1. Blogging 102 Getting Customized!

2. Choosing your theme A WordPress Theme is the design of your blog. Much like every magazine has its own unique design, so do blogs. – you can easily preview and activate standard themes from the Appearance > Themes area of your blogs dashboard.

3. Choosing your theme Heres an example of a photo blog format using the the Monotone theme

4. Choosing your theme Heres an example of a news blog format using a three-column theme

5. Choosing your theme What is the goal of my blog? What kind of vibe do I want to set for my readers? Is my blog personal or professional? Do I want to display wide-format photos, images or videos? Do I want to customize my header? – The header is the big top area of the blog; some themes allow you to add images or design that header all on your own

6. How to activate your theme When signed in, make your way to Appearance > Themes to browse the collection of WordPress themes from your dashboard.

7. How to activate your theme Select Feature Filters if you want to narrow your theme search by color, column number, width, or features.

8. Adding Widgets After choosing a theme, you might want to further customize your blog by adding widgets. Widgets are mini-applications that allow you to quickly and easily add content and special features to your blogs sidebar. – Go to Appearance > Widgets in your dashboard. Its worth exploring the Widget area and finding the ones you like.

9. Why Widgets? You can… – add a Search button – add a link to your Twitter feed – add a widget that shows your most popular posts

10. Activate a Widget Drag it from the main portion of the widget page, and drop it into the sidebar section on the right of the widgets page. Adjust settings by clicking the down arrow. Be sure to hit save and close when youre done with a widget.

11. Example

12. Bonus Round: Add a blogroll Add a Blogroll by using the Links widget. Go to Appearance > Widgets in your dashboard

13. Add a blogroll: create link categories You can also create new link categories if you want to organize links by topic.

14. Resources http://learn.wordpress.com/ http://wordpress.org/support/ http://codex.wordpress.org/New_To_WordPre ss_-_Where_to_Start http://codex.wordpress.org/New_To_WordPre ss_-_Where_to_Start http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=499 http://wordpresshelp.org/

15. 15 Creative Commons License This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/lice nses/by/3.0 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/lice nses/by/3.0