NOT a Guru!
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
Keeping it simple, without the hype. PC tips and Internet advice for mom and pop businesses.
If you’ve just “tuned in” to this blog, what we’re doing is building a website from scratch. This is an ongoing series of detailed tutorials that are geared toward mom and pop business owners or other new site builders who are building a website for the very first time.
The example site that is being built from scratch is for a friend of mine who owns the domain, CalmingFood.com. We’re structuring the site with a couple of static pages at the front end, coupled with a blog that is being integrated into the site so that it will always have fresh content. We’re running a WordPress blog that has been highly optimized with the powerful (but free) SEO blog software. You can see a step-by-step tutorial on how the software was installed starting here, which explains how to download and extract the software, and then moves onto other installation guidelines.
When we left off on day 14, we left the blog in its basic, ugly form because the software is so powerful that if we started working on the blog right away, the search engines would start sending traffic before we had the site done. Here’s what the blog looks like, with the basic Wordpress template:
Finding a Wordpress Theme That Looks Good.
The SEO blog software comes with a couple of different templates; however, you might want to find one that looks a little bit more like your site or suits your tastes. There are many free themes available. My favorite three Wordpress theme sites are linked here. For Laura’s blog, I decided to go with my favorite, Themes Preview, and take a look around. The SandaCom theme looks like a good fit for Laura’s blog. All I need to do is to click the “download” button and store the zip file where I can find it on my hard drive.
Quick Notes About Themes.
Don’t download just any old theme. You need to make sure that they are compatible with the latest version of Wordpress. You might also want some features such as Gravatar commenting, ad spaces and so forth. I like Themes Preview because they certify the themes which work the best.
Also, if you find that you don’t like what your theme looks like, or want to change your blog appearance down road, you can always install new themes at any time.
Uploading Your Wordpress Theme.
In the screen shot below, I have unzipped the theme that I’ve selected for Laura’s blog and will extract it to a folder that I can quickly find on my computer hard drive. When you extract, make sure that you extract all files and folders that came with the zip package.
Once the theme is extracted, I’m powering up my FTP program and logging into Laura’s website (called the “Remote Site” in the FTP software). You can see the site’s folder structure in the screen shot. As we talked about before, you first want to go into the public_html directory by double-clicking on the folder.
Laura’s blog is in a subfolder called “WeightJournal.” If your blog is your front page, you will not need to deal with a subfolder. In our example, however, we’re going to open the WeightJournal subfolder by double-clicking on it.
Once you are in the blog folders on your Remote Site, you should see three folders as shown: wp-admin; wp-content and wp-includes. You must open the wp-content folder. Do so by double-clicking on it.
Within the wp-content folder are your plugins folder and your themes folder. Open the themes folder by double-clicking on it.
Now that we’ve opened the themes subfolder, you can see that there are five themes that were already installed with the blog software. We’re going to be installing another one.
On the left hand side of your FTP program, find the folder of the theme that you downloaded and unpacked. For Laura’s site, we’re going to use the folder that reads “sandacom.”
You are going to want to transfer the entire unzipped folder. Don’t transfer the zip file. Just transfer the unzipped folder “as is” into the themes portion of the blog.
In the screen shot above, I’ve clicked “yes” and sandcom folder was transferred into Laura’s blog/wp-content/themes folder, as shown below.
Set the File Permissions.
In order to modify your theme, you are going to have to set file permissions. This can be done from your domain’s control panel (select the file manager and proceed), but we’re going to do this within the FTP software since it’s fast and easy. Select ALL of the theme folders. You can do this by holding down the control key and clicking on each folder –or– holding down the control key and “A” at the exact same time. You’ll know that you’ve select all of the folders because they will be highlighted as shown.
Right click your mouse and select chmod. Some FTP programs might have a chmod button or a “file permissions” button. The main thing is that you need to set the permissions with chmod.
You will want to change your theme’s read/write permissions to 775, which which would look like the following table that shows up when you select chmod.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER AND NOTE – You might want to chmod these files to 777 instead by clicking all of the read/write/execute boxes. This will ensure that you can make and change permissions on your template. The 775 might not work. When you are all done making changes (shown in tomorrow’s post), go back and change the permissions back to 775.
Once you have changed the themes’ permissions, you are done using your FTP program. Go ahead and exit … or install some more templates if you want a bunch of choices to take a look at.
Changing the Appearance of Your Blog.
Once you have uploaded your themes, log into your blog’s administrative panel. This is always at http://www.YourBlogAddress.com/wp-admin; the wp-admin extension is very important. You might want to bookmark your administrative log in page. When you installed the blog, you had a username and password. Use that information to log into your blog’s administrative area, which is called a dashboard.
Once you are in the dashboard, look at the options on the left hand side and select Appearance. When you do so, you’ll see the current theme and the available themes.
The available themes have thumbnail images, giving you an “at a glance” review of what’s available. Click on the theme that you want to use.
A pop up will appear that shows you what the blog will look like. You’s see an “Activate” link in the upper right hand corner. If you are satisfied with the theme’s appearance, click Activate.
The blog theme will immediately install and change. You’ll get a confirmation screen that looks like the one below.
Here’s the skeleton of Laura’s blog, with the new theme installed. Look at how different it looks from the beginning of this post!
Tomorrow, we’ll start making some modifications to the theme.
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Yesterday: Free Content for Your Blogs and Web Pages.
Tomorrow: How to Modify Wordpress Themes.
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