One of the things that seems to put people off using the WordPress software on their own site (as opposed to the hosted WordPress blog site) is the technical side of the process involving WordPress templates and themes. There?s a lot of talk about code, PHP, CSS and plenty of other confusing abbreviations that don?t mean a lot to many people! This is unfortunate, as a WordPress blog can make such a big impact on web pages, and can even be used as a standalone website once you get your domain name and hosting sorted out.
Understanding the way WordPress works, installing the software, and figuring out how the templates fit in to themes does require a bit of techie know-how. It is not as hard as it first appears though, and thankfully, for those of us who are a bit technically challenged, there are some excellent guides and resources that can help make the process a whole lot smoother.
The WordPress templates are the backbone of the themes used to build the WordPress blog pages. Themes come in all manner of styles and designs, and can be customized by altering the layouts, installing WordPress plugins and by adding or changing the templates. WordPress templates are basically just a bunch of files that together make up the themes for your WordPress blog site. Generally, a default set of templates for WordPress themes would include some of these essential files:
index.php ? this is the main template file for your WordPress blog header.php ? the header template footer.php ? the footer template page.php ? for creating WordPress pages single.php ? for creating WordPress posts sidebar.php ? the WordPress blog page navigation style.css ? the stylesheet that makes up the layout for your WordPress blog.
These are just the basics; there are many more WordPress templates that can be added to customize your blog; for example, links, search forms, archive posts and WordPress blog comments.
Another confusing aspect for some people is the mention of template tags. Again, these are not as difficult to understand as they first seem. They are basically just bits of code to help the WordPress templates to perform their job properly. The tags within the templates contain the instructions to make your WordPress blog a cleverly designed set of pages!
One of the great things about WordPress templates is that you can customize them to design individual blog pages as well as post pages. The pre-defined templates will usually apply to all the pages on your WordPress blog, but you can add, remove or change the other template files to create unique items on each page.
If you consider the WordPress templates as the mechanics of the themes, you can hopefully begin to understand how they work together to create a WordPress blog.
Mike Paetzold is the creator of WordPress Made Easy a multi-media course to allow you to install and customize a WordPress blog on your domain. Get more information at http://www.wordpressmadeeasy.net and grab your free blogging traffic tips.
Website Development: Become Your Own Expert
Starting and maintaining a business is challenging enough without the additional financial burden of hiring a web site expert to put your vision on paper. If you are starting your business on a "shoe string budget," hiring someone to take your written materials to type in a basic format, add a few pictures and edit what you tell them periodically may not be sound money management.
Search Engine Friendly Website Development
Define: Web Development Web development incorporates all areas of creating a Web site for the World Wide Web. This includes Web design (graphic design, XHTML, CSS, usability and semantics), programming, server administration, content management, marketing, testing and deployment. The term can also specifically be used to refer to the "back end", that is, programming and server administration. There is usually more than one member that works on a given Web Development team, each specializing in his or her own field.
Business Card Templates ? How To Pick The Right One For Your Business
A business card says a lot about your business -- not only does it give the vital information on how to contact you, but also communicates the level at which you value your communications. While you don't have a lot of room to design your business card, you need to use that space with a punch. In this article, I will show you how to evaluate business card templates, and how to pick the right ones that will leave an impression on your audience.
Increase Adsense Profits With Keyword Strategies And Templates
We all know that one great way to make money online is with the use of adsense adverts being displayed on your websites. Lets briefly break down how adsense works with an example. Lets say that you have a website based on Gardening. When you sign up for an adsense account and place the adsense coding in your web pages, it automatically displays relevant adverts on your website of other websites in your same niche.
Bespoke Website Development
Thousands of web hosting companies offer one-size-fits-all solutions, but since it?s rare that that kind of solution will truly fit your needs, perhaps it?s time to find the right bespoke website development solution that will truly ensure your needs are carefully met.
The Significance Of Balanced Scorecard Templates
With the numerous management tools popping all over today?s industry, you just cannot help but ask yourself, are all of these really necessary Yes, these tools may have some purpose to fulfill, but which of them are really as necessary as they claim to be
Five effective ways of making money out of web templates
Web templates are the in-thing now-a-days and most of them are selling like hot cakes resulting into huge profits for web template providers. You too can cash-in on this web template craze and make money. Discussed in this article are five effective ways of making money out of web templates.
How Professional Ebay Auction Templates Can Boost Your Ebay Sales
Do you like to sell on eBay ? It's easy and fun, isn't it ? In fact, it's one of the easiest online business you can start almost overnight, without any major investments. That's the best thing about it.
Web Templates: Replacing Designers?
I've seen articles (and websites) that suggest you can buy a website template and skip the expense of hiring a professional website designer. Recently, I read several testimonials from the very satisfied customers of a website template vendor that mentioned how quickly they were able to get their sites done.
Build Your Own Web Site: Great Templates
Preparing to build your own website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) can be very intimidating. There are a multitude of new technologies being developed daily, and there is a lot of technical knowledge required to build a website from the ground up. When all of this is considered, it is not surprising that many businesses opt to not have a website at all. Fortunately, new tools are available which make building your own website more pain free than ever. With fast and affordable technology at your fingertips, it doesn't make sense to not create a website.
