been done for you, the coding’s been done for you and all you’ve got to do is to get typing.
3. A WordPress blog doesn’t have to look like a blog. If you want to have what looks like a conventional website, that’s easy. You can make a WordPress blog have a static front page and have your other pages accessible from navbars down the sides or across the top or down the bottom (or all of the above!)
4. WordPress is flexible. If your needs change or you fall out of love with your blog’s design you can easily change it. Your precious content will be preserved. You can move your content around, delete pages without leaving broken links, or add or remove widgets at will.
5. The search engines love WordPress blogs. Put up a few pages of content and keep building out your blog and you’ll get indexed in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Search (and all the others) in no time.

In fact, it won’t take you months or cost you megabucks to get your business online. You can do it in a few days, all by yourself, with WordPress!