by Ray Cook

Created on: March 14, 2009

WordPress templates, or themes' as they are known, provide a means for a WordPress blogger to change the look, design and structure of their
blog.

If you create your blog on the .com version of WordPress you will have created a blog which is hosted on WordPress servers and you need know virtually nothing about how WordPress works. With this option you will have a limited number of themes available to you. Changing between themes can be carried out easily using your Admin area where you will be able to see about a dozen simple and somewhat boring themes which you can preview before choosing the one that suits you.

If you choose to set up a WordPress blog outside of
WordPress (this is what might be called the .org option because you download the fields required from the wordpress.org
website) you need to be confident about your ability to fully manage your blog.

But the .org option provides you with many opportunities to configure, design, extend and advertise your site. This is the option for the professional blogger. The starting point for this is to throw away the default theme options and look for a more professional-looking theme or even build your won.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A THEME?

Every WordPress blog consists of a number of basic files which combine with the code to change the look and design of the blog as presented to the outside world. These files can be seen if you click the Editor'
link in the Appearance' block within the Admin menu system. Atypical blog will have 9 php pages and a stylesheet.

The stylesheet is the guts of the theme because the beauty and glory of CSS is that you have complete control of page layout, fonts, colours and structure from within a single stylesheet file.

The basic idea is that the stylesheet along with the code in the other pages will create the pages you see on the blog. Themes will implement or have the option to implement a number of standard features found in WordPress blogs. The features a called widgets and include such items as the list of Categories, Pages and the Blogroll'
of links, recent post links, search bars, calendars, Tag clouds and other features which can be seen by clicking the Widget' link in the Appearance'
block of the Admin menus. Some themes will have additional widgets which come with the theme or which are implemented in a theme=specific way.

It is the combination of stylesheet and basic features which constitute a WordPress theme or template.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT A WORDPRESS THEME

When you first download your WordPress.org

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>