Wordpress Is Not Just For Blogging

You've built a great website on the WordPress blogging platform. You've spent a lot of time creating and building up the content. The problem is, using a free WordPress theme, your website looks like a lot others out there who are using the same theme.

Almost all WordPress themes are built in the following manner -- an index, page and single post template that inserts the header, sidebar and footer PHP files. Header files usually have some degree of customization to them, linking to the stylesheet, with custom layout elements for the logo or branding elements. Almost all of the sidebar WP3 themes are the same, while the footer php files also have a bit of customization to them. Changing these files can be fairly easy if you know basic HTML. Just make sure to save frequent backups so that you can backtrack one step in case you make a mistake. You can usually make some basic HTML and CSS structural changes to these files without too much effort.
 

 


WordPress.org allows you to download Generatepress and install their software and run it on your own server. This in turn allows you to run any themes, plugins, and widgets you want.

The good news is that WordPress has a built in theme system that makes changing your design a really easy process. Believe it or not, you can install and activate a theme in a matter of minutes. It sure beats trying to design a website from scratch!

What can you customise? The short answer is "everything". I usually work from the top down. You can design your own header graphic and upload one or more - the Atahualpa theme has a built-in header rotating function if you want to use it. You can have an area above the header graphic (or below it) for your company logo, RSS and comments feed and a search box. You can style this area to blend into the outer background or you can give it a style of its own and make it stand out.

 

 



Good question. In fact, before I used paid themes, I used free themes as well. I became frustrated with free themes. Then I more info read something about some free themes being encoded with links and perhaps even poor code. I became a concerned and dug a little deeper.

Also WordPress has a bunch of free plugins that you can use to add features to your website. It's your website and your choice. You now have a good start to avoid the pitfalls I had to go through choosing popular WordPress themes.

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