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Thursday, May 19th, 2011 at 7:10 pm

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3 ways to customize your WordPress theme

One of the best things about WordPress is the number of items that are available to change the look of your blog. There are free and paid versions available. Changing themes is very easy, but ...

Finding just the right theme to fit your blog can be frustrating. And that's say the least.

You find one you like almost everything, but a small thing.

It can be ...

* The way that displays hyperlinks
* The size of the sidebar
* The header image
* Or any of many other problems

Now short of hiring someone to create a custom theme exactly the way so there is an easy change you can do to make almost perfect theme and make it much more yours.

Here is how you can change three of the most common things to customize your and they make their own.

Before you start, but always, always, always have a Backup your files. And I always say if you do not guess from the above statement.

Change the header

In the theme folder is img or a folder of images depending on the author uses the theme. Inside that folder is a picture called or header.gif header.jpg. You can get a copy of the image and check to see exactly how big it is.

Or create a new image the same size as your car or hire a graphic designer to create one for you if you lack the skills. The name of this new file the same as the original and replace the original. You now have a custom header.

Hyperlink colors

Just the other day a friend of mine had found the perfect theme for your blog, but hyperlinks are not blue and underlined were the standard, but they were that black and bold.

He loved the subject except that they had spent many hours to find just the right look. This problem is easily solved making a small change in the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) file in your theme.

WordPress Themes run using style sheets and you can change the attributes quite easily. In this case it was the hyperlinks to need to search the style sheet for the "link" attributes.

It look something like this

a {
color: # 000000;
text-decoration: none;
}

Just change the color hex code appropriate in this case # 0000FF and to highlight any attribute and has a "standard" hyperlink.

Resize the box

This leads to two changes and must be the same amount of change. If the sidebar is a bit tight that you want to use 120 pixels and 125 × 125 buttons you have to change the width of the sidebar and reduce the width of the body in the same amount.

Here are the two inputs

# Sidebar {
position: relative;
float: right;
width: 237px;

# Content {
float: left;
width: 676px;

You should subtract one which adds to others, but this will allow you to customize the size of a sidebar, if that is the feature that does not like.

WordPress Themes can be easily your needs so if you find most of the features you want to try your hand at customizing them. Just be sure to have a backup before you start.

About the Author

Mike Paetzold is known as an expert on using WordPress for your marketing solutions. You can find other items to improve your WordPress look, feel and usage at
Advanced WordPress
or more WordPress Information at his blog at
WordPress Made Easy
.

How to add a dynamic sidebar in WordPress

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