- Hi, today I want to walk you through
what it looks like to customize your WordPress theme.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so one of the biggest headaches I've found
in dealing with WordPress is shopping
for hours and hours and hours online
for a really great WordPress theme,
only to install it and it looks nothing like
that original preview or that demo version,
and it's very frustrating trying to figure out
how to make your WordPress theme
look like that amazing example.
Today I'm gonna walk you through how to do it.
Here we go.
Okay, this tutorial is going to be
hopefully generic enough that it's going to
apply to every one of your situations.
The truth is, every theme is totally different,
so I'm gonna try to hit on the things
that should be the same.
Now, there are gonna be,
every theme is gonna have its own little variation,
so the very first step I want to tell you
to hopefully keep you from spinning your wheels
and wasting your time, is you'll want to find
your theme's documentation.
Every theme out there, whether it's free
or premium, which means you paid for it,
should have some sort of documentation
that's gonna help you in this whole process.
So if you're using Themeforest, let's say,
so, this particular theme here,
if you came over here and looked at the Themes page
to see kind of what all this theme is about,
there's an area here that has a Support area
that you can go into, and find details on
how to connect with this author.
Especially, this is typically here
if you've already purchased this theme.
But the spot that you really want to go to is,
let's scroll up here for a second
and go to my downloads.
Move me out of the way here.
Go to my downloads.
Well, it's not gonna let me go to my downloads.
Go to my downloads.
All right, I'm back.
And right here in this spot,
let's say this particular one.
If you go to this download area here,
and you click on it, it allows you
to download all the files and documentation, okay?
So when you click that, it's gonna take a while,
it's gonna download to your desktop.
What typically is gonna happen is
you're gonna get a zipped file like this.
You double click it, and it creates a folder like this.
When you double click that and open it up,
you're gonna see a folder hopefully called Documentation
or an html page called Documentation.
When you open that up and click on it,
it should be able to quickly and easily
walk you through literally every step.
How to set up your home page, how to install it.
So this is the very first thing, how to install it.
So if you're struggling with how to even get this theme
active on your website, here it is, step by step,
and it literally will walk you through
how to set up the slideshow on the home page,
what all your options are.
And some authors even have incredible videos
that you can literally sit here,
click and watch the whole situation take place,
unfold in front of you.
Or they have great screen shots,
just like what we're seeing here.
So really, really important to be sure to
go search for your theme's documentation, okay?
If you're using a free theme,
this particular theme, Spacious,
has a support tab right here.
So clicking on that, I'm able to go see
an entire forum area type environment
where I can ask questions and see
what other people are struggling with
and maybe get some questions answered
if I'm having a problem with getting this to work
and to look like that amazing demo
that they did for us.
Another thing you want to do,
you're going to follow the instructions
how to install and activate it,
but the next thing you want to do
is you literally want to walk through
every single portion, how they say to customize
the theme, and some authors
even give you another zipped file
that's their demo content,
and they'll walk you through how to import that
and plug it in.
And then with that, your whole theme will
begin to switch around and look just like that demo.
If you're still struggling, there are a couple of things
that nobody typically tells you,
and you only learn them by trial and error.
That's what I want to walk you through right now.
So how to set up your home page.
If you don't want all your blog posts
to be seen on your very first page, your home page,
you have to actually tell WordPress to make it
be a page that you've created,
like a home page or a welcome page.
So the way to do that is you actually
go into your Settings area, and you go into Reading,
and right here, Front Page Displays,
you want it to display your latest post,
or do you want it to display a static page, okay?
You have to be sure to make the page first,
and then come to these settings.
So if you do that, then in this dropdown,
you'll have the option of that page that you made,
and in this instance I called my home page Home.
I select that and I click Save Changes.
Then that allows the website to know
to present that page of content
instead of all of my posts dynamically listed.
And remember, WordPress was created for bloggers, right?
Initially that was the concept.
So by default, it puts all your posts on that home page.
How to set up your menus.
This is another thing some people,
some authors forget to walk you through,
and you get totally turned around.
So we know that the top of your website up here,
this area up here typically that runs across the top
or maybe down the side of your website
is called, WordPress calls those your menus, right?
In order to get to those
and to set those up appropriately,
they're hiding inside of Appearance.
So if you go to Appearance, go to Menus,
move myself over here.
I'll get myself out of the way here.
So here you can set up and create a brand new menu.
Most of the time menus aren't even sitting here yet,
so you have to click this button right here
to create a new menu.
And you can name it Main Menu, Top Menu,
whatever you want to call it,
and click, this button will actually say Create Menu.
You'll click that.
And then now all of your content
is sitting over here on the left side,
so you can choose whatever pages you want
and click Add to Menu.
Whenever you click that,
they'll automatically put them over here
and you can drag and drop these
in whatever order you want these to
appear inside that menu, all right?
If you don't see all of your content here,
click this little button that says View All,
and it will list all of your pages alphabetically
here for your to choose from.
You choose those again, click Add to Menu.
They'll drop over in a random order.
You just grab, drag and drop them
in whatever order you want them to be in.
If you want them to be a dropdown,
maybe you want Apply Today underneath Contact Us,
slide it just slightly to the right
and see how it becomes a sub menu?
And now you'll have that dropdown effect.
I don't want to do that.
I want these all to be all on one line.
And just click Save Menu.
And then down at the bottom, check this out.
Right here.
Theme Locations.
Now, some of your themes might offer
different locations here.
Your top menu is where I want this
particular menu to appear.
I want it to appear at the top of my website.
So I'm gonna check that box and click Save Menus,
and now it'll overwrite whatever default option
was taking place up there.
So super tricky, and a lot of authors
forget to mention it to you.
So let's set a couple more things.
You might have some page templates that apply.
This, again, should be documented
in all of that amazing helpful resource
of documentation that your author gives you.
But if not, and you say,
but this page has a side bar,
and I didn't want a side bar on it,
I want it to be full width,
you'll go into that page that you want to manipulate.
Let's just say this one, About Us.
And over here on the right side,
there are page templates.
Now, these are gonna look a little different,
again, depending upon theme to theme to theme, right?
But you, somewhere on this page,
you should have the option to select
your page template, and see I have one
that says Full Width.
That means that that sidebar would disappear
and my content would extend the full width of my page.
So super helpful option here.
Some authors may have an area down here
toward the bottom that would have a layout
type of selection, so you could choose that,
and again, it would create that sort of
full width page template.
You'll have all sorts of really cool options in here.
Sometimes they have an archive option,
where if you wanted all of your posts
from your blog to display on one page,
it'll give that sort of structure.
So depending upon how creative your author got.
And then the last thing is you want to
set up your footer area.
A lot of people forget that you have
the opportunity to create a really dynamic footer
that gives your user a really great user experience.
So in order to do that, you'll want to go to
your Appearance and go to your Widgets area, right?
And this, again, is gonna look a little different
depending upon theme to theme,
but you're looking for something over here
on the right side called Footer Areas.
And you would have some opportunities
to drop in content.
Any of these, as you know, on this column here,
these are available widgets that you can
drag and drop into these boxes
and use them in that allotted space.
Okay, so again, like I shared with you,
it might be a variation of kind of
these steps that I've given you here today,
but always, always look for that documentation
and look for that that forum that that author
might have for you, all right?
If you have questions though, specifically about
your WordPress theme, we also want to
be a resource for you, as well as your
local Meetup group for WordPress.
So be sure to Google around in your area
or give us a Tweet.
I'll put our contact information in the
description box below.
We'll see you next week for WordPress Wednesday.
Bye-bye, y'all.
- Hey, everybody.
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