Tag Archives | Techies

WordPress Theme Editing Basics for TwentyTen & TwentyEleven Default Themes

In this video I demonstrate how to do some basic editing on the default WordPress themes (Twentyten and Twentyeleven) to reduce the header size and remove some of the items that, in my opinion, take up way too much space in the header. In the process, I show the basics of setting up a child theme and provide a glimpse into how I use local copies of WordPress running on my computer to make theme editing a lot quicker and simpler. I also demonstrate how to preview changes in Firebug and then copy those changes into your theme css file. This tutorial is intended for non-techies…if you are an expert, then this isn’t for you. Enjoy!

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The Thesis WordPress Theme – Perfect For Beginners and Experts Alike

The Thesis WordPress Theme – Perfect For Beginners and Experts Alike

Almost anyone who has ever set up a blog or tried to design a website will probably have used WordPress at some time or other. It’s one of the most powerful, and popular, pieces of software to be found on the internet today.

Most people think that it’s just useful for blogs and they do little more than install a copy and add some content. However, if you search around the internet you will soon discover that WordPress can do much more than just act as a blogging platform. Its great popularity comes from its customizability thanks to the huge number of plug-ins and widgets that you can download for free. These add-ons enable you to configure WordPress for almost any kind of website from simple sales pages to complete e-commerce stores complete with payment gateways and so on.

Its other great feature is the ability to change the look of your website at the touch of a button using templates, or as they are referred to in WordPress circles, themes. Some themes offer little more than a change of colour or some extra graphics, but the better ones enable complete customisation of your website, right down to individual page level. Using such a template can really make your website seem individual and make it stick out from the crowd.

One of the best themes in terms of the level of customisation it offers is the Thesis WordPress Theme by DIYThemes.com. This amazing template enables people with little or no web coding skills to completely customise the look and feel of their WordPress installation. Non-techies can adjust a whole range of parameters from right inside the WordPress control panel itself without ever changing a line of code.

There are 3 different ways to alter the look and feel of the Thesis them. These are listed under 3 menu options named Thesis Options, Design options and Custom File Editor from inside the control panel. The Thesis Options menu allow you to change things such as the layout of your navigation menus, add analytics and stats tracking code and gives you a fine degree of control over the display by tuning the headers, the posts, comments, sidebars and even tags that are used. The next menu option covers the design aspects of the Thesis theme. Here you have a bewildering range of choices that allow you to change the colours and fonts of every part of the site individually. You can have a feature box, a multimedia box for displaying video and even drop in a custom stylesheet if you have one.

Finally, you have the custom file editor. This utility allows even the most hardcore technical wizard full control over every aspect of the themes design. There is literally nothing that you cannot customise as long as you are familiar with WordPress and PHP.

The Thesis Theme is amazingly versatile, as can be seen by some of the showcase blogs that are demonstrated on its homepage. If you are en expert you can play about with it to your hearts desire but if, like most of us, you never want to see a line of code, then you can still change almost every aspect of the design. You can really allow your creative juices to flow without your getting your hands dirty, making the Thesis WordPress Theme one of the best available on the market.

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