There are hundreds of WordPress themes to choose from, and these determine the whole look and feel of your blog as well as its functionality and various on-page elements. With such a large choice of themes, you shouldn’t have much of a problem choosing something which is suitable for your website. However, you will likely want to make a few tweaks and modifications to truly make your blog your own. Most themes provide extensive customization options, although more advanced users can take personalization even further by editing the source code of their chosen theme or even create their own one from scratch. This guide takes a look at the process of customizing your installed themes using the theme ‘Twenty Ten’ as an example. Different themes will have a slightly different set of customization options, but for this guide, the Twenty Ten theme is a good starting point, since it is one of the default themes included with most base installations of WordPress.
1 – Using the Customization Control Panel
Depending on the theme you currently have activated, the customization section of the Appearance menu provides you with the quickest and simplest ways to customize the look and feel of your blog
- Log in to your WordPress administrator dashboard and open the “Appearance” section from the sidebar. Click “Customize” to open the customization page for your currently activated theme. All changes made will be displayed immediately in the site preview to the right.
- Enter the title and tagline of your WordPress blog. These will appear in search engine results. The tagline should be a brief description of your blog, ideally not exceeding a single short sentence.
- Click on the “Color” box to configure the color scheme of your website. With the Twenty Ten theme, you will only be able to select a different background color. The next two sections allow you to choose a custom header image as well as a background image for your blog. Most themes allow you to easily upload your own header image.
- If your theme supports static front pages, you can select this option from the “Static Front Page” section. If you choose a static front page, the homepage of your blog will not change as you add new posts.
- Click “Save and Publish” to make your changes go live.
2 – Other Customization Options
The Appearance menu allows you to access a variety of more sophisticated customization options as follows:
- Open the “Widgets” section to configure additional on-site elements such as text boxes, categories, search functions, calendars and more. Certain plugins, such as polls, allow you to add additional widgets to your site. To activate a widget, drag it to the right-side column and click on it to edit its title and content.
- Upload a custom header image to your blog from the “Header” page. For the Twenty Ten theme and many other themes, the recommended optimal image size is 940×198 pixels.
- Upload a custom background image from the “Background” page. The image can be any size you like.
- The “Editor” section of the Appearance menu displays the CSS style sheet of your current theme. This allows more advanced users to customize their themes much more extensively by changing typefaces, colors and various other features.
