Autonomous Industry

TweetWe will begin to install addons to your WordPress blog after we start with the look with a new theme.  The following list are some of the plugins we will be adding to your new blog.

WordPress

• Feedburner
• wordpress.org/extend/plugins/paypal-donations/
• WordPress Stats
• Akismet
• Addthis/ShareThis/Addtoany
• Welcome Visitors

Theme and Logo

Just like any other Content Management System you are able to swap and change themes as you wish.  Some are more arduous to implement but luckily WordPress is very easy especially if you like the theme’s on offer, so there is no need to edit them.  Search Google for other free WordPress themes to get the one which will work for you.

• freewpthemes.net/
• templates.arcsin.se
• topwpthemes.com
• themebot.com/
• themesbase.com
• skinpress.com/

Some of the above links also have categories for other Content management systems.  To add your own within WordPress head to the Appearance tab in your admin section and Add New Themes.

Here you will have a few options to search for your theme, search will give you tick box’s to choose.

which features you want and what look you would like.  They will narrow down their results specific to your suggestions and hopefully provide you with the one.  Featured, newest and recently updated categories are available to browse through, when you have wittled it down to a handful you like, click preview so that you can see the theme in action and how it would look live on a page.

Below is the theme I have chosen for this tutorial, it has a nice simple feel and a logo which can be changed.

Head back to the preview section of your admin panel and click on Install.  In a few steps, by inputting your FTP details, WordPress will do the hardwork.

The login and password you use to connect to your hosting and ftp are the same details you input into the fields provided. WordPress will connect and automatically install it to the correct folder within your WordPress directory.

After waiting a minute, (depending on your hostings connection this may take longer)  activate the new theme and get ready to add the plugins and widgets you require to successfully communicate with visitors to your site.  Give them the choice to share your content, let them get involved with the creation of your content and keep them coming back for more.

If a message appears after activating, it is telling you to populate your widgets, which means finish off the site.  We will come to this later with the layout(Web Interface) and other plugins available to enhancer your blog.

The theme is installed and the site is ready to use.  Well not quite yet, there is some functionality that your blog should try to utiilize. Before you get to understand the workings of WordPress and feel comfortable with it you should think about your logo on your new website which you have just created.

Logo on WordPress Blog

On the home page of your blog, or anywhere you see the banner image, right click and view.

This will then show you the path to the image if you where to look in FTP or other file transfer services.

Log in to your FTP and head to your domain where your website/blog has been uploaded and the directory it’s installed in to.  In this case, the folder news.

Within your blog’s main folder, find themes and then the theme your using.  The one with the city scape banner is mflat, so thats the folder I go in to.  You should see the final folder, images in which the banner will be stored.  Here it is under the name of ‘bg.png’.

If you have already got your logo or banner for your band which your using across your services then simple rename it bg.png or whatever it is in your case and put it in the images folder and replace the original.

Now it has been uploaded, head to your blog and you should see the new banner, no more city scape red.