Flickr Set.

Flickr Set.

Flickr Set.

Flickr Set.

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Flickr Set.

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(46 Photos)

Flickr Set.

One of the first things that you notice in the Appearance section of the WordPress Dashboard is the Editor, the temptation is strong to click on it. If you do so in the default theme you get a screen that looks something like this:

Down the right hand side you will see a list of Templates, and at the bottom, Styles. These are majority of the files that make up the theme for your site. In the main part of the screen the text box allows you to change whatever template or style is selected.

However, you should never change the theme in this way. The reason is simple, if the theme is updated at some point in the future, you will either need to migrate your changes into the new version of the theme, or not update to the new version at all. There is a better way: Use a Child Theme as described in this WordPress Codex article.

The article goes through the process but, basically, you create a directory on the server and write a small file called style.css into that directory. When you go into the Themes section you should now see a new theme with the name that you gave it as detailed in the article. Now you can change the theme to change the fonts or colours without affecting the original theme’s files.

There are some complications. Firstly you have to get access to the server that’s hosting your blog, normally you should have ftp or sftp access, if you don’t you may need to check your providers FAQ’s to see what the alternatives are. The nasty problem is that some themes use clever methods to build their style sheets which mean that they cannot be used as the parents for Child Themes.

For more information you should look at the following resources:

• WordPress Child Themes
• How to Modify WordPress Themes the Smart Way
• How to make a child theme for WordPress

At the time of writing there are over 1,400 themes available for download on the WordPress site, so how should you choose a theme?

You can use WordPress’ Tag Filter to get a selection of themes that match a particular feature that you might be interested in. For example, try searching for a colour or colours as a starting point. You can click on the image in the resulting list to get a live preview of the theme using a standard set of information. This will give you an idea of what the theme looks like. I would suggest getting a list of themes that you like and then checking to see if they have a good user recommendation and when they were last updated, which are both factors to consider in your choice.

Once you have a few possible candidates I’d suggest adding them to your site, there’s nothing better when making a decision on what theme to use than to actually see it for real. You can switch between the themes quickly and see what they look like and how they can be customised.

Themes have a number of features that can be present, or not, that allow you to place information into various areas. These include widget areas, in the sidebar, header and footer, and menus. Sometimes the number of sidebar’s can also be changed. Sidebars will often have a default set of widgets that are displayed if nothing is placed in a particular sidebar.

Themes will normally also allow for the header and background to be changed. Header’s can use text, taken from the site name and description, or use images that include that information instead, or a combination. The header images are not a standard size, so you will need to use an image editor like Gimp to correctly size your images to fit the required dimensions, don’t just use the in-built editor to crop your image as it will not produce the best results.

One other thing to consider is Smart phone compatibility, always check what the theme looks like on your phone. Some themes re-format themselves to work on phones, some look OK without re-formatting, and some just don’t work. If you need mobile browser support them there are options to add plug-ins that help even if your chosen theme doesn’t directly support mobile browsers.

Next time, how to use CSS to customise your theme beyond what’s available via the theme’s controls.

I’m intending to post things that I’ve found useful whilst developing this site, both initially, and on an ongoing basis. It will be simple stuff only, strictly at a beginner’s level, there will be nothing complicated at this stage I can guarantee.

Stay tuned.

The following is my current top five six, in alphabetic order:

• Alabama 3
• The Blind Boys of Alabama
• Brett Anderson
• Dawn Langstroth
• The Leisure Society
• Mojave

Can’t believe that I forgot to include Mojave on the list, but also couldn’t think of whom to remove to make room either. So it has become a top six list, not top five one now!