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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!

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More WordPress Configuration Tips

A common question which is often asked of our support staff is “After Installing WordPress how do you customize it?” So it is about time for More WordPress Configuration Tips, to take you to the next step.

First of all, log on to the wp-admin pages using the account details you used when setting up. In order to make the site your own after installation, we suggest that you customize WordPress by completing the following steps:

In the WordPress General Settings (Settings, then General)

  • Set up your Blog Title and Tagline, if not already to your liking
  • Set the Date Format by clicking on one of the existing examples, or setting a Custom format; we normally use a custom j F Y to show the date in UK format 30 November 2009
  • Click on Save Changes

In the WordPress Writing Settings (Settings, then Writing)

  • Change the size of the Writing window if required
  • Check WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically
  • Add any further Update Services to which you wish to subscribe (For more about this, see Update Services on the Codex.)
  • Click on Save Changes

In the WordPress Discussion Settings (Settings, then Discussion)

  • Check Users must be registered and logged in to comment in Other comment settings
  • If You are particularly keen on keeping a tight rein on comments, check An administrator must always approve the comment Before a comment appears.
  • Click on Save Changes

Once you are ready for your Blog to see the world (or is it the world to see your Blog?), in the WordPress Privacy Settings (Settings, then Privacy)

  • click on I would like my blog to be visible to everyone,
  • Click on Save Changes

In the next installment, we will show you how to install your new WordPress theme, in order to change the Appearance of your WordPress Blog rather than the default theme.

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Matt Mullenweg: 10 blogs to make you think

Regular bloggers will already know that Matt Mullenweg is the co-founder of the WordPress blogging software and founder of Automattic, a company that runs WordPress.com and Gravatar. He has just published an article on cnn.com entitled 10 blogs to make you think. His stated job as the co-founder of WordPress is to help many more people start blogging, and his top ten list is a great place to start reading if you are new to blogging, or a seasoned vetran.

His first recomendation is Scripting News by Dave Winer, who pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software. We particularly like Dave’s blog about the Android operating system, Droidie. This is a blog about the Droid phone from Motorola with the Verizon service and Android 2.0 operating system. We are interested in anything to do with Android OS at the moment, having just taken delivery of an HTC Hero.

Other notable blogs and sites nominated by Matt include Open by Glyn Moody, Raw Thought from Aaron Swartz (check out his FBI file!) and the daily comic XKCD

To read the full article by Matt click here to read Mullenweg: 10 blogs to make you think on the cnn website

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Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins

While most people using WordPress are happy just to have an excelent blogging platform, there are some people we support who are seriously in to developing web based applications, and tweeking WordPress for the good and benefit of all.

While looking for the solution to a problem on a WordPress site we are setting up, we came accross this gem from Ozh Richard called Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins. Actually, to give full credit, there are about eighteen common mistakes listed, and we have probably made (no surely we mean seen!) all of them at some time.

The top ten most frequent bad code bits are listed here for a quick reference, but for the detail and a good laugh, visit Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins

  1. It’s not a plugin, it’s a mess
  2. Way too generic function names
  3. What? 87 new rows in the option table?
  4. You create new tables for what?
  5. No uninstall function
  6. Custom javascript or CSS added on each and every admin pages
  7. Plugin forms with no security, or nonces misunderstood
  8. Actions triggered from unchecked GET data
  9. Trust user input and pass it to SQL
  10. Localization done wrong

To read the full post, visit and enjoy Top 10 Most Common Coding Mistakes in WordPress Plugins.

While you are at it, check out the succinct The Definitive Guide To Using WordPress as a CMS on the same site

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Improving Your Search Engine Results

Have you ever wondered how to get your business up to the top of Google or Yahoo! search results? Companies and individuals the world over have pondered this almost since Larry Page and Sergey Brin came up with the idea of PageRank (after Larry Page) and founded Google. Some specialist companies charge hundreds of pounds a month just to help you keep your business at the top of the Google results.

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of measuring its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

So how do you improve your position in the search results? Our advice is that if you want to reach the top of the Google search engine then you should build a Blog on your website, and start Blogging.

How do Blogs increase your placement in the Google search engine results? First, Blogs increase the amount of content on your website. Google spiders love to see content, and the more content you have the better. If you have enough content on your site, then Google will deem you an authority site on the topic. If you provide a service rather just having a page full of advertisements, then you get a better page ranking.

If you accept that Blogs are the way to go, the next question would be what Blog program to use? The top Internet Marketers in the world recommend WordPress, which is available at wordpress.org. For some options on starting a Blog see our WordPress Tags

Another advantage of WordPress is that it is a top pick for many search engines. WordPress creates site maps and automatically pings the search engines each time you update your Blog. The best news is that WordPress is FREE.

By making Blogging part of your daily schedule you can increase content on your site and help to improve your page ranking in the search engines. If you can increase your placement simply by writing a Blog, then why haven’t you started Blogging yet? We will be running a regular series of articles on Blogging, WordPress and Search Engine Results on this site to help you get started on the Internet. Why not come back every day and check us out?

For resources to help you get started with your first Blog, see the following links:

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Newest WordPress Plugins

Check out some of the latest WordPress plugins.

Bibs Random Content
Faster Image Insert

Please note that these have not all been tested and evaluated yet. We will evaluate them and comment in these pages. If you have any feedback on the Plugins please let the developers know directly via their own support mechanism.

We are curently testing the following

NextGEN Gallery Currently installed on Another World of Travel

Google XML Sitemaps Currently installed on a numbers of our WordPress sites.

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Customising WordPress Using Templates

In order to customize a WordPress theme, you may need to decide which template file needs editing in order to provide a conditional display. Say you want to have a link to you favorite book retailers which only appears on your books page http://techcosupport.com/press/category/books/, then you may need to build a custom template for that page.

WordPress uses the Query String, the information contained within each link on your web site, to decide which template or set of templates will be used to display the page. If your visitor clicks on a link to a category page like http://techcosupport.com/press/category/books/, then WordPress looks for a template file that matches the category’s ID in the directory for the current theme. If it is missing, WordPress next looks for a generic category template file, category.php. Failing that archive.php and if that is missing the main theme template file, index.php.

In order to find out the category ID number go to Manage Categories and hover your mouse over your target category and the ID will show up in the link. Alternatively if you are editing a category, the ID will be displayed at the end of the url.

You then create your custom page with the name category-2.php in the case of http://techcosupport.com/press/category/books/. After that, when you display Books the custom page will display. Easy!

For more detail on the use of templates see Codex WordPress Template Hierarchy

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Customising WordPress Using Page Templates

If you are considering customising WordPress, you may be interested to know that it can be configured to use custom Page Templates for different Pages. This means that several or all pages could have their own unique Page Templates and so appear completely different.

If you want to create a custom page template called MyTemplate, create a file called mytemplate.php. At the top of the file, put the following:
<?php
/*
Template Name: MyTemplate
*/
?>

Copy the content of another template (perhaps page.php or index.php) after the above five lines of code then you will only have to alter the HTML and PHP code, instead of creating it all from scratch. MyTemplate will now be available as a choice when you create or edit a new page. You can go ahead and customise this new template further without if affecting your default pages.

To select a template, there must be at least one custom Page Template available in the active theme. Once there is, toward the bottom of the Write Page administration panel (or on the sidebar, depending on which version of WordPress you are using) you will see there is a drop-down labeled Page Template. From there you can select which Template will be used when displaying this particular Page, and MyTemplate should now appear.

See Codex WordPress Creating your own Page Templates to find out how to create a custom Page Template.

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Aloha From Maui and the Pink Biker Chic

While off last week on a working trip to the beautiful island of Maui, in the State of Hawaii (well someone has to do the difficult jobs!) we bumped into Eldonna Lewis-Fernandez, a retired US Air Force veteran of 23 years. Adventurous, edgy and refined, Eldonna is affectionately known as the “Pink Biker Chic.”

Eldonna is a Harley riding bad biker chic, speaker, trainer, author, Girlie Girl who drives a GMC truck, works out, does yoga, loves clothes, shoes and anything PINK! That stuff you can get off her website – what her site does not necessarily tell you is that she is also a very impressive and inspiring person when you meet her face to face.

She trains & coaches women in male dominated environments to eliminate self doubt and be the girlie girl in charge of their lives. She helps teens create better choices and amplify self esteem. Wow! What a Résumé!

We are currently negotiating a full article on Eldonna, so watch this space! In the mean time, if you want to visit her website now click on Pink Biker Chic