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Advice at the Intersection of Work and Life

Featured WordPress blog: Brazen Careerist – Advice at the intersection of Work and Life

This week we are visiting a blog which is a wonderful place to draw inspiration if you are a writer or blogger, and highly entertaining for everyone, even if they are neither. It is titled Brazen Careerist, by Penelope Trunk, with the subtitle Advice at the intersection of Work and Life. It contains such gems as “if you want to be an idea person, you should sit down and write an idea first thing in the morning”.

Penelope Trunk is the founder of 3 internet companies, most recently Brazen Careerist, a social network to help young people manage their careers. As an entrepreneur she got a column in a national magazine and started giving advice in places like Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the London Times. Her career advice now appears in more than 200 newspapers.

As she points out in Penelope’s Guide to Blogging, a blog is a great way to figure out what you want to do with yourself because writing regularly is a path to self-discovery. For that blinding insight alone she deserves a visit, but believe me, the rest of the site is filled with the same sort of wisdom which bloggers, job seekers, and Internet savvy in general should be immersed in every day.

Another point she has made in her blog is that personal responsibility is the most important trait of a successful career. This is one right out of our business coaching manual and a sentiment we have been able to identify with in other ventures such as life coaching and presentation skills training.

Would be bloggers would befit from reading Penelope’s post entitled What makes a blog successful? This contains some interesting views about why you should blog; we might even make it required reading on our Getting Started With WordPress training!

To read more from this entertaining blogger, click here to visit Brazen Careerist

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How To Manage Themes in WordPress

One of the most frequent questions a new WordPress blogger will ask is “How do I change the Theme?” or “How do I alter the appearance of my WordPress site?”. This post will take you through the simple steps to changing the appearance of your site. After completing this exercise you will be able to download and activate a new theme for your WordPress site.

First of all, log on to the wp-admin pages using the account details you used when setting up, or an account with Administrator role. On the left Menu click on Appearance and the Manage Themes page will appear.

The current theme will be displayed at the top, and any alternative layouts will be displayed under the heading Available Themes. If this is a fresh installation, there will likely be one one alternative, which will be WordPress Classic.

You can see what your current blog would look like using the Classic theme by clicking on the Preview link under the thumbnail view. After a few seconds your current blog will be displayed in the WordPress Classic style. If you wish to change the appearance of the site to Classic, then you can do so by clicking on Activate WordPress Classic at the top right of the preview screen, and you will be taken back to the Manage Themes page. The rest of the world can now see you blog in it’s new style.

As there are thousands of WordPress themes available for free, the next step is to see what themes appeal to you. Click on Add New Themes (under the Appearance menu item) and the Install Themes page displays.

You can Search for themes by keyword, author, or tag, by entering the string in the search box and clicking Search. Enter a string and search to see any themes which match your criteria displayed in the Search Results. At this point you can either:

  • Select Preview to display a sample of it on screen.
  • Click on Install, to see a small view of the screen, then click on Install Now, to add the theme to your blog.

If you select Install, you should see a number of messages somthing like the following:

  • Downloading install package from…
  • Unpacking the package.
  • Installing the theme…
  • Successfully installed the theme…

Afterwards you will be offered a choice of Actions: Preview, Activate or Return to Theme Installer. Selecting Return to Theme Installer will take you to the Install Themes page so that you can search for another theme. Finally clicking on Themes will allow you to return you to the Manage Themes page, where you will see your new thumbnail picture under Available Themes, or as your current theme, depending on your earlier choice.

Congratulations, you are now able to download and activate a new theme for your WordPress site. In the next post in this series, we will look at How To Manage Plugins in WordPress. Happy blogging!