How I Started This Blog - Part 3
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to read How I Started This Blog -Part 1 and Part 2 before reading this.
In my previous posts I talked about finding blogs that walk beginners through setting up your own blog. I told you about the Dazzlin Donna site and the preblogging site which have instructions on how to set up your own blog. There is also Courtney Tuttle’s instructions on how to build a blog.
Themes
When you load Wordpress they give you two theme options. Themes are like skins; it’s the way your blog looks. The two themes that come with Wordpress have very little personality and luckily you don’t have to settle for using either of them. If you do a search you will find many sites that offer themes and Wordpress has there own area where you can download themes for free. You could spend days looking through all of the theme options out there, but before you waste huge amounts of time looking for the perfect theme, let me offer up some helpful tips.
Helpful Tips When Picking a Theme
Here are some tips to help you narrow your theme search before you get lost in the infinite amount of theme offerings out there.
What is Your Blogging Goal?
Have an idea of what you want your blog to do for you. If your blog is just for diary type postings that just your close friends and family will see, then you have a lot of leeway as far as a theme goes. Pick whatever layout appeals to you. If you intend to make money from your blog, then you have some things to think about. If you don’t know any programming then you are going to want to pick a theme that is already set up to make money. Do some research and see what the popular layouts are for sites that are monetized. How many columns do they have and where are they placed? Are columns on the left, right or both sides? Once you’ve decided on columns and placement, you’ve narrowed your theme search considerably.
Downloader Beware
Especially for those of you who have no experience, be careful where you download your themes. Even some of the themes on the Wordpress site have hidden things in them that you don’t want. Or the code might be messy and hard for search engines to navigate which would make your blog harder to find. Courtney Tuttle’s blog has a section with Wordpress themes. He has done your programming work for you; thank you Mr. Tuttle. He has cleaned up code and optimized the themes so they are easy to read from a search engine’s perspective. What more could you ask for? Your sea of themes has now been intelligently reduced to a handful, which is what a busy single parent wants. It shouldn’t be too hard to efficiently pick a theme from a smart and professional point of view at this stage.
Knowledge is Power
If starting your own monetized blog is something that you are seriously considering, then you need to understand a very important thing. You have to be willing to learn and you have to be creative. Most single parents have no choice but to be creative learners, but this is on a higher level. What you don’t know can hurt you but there are many great resources out there to gain the knowledge that you need to succeed. You just need to be willing to search out the blogs that will assist you in attaining your goals. And even though many bloggers will tell you how they did it, you can’t just mindlessly copy someone else’s success and think you will succeed also. It doesn’t work that way.
In Part 4 and 5 I will talk about some of the ways you can enhance Wordpress with Plug Ins. And I’ll also be talking about posting and content. I’m just not sure which one I’ll talk about first at this point.
