3 Important Ways To Customize Wordpress Blog

2011-12-28T12:21:26Z

Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack? �Here�s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours.

WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be. �Although it doesn�t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like. �Here we�ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience.

1. The Header

The first thing you might want to do when customizing your theme is change the header. Most sites have a custom header image, usually a company logo or a picture that has to do with the theme of your site. To edit the header just go into your theme directory and edit the header.php file. The header HTML will usually be stored in this file. In some more rare cases theme authors may have placed header information in the individual page templates (if they did you�ll have to hunt around a bit more!). You�ll usually see a piece of HTML under the opening <body> tag that�s something like lt;div id=�header�>�header content�</div>. You can customize this content with your new header.

2. Themes

Find the perfect theme. Themes are like website templates, and they give your blog the look you want it to have. Locate dozens of themes online, or have a custom theme designed.

Customizing WordPress�s look happens through �themes.� If you log in to your WordPress dashboard and select the Design tab, you�ll see the main themes panel. Also check out the Header Image and Color tab which features a very nice inline theme editor, complete with color pickers and other tools that make it easy to customize the default theme.

But frankly, one of the advantages of WordPress is the number and variety of custom themes that members of the community have created. The official repository of themes is the WordPress Theme Viewer, so browser through that list, find something you like and download it.

Then just unzip and upload the theme to the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. Then, just head over to the Design tab inside the WordPress admin interface and select your new theme.

From there, you can customize and tweak the theme to fit your whims. Different themes offer different levels of customization so what you can and cannot do will depend on the theme you�re working with. In general, you should be able to change the header image, layout options and colors on any theme.

Also note that themes don�t have to be site-wide. If you happen to blog about both cupcakes and software, you can assign your archive pages for cupcakes to use one theme and the software posts to use another.

If you�d like to create your own theme, it isn�t too difficult. The best place to start is to open up an existing theme and study how it works.

You�ll notice it�s more complex than just throwing together some HTML and CSS in a template. It helps to have a decent knowledge of PHP, and if you need help getting up to speed, Webmonkey has you covered.

3. Sidebar(s)

This area will most likely be the most unique from blog to blog. From single sidebars to double sidebars to sidebars with sidebars this is where you can get creative and also add great functionality to a blog. Here are things to consider when designing or choosing sidebar items:

Social media links

Subscription links (RSS/Email)

Info about the blog

Search functionality

Categories

Popular articles

Most commented articles

Flickr photo stream

Recent news

Twitter update(s)

Advertisements

Recent posts

Blogroll (other blogs you like)

Links

Email forms

Contact information

Archives

There are more useful ways to customize wordpress blog . Watch simple video guides reveal exactly how to set up wordpress 3.x websites on Wordpress Genius Today!

The 4 Effective Wordpress SEO Tips

2011-12-21T08:51:16Z

There are several million WordPress blogs that you can find on the internet, but unfortunately the majority of them are not properly optimized for search engines. This article is going to touch on some SEO tips for bloggers using WordPress to host their blog, because with the right tips it is easy for you to make your WordPress blog more search engine friendly.

To help your wordpress blog to rank high for your niche, you'll need to know some solid, evergreen, white-hat�WordPress SEO tips�that will help get you ahead of your competition and ahead of the traffic in your niche. There is a lot to cover so lets jump in.

1. Headlines

You should write the kind of headlines to your articles that:

Contains important keyword combinations or phrase for ranking

Describes with great interest what the article is about

Makes the reader want to read it and clicks on it in the SERPs

And is short and to the point

Search engine traffic is very important for this process to work. Do not forget to utilize this as a part of your technique because it is a free method for bringing in traffic to your site. Whenever you figure out how to make the right modifications and understand how things work, then you will notice a spike in your search engine rank. At this point, you can use your WordPress blog to your advantage.

2. Meta Description Tags

Using�meta description�tags is no longer considered to be as important to SEO as it once was. Google reports that they no longer include meta descriptions in their algorithm. However, these descriptions still appear in the search results. Therefore, they can influence whether or not someone decides to click on your link and visit your site.

WebsiteMagazine.com�(one of my favorite resources)�recently conducted a study where they analyzed the use of keywords in meta descriptions and the results that were returned in search queries. Basically, their conclusion was that since you're not penalized for using meta descriptions and it does provide an opportunity to engage potential visitors, why not use them.�

3. Use an Optimized Robots.txt File.�

You want to make sure you block certain directories from search engine bots and direct them to the content that you want them to crawl. This can be done manually if you're familiar with the robots.txt file, but I recommend you useiRobots.txt SEO (IRSEO)to get the job done.

4. Link to Some Cool Content

It is also important to let your blog readers estimate other content with relevant and useful information. Why? Because of two reasons. First, it will show your blog subscribers that you try your best to provide the coolest content. Secondly, it will help your WordPress blog to become noticed and get benefit from search engines. REMEMBER: don't post links just to other websites at random. You need to use links which lead to the content which concerns your article and is truly relevant. We'd also recommend you to enable trackbacks which will help other bloggers link to your posts and allow your weblog to obtain good reputation.

These guidelines will set up a nice clean blog pattern that can be duplicated time and time again as you build far more blogs. It is straightforward to set up, and you can gradually add more plugins and items to get your website in an even far better position to make it to the top.

There are other things you can do to support optimize your SEO on a WP blog; but if you follow the�Wordpress SEO Tips, you will be well on your way to having a blog that the search engines would love and pay attention to.�

Wordpress Genius : Wordpress Genius

3 Important Ways To Customize Wordpress Blog

1. The Header

2. Themes

3. Sidebar(s)

The 4 Effective Wordpress SEO Tips

1. Headlines

2. Meta Description Tags