So, you've already registered a domain, and hosted your own blog; or, you've signed up for a free blog at www.wordpress.com. Now what?

You've got alot of initial setup work ahead of you! But, the good news is you can do this in just a couple hours yourself. And the great news is that when you are done you can have an original, search engine friendly, and professional looking blog that is easy to both add content to or modify later as you'd like. Sweet!

So, what are the steps anyway? I'll list them out for you here, and then focus on the topic of this page, which is how to modify and tweak your theme.

1. Buy domain name, get hosting, host your blog with wordpress (check!)

2. Choose your theme: one of three defaults that you can tweak, or find a ready-to-go theme. (I'll cover that here.)

3. Upload your theme and tweak it as desired. (I'll also cover that here.)

4. Get all of your widgets and plugins, upload and activate them.

5. Input necessary settings and rearrange widgets as desired.

6. Make your Blog SEO (search engine optimization) friendly.

7. Monetize your Blog.

8. Convert visitors to readers and commentors.

9. Start Blogging! (You are on your own on that one!)

I know this might sound like alot, but you can really do steps 1 to 8 in just a few hours on your own, no need to hire out!

When you first get your wordpress blog, it will look like this ------>

Maybe not the worst looking blog in the world, but certainly nothing to write home about either! The great thing about wordpress is that you can use this default (or a similar one) as a starting point, hack into the coding pretty easily, and completely change the look of the blog.

As an example, look at this ------>

That is a modified default blog! Knowing what I now know, I can upload a 3-column version default theme, modify the background color, modify the header image, side images as needed, and the footer, and have that all done in probably half an hour! The next step is to simply add whatever widgets or plugins I want and set them up as desired. That can be done in about 1 to 1.5 hours! (As long as you already know what plugins to use, which takes some time to figure out, but I can will help you by providing a full list of 30 widgets to grab.)

There are two paths here. Simply find a theme you already like, and just use that. Or, start with a default theme and make your own tweaks to it.

If you want to use someone else's theme there are plenty of places to grab one. Simply google "wordpress themes" or "free wordpress themes", or just check out the wordpress library of free themes. You can also purchase inexpensive themes at places like Theme Forest.

Once you have the theme file, getting it to your blog is a simple 3 step process: download the files to your computer, upload them to your blog, and log into your blog and activate it. To upload the files to your blog you'll need an ftp program. If you don't have one or haven't ever used one, I show you how to get a free ftp program and use it here.

The video below will show you exactly how to do this process. If you have any questions on this (or anything), you can submit them in the comment section at the bottom of the page.

If you'd rather just modify a default theme yourself, you have 3 good choices to start with:

1. The default theme you start with. This is a 2 column theme, with content on the left and a narrower sidebar (for widgets) on the right. You can switch that easily to make the sidebar on the left if you'd like.
2. A sidebar-content-sidebar theme. Just as it sounds, but overall the s-c-s section is wider than the c-s section in #1, due to needing more space. You can download this default here and upload it the same way that was discussed above.
3. A content-sidebar-sidebar theme. Again, just as it sounds, and wider than #1. You can download this default theme here. (Note, most 3 column blogs are structured this way, instead of s-s-c.)

Once you have the starting theme uploaded and activated, you just need to update some of the image files (under your theme's image folder) to change the background color or image, header, footer, and sides to really give your blog a very different look and feel. I go over that in the video below.

Quick Note: searching for images with google to use in your header image or elsewhere in your blog means you may be using copyrighted images without permission. Plus, it can be frustrating to find just the right image. I use istockphoto.com now to get around that. Although it does cost a dollar or two per image (buy the smallest image), the image quality is very high, and there is alot to choose from. Plus, you know you aren't stealing from anyone!

Now that you've customized the overall look and feel of your blog by updating your theme, the next major task is to grab, activate, and set up the widgets and plugins that you'll want to have.

If you know the widgets to use, this can be done pretty quickly. I'm removing some of the guess work for you by providing a full list of the widgets and plugins I use, and the reasons that I use them. Of course, you won't necessarily want to use all of these, and there may be others that you want to use that I don't have listed, but my list will be a great starting point for you.

If you are ready to start adding widgets, check out my hubpage about doing that, with a full list to use, here.