Blog with WordPress - The Look
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Step 5: The Look
Using the toolbar at the top of the page, select Design. Another, smaller tool bar will be apparent under this one. You’ll begin on the Themes page. This allows you to choose a pre-designed theme, so you won’t have to set each design element of the blog yourself. You can simply pick a theme and click on it; like magic, the theme will be applied to your blog.
The next tab, Widgets, allows you to apply features to your blog. You’ll be presented with a list of options. You can click and pick to your heart’s content, and of course always go back and change anything to suit your own needs and style images. The Extras tab gives you some picture and links options; simply enable or disable at will.
Next, you can choose to customize your image header. Use the tools to change colors and text on the image, or you can upload an existing image from your computer’s hard drive. The next tab allows you to customize header colors (headers, by the way, are headlines, or titles).
You can also use the CSS tab to edit the blog’s CSS. WordPress offers some very helpful information on this if you’re interested, but unless you know what you’re doing with CSS it’s not a good idea to start editing and re-arranging this feature.
Step 6: Start Blogging, Already!
You’ve signed up with WordPress. You’ve picked a Web address, title and design for your blog. So…what are you waiting for? Now that all the stylistic issues are out of the way, the only thing left to do is start creating posts.
Select the Write tab and you’ll be placed in the text editor, a very easy-to-use feature which makes WordPress so popular. Using this editor (and the icons which appear across the top), you create subtitles, links, or add images and video to the posts you create. The point-and-click menu is easy to use, so don’t be afraid to spend some time playing with it. It’s good to explore all the options you have for your posts, and to create a test post to get started. Remember, this blog is your little piece of the Internet; you can edit or delete any post after you create it, with no trouble whatsoever.
Step 7: Management
You’re in charge of every aspect of this blog, and that means you have to call the shots. The Management tab puts you in control. You can create categories so you can organize posts, import posts and pictures from other blogs on the Internet, export your own posts, create link categories to organize links, manage tags (a link you attach to a post) and look at a list of all the posts on your blog.
Using the Management options, you can look at the media, links, tags and posts associated with your blog at a glance. You can organize blog posts into categories, create new categories and organize the order of posts.
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