How To Customise a WordPress Blog

No I haven't mis-typed the title: I am writing this hub so that people who have signed up for today dot com paid blogging know how to make their blog work for them, or at least not be plain ugly! However today dot com is running a slightly customised version of WordPress MU (multiuser) so that if you are either setting up your own self-hosted WordPress blog or using other platforms that offer blogs (usually free) to you all these tips will apply.

If you don't know what today dot com is check out my earlier hub: Would You Blog for $1 / Day?

I've tried to write this hub with enough detail so that you know enough to get started without doing every screen and every button. I am pretty experienced with setting up WordPress blogs so if I've skipped something and left you confused please leave a question in the comments- its not you its probably me and it won't be just you, just most people won't ask the question so I'll never know there was problem!

• Travel for the Over 30s: Today Dot Com Blog

I am going to take you through setting up a blog that looks like one of mine - the example above. This is a screen shot of how the blog looked when I wrote this hub so the current version of my today dot com blog may look different but click on the link to open it up in a new window/tab so that you can see more easily what I am talking about! What I will cover is:

• overall blog settings: usually only have to do this once

• setting up categories etc again usually only have to do from time-to-time
• making it look pretty - you can waste an infinite amount of time on this one - its up to you :-)

The screen shots are all from today dot com but the rest of the terminology and most of the actual screens are pure WordPress .

The exception is the customised Control Panel you will see once you are logged in and have your blog approved.

As with many pieces of software there are many ways to do the same thing, but I am going to give you ONE way - in the interests of brevity and reduced confusion (hopefully).

Lets start with the do it once ad forget it options! These things are important though particularly if you want to keyword optimise your blog. I have included my version of the field where appropriate in italics

Weblog Title:Should be already filled in - you can change this at anytime Travel for the Over 30's

Tagline: Probably says - just another today.com blog - change this to something useful Travel for the Baby Boomers and Even for the Rest of You

The defaults for comments will probably work: I either select "email when a comment is held for moderation" or "email when a comment is posted" otherwise I get 2 emails - one when its held for moderation and one when I approve it!

Size of the post box: that's the box your write your posts in, I think the default is 10 which is very small - I changed my to 40.

Hit SAVE OPTIONS if you have changed anything and then click advanced ...

This is not that scary - its more about your timezone than anything else. Note the current time - that's what time it is in server-land! If its radically different from your current time you may want to change your timezone so you don't have to subtract 8 hours or whatever.

Towards the bottom you will see Show at Most X Posts per page. The default of 10 works for me but you might want to change it - depends on the length of your posts really - this is just where you change it when you decide to!

(RSS) For Each Article this is important, change the default of full test to summary. Why? To make it harder for people to steal the entire article. If you don't know what an RSS feed is then make this change anyway and check out Jenny's excellent explanation of how to use RSS

Moving on the SPAM protection - next tab along...

OK this is all about how you moderate your comments. I'm sorry I can't remember what the default is here but personally I click the boxes that say people have to provide and name + email address but that do NOT have to be logged in (that would prevent non today.com users commenting which is pretty self-defeating in my opinion).

I always moderate comments on blogs (there are too many spammers out there) but I try to make it as easy as possible for real people to comment.

Which gets me to my next problem the dreaded captcha which is by default is turned on at today.com. That's what gives you the 2 funny words to type in before you comment. I find it really,really annoying and not even terribly good at stopping SPAM I turn it OFF

To turn it off follow the click here link and click deactivate - the captcha is actually a plugin and you just deactivated it, so now you know how to activate/deactivate plugins in WordPress!

You thought I'd forgotten - but no we actually need to add some content to this blog. It will be easy to appreciate the beauty of your blog if there are some words for the design to show off on!

Go to the Write tab and you have two options :

Posts: A post is an individual - well post on a blog. Each post has its own url - so for example Travel Gear: A Notebook post has its own url: http://travelover30s.today.com/2008/11/06/travel-gear-a-notebook/ The name of title of the post is important because that's what the search engines see so again use your keyword phrase here if you want to. Posts are the equivalent of hubs on hubpages but they have a natural date order - most recent on top.

The very first post will already be there when you start your blog - its called "Hello World" - you're need to delete it - you do that under Manage My Blog tab.

Pages: There is already one Page on your blog its called About - you can delete it or you can edit it to say - well what your blog is about probably. A page is exactly the same as a post except that its not associated with particular date. Its like your profile page on HubPages and your posts. If you don't understand - just remember they exist - we're get back to them.

Categories. When you wrote your post on the right you had the option to add it to a category, at the moment you only have one category: General I think its called. My blog has a number of categories: Destination Asia, Travel Gear General Travel. You can have the same post in more than one category. You use categories to organize your posts on both the sidebars (see below) and also just below the title it will probably say something like posted by <yourname> at <some time> under <category>. So yes if you want to get all SEO'd make your categories your keywords!

You can edit/add/delete categories from either right on the post creation page - by clicking "edit categories". Or you can go to Manage My Blog tab and select categories there.

OK lets go and make this look like a pretty blog! Click on the Look and Feel tab.

OK I have to some jargon: this WordPress jargon so its applicable all across the web! A theme is what makes blogs look different. It controls not just what is on the header, the footer and the sidebars (the vertical columns of stuff to the left and/or right of your main blog post) but also the fonts and colours used. The easiest way to explain this is to try it for yourself.

Click on Look and Feel and you will see a whole lot of "Today.Com Themes" - there a pink, ones blue ones, there are holiday themes and themes with different number of sidebars. There's pages of them, but luckily the search works quite well.

Click on "activate theme" option below any one of them - now go and look at your blog (right click on view site at the top of the page and open it in a new tab) - different? Try another one - go back to the tab with blog in in it and hit refresh - different again. OK go and have fun.

Back? OK

How to Choose a Theme

• Don't choose anything on the first page - they are all done to death over the entire Internet - go a few pages deeper!

• studies suggest that most readers prefer the sidebars on the right

• if your topic is visual choose a theme with a custom header: you - click on the box to search for these.
• not all themes have widgets: you WANT widgets because they allow you to customise your sidebars - if the theme you chose doesn't have widgets then choose another one!

Now free choice is a wonderful thing but for the rest of the tutorial I am going to use the theme that I am using. Why because this theme has both custom header and widgets. If you are uncertain - choose "Seashore" theme: if you click themes with custom headers - you will see it click activate and you should see it as your current theme.

Seashore has a custom photo and shows your pages along the top of the theme: Home is the default, I have an About page as well and you can add others or delete the About page from Manage Your Blog / Pages

This is Optional: check out how your blog looks now: you might like it ! But for those of us who are control freaks read on.

Customise Header Image

This is so easy - you don't need any image software. You need a photo on your computer. Because of the rules of design the theme tends to look good if you choose an image with strong horizontal lines - like a horizon.

Select and upload your photo: you will then get a box on top of the image which is where the theme will crop your photo - move around until you are happy and click it - you have a new image.

You can change images at anytime you get bored with the old one!

Now your blog looks unique: doesn't matter if the rest of theme is the same as everyone else's - the picture fools most of the people most of the time! Both my blogs at today.com use the same theme with different images.

Lets carry on and now go back to the Theme tab and click widgets on our current theme: if you don't see a widgets links its because the theme you chose doesn't support them - not all themes do.

A widget is just a box that does something useful like display a list of your recent posts or a your blogroll links. The Sidebar Arrangement screen lets you re-arrange those widgets.

Getting Started with Widgets

When you first come in here your side bars (1 or 2 depending on your theme 2 in the example) will say something like "default for this theme". At the bottom of the screen are widgets waiting to be used. Drag a widget and drop it on a toolbar, and another one, and a third. Now you can re-arrange the order of the widgets on the sidebar by dragging and dropping.

Some widgets you can only have one off: e.g. archives or recent posts.

Some widgets have options - click on the little configure button on the widget itself and it will give you some options.

Some widgets you can have more than one of :categories, text, RSS widgets - dial up how many you want and they will appear in the lower list.

The RSS Widget is currently broken at today dot com - its bug they are trying to fix

You can ignore the Adsense widget on today dot com - you can't use it. Instead the site will automatically display Adsense and other ads at the top of the first sidebar: your widgets will be pushed down and display below that.

Its this advertising which gets you paid so don't complain!

This is the most important widget. You can open it up and add some static text and a title.

Or you can add html and that is why its the most useful widget out.

On my blog there are 2 text boxes at the top of the 2nd sidebar. The first one displays a site feed from feedburner.com, the second displays my HubPages widget.

You can also use this to display things like mybloglog widgets and even advertising anywhere that some gives you code you can add it to a text widget!

This works on any WordPress blog and something very similar works on blogger blogs too.

First you create the code for yoru widget at hubpages, then you cut and paste it into your text widget.

1. Go to your HubPages profile, and click on your profile page and then find the add <username> widget to your website
2. Design your widget:choose latest/hot/best and alsothe width - I think the default worked OK for me, but this is a bit trial and error and will off course depend on your theme
3. Click inside the box with your code to select it all - it will highlight and then copy it by using ctrl-C
4. Come back over to your text widget and paste the code ctrl-V
5. Remember to hit save changes and then go admire your new widget on your blog

BTW if you change theme then you will loose your text widgets so either save the code in a simple editor such as notepad (NOT Word) or get good at doing this!

So if you haven't already head over to today dot com and sign up!

Well I hope this helps you get started with blogging either at today dot com or on your own WordPress blog.

Still confused - leave a comment below!