Day 5 - Customizing Your New Blog

Theme = The appearance of your blog. The theme determines the

colors, graphics, layout, style, and general appearance of your blog.

 

FTP = File Transfer Protocol (the process of adding files from your

computer to your web server)

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You should now have your new blog, so let's focus on making it look
great.

Finding a Kickass Design For Your Blog

It took me a lot of time and money to get www.deanhunt.com to look
the way it does today, in fact, I know of people who have spent
thousands of dollars on their blog theme.

But I have since learned of a way of getting a really cool looking
site at a fraction of the cost and effort.

There is a company called WooThemes that have premium themes that
you can install onto your blog to make it look awesome.

If I had to go back and do it all again, I would definitely use them.

Yes, there are some fr ee themes out there, but often they are not
worth the hassle. What's more, they often look generic, don't have
premium features built-in, and can lead to problems later down the road.

The WooThemes themes not only look superb, but they are built to be
powerful and easy to use. So go and check them out.

Uploading Your WooThemes Theme

Have you purchased your amazing new theme?

Ok, well now we need to install it, so here goes:

You can make this process a lot easier by using an FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) application.

If you use a Windows PC, then I recommend CoreFTP, you can grab a
free copy of this here: CoreFTP Download

If you have a Mac, then I use a program called "Transmit" which is
approx $17.00 Download Transmit Here

 

I have also used a program called "Fetch" which has a fr ee trial
Download Fetch Here

The goal here is to transfer your WooTheme files that you have
downloaded onto your computer, and transfer them to your

HostGator server.

Open your third party FTP program, look for an option like
"connect" or "accounts" and fill in the required details.

In most cases you will need the following information:

Server: e.g DeanHunt.com

Username: e.g deano

Password: e.g password123

Next, locate your theme folder from your computer via the FTP
program, and transfer it to the themes folder on your server.

This is likely to be found via:

Public_html - Wp-content - Themes

So drag the theme folder to the themes folder, and await
confirmation that it has uploaded (transferred) the theme to your
server.

Once you have done this, login to your Wordpress Admin
(yourdomain.com/admin) and click Appearance and you will see your
theme, click it and a preview will open up and then in the top
right corner is a button saying 'Activate', click it and your theme
will now work!

Done!