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Benefits of this lesson:  You can customize your blog any way you’d like

Ever say to yourself, how can I change my Wordpress theme?

Ever visit a Wordpress blog and wonder to yourself, gee self, how on earth did they get that super design?

Or perhaps think to yourself, woah, what a great picture, how did they put it on that word press page?

In almost all cases, it was done very easily by simply:

• Downloading the design (called a theme) or images or plugin to their home computer
• Uploading that theme or image or plugin to their Wordpress blog and turning it on or adding it to a post or….

Here’s a basic tutorial on how to do it.

DO THIS FIRST) 

• Look up your Wordpress login and password.  You will need this to access your Wordpress blog. 
• Make sure you have a way to unzip files (themes and plugins are distributed as zip files).  You can get a trial version for free at Winzip.

Step 1.)   Choose a folder on your computer to store all the things you’ll want to add to your blog. 

Here’s my structure:

• AskOwlbert (site name)
  • images (here’s where I’ll store the images)
  • plugins (here’s where I’ll store the plugins)
  • themes (here’s where I’ll store the themes
  • ideas (here’s where I’ll store any ideas I want to explore later on)

You can create this folder structure in your My Desktop or My Documents, whatever works best for you.  Here’s an example:

Step 2.)  Get yourself comfortable with viewing files remotely on your Wordpress blog.

You’re probably familiar with Windows Explorer, right?   It’s the way you can view what files you have on your computer.

Did you know you can use that to look at your Wordpress files too?

Let’s say that your Wordpress blog is at http://www.YourDomain.com .  Open up your Windows explorer and type the address at the top:

ftp://www.YourDomain.com

where YourDomain is, well, where your Wordpress blog is installed.  Login (you’ll be asked for your login and password) and then double-click on the folder "wp-content".  (NOTE!  If your blog is installed at http://www.YourDomain.com/blog/, you’d first have to double-click on the folder blog and then double-click on wp-content).

You should see something similar to:

See that?  If you’re having trouble viewing your remote files this way, you can simply download the free Smart FTP client and use that instead).

Step 3.)  Save the plugin or theme that you want to your local computer in the folder structure you made in Step 1.  

You can view thousands of themes over at ThemeViewer and thousands of plugins over at Wordpress Plugins.

Step 4.)  Unzip the theme or plugin. 

In almost all cases, a new folder will be created in the themes or plugins folder of your original structure.  For example, below I have unzipped a plugin called Dagon Design Sitemap Generator that automatically creates a nifty sitemap for your blog.  NOTE!  Each plugin or theme has a different sub-folder name, they won’t all be called "dd-sitemap-gen".

Step 5.)  Drag and drop the plugin or theme to your remote blog.    

Remember in Step 2, you browsed to your remote blog and saw the folders

• plugins
• themes

All you have to do now is simply open one Windows Explorer window and browse to the plugin or theme you want to upload, open a second Windows Explorer that shows your remote folders, and drag/drop the plugin or theme in question.  In other words,

and that’s how you add things like new themes and new plugins to your Wordpress blog.

NOTE!  Once you upload or add a new plugin to your Wordpress blog, you have to activate it.  This is done by going to your Wordpress dashboard and selecting the Plugins option on top.  Scroll down until you see the plugin you just uploaded and click Activate.

To change your theme view instead, select Presentation.

And if you’d like more explanations about plugins and themes, visit:

• How to Install, Configure, and Use WordPress Plugins
• Beginners Guide to Wordpress Plugins

True, it might seem strange when you add plugins or themes the first few times, but take my word for it - it will get easier and easier and your blog will look better and better.

ThankYouVeryMuch!

Owlbert

Related posts:

1. Add words to your blog post address (permalinks)
2. How to make writing in your blog much easier
3. Compel iPhone and mobile viewers to adore you - easily enhance your blog for them!
4. Easily add a signature image to your blog posts
5. Super affiliate wordpress themes

(By the way, if you have any questions about the topics in this posting "Soup up your blog with easy-to-install plugins and widgets", do comment below - I'll try to clarify any issues).

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