after part 1 continue

Step 4: Choosing a Template for Your Website

A big advantage of using WordPress to power your website is the fact that there are literally thousands of free templates available, created by the community of WordPress users. Note that these templates are called "themes."

You should start your search for a suitable theme at the Official Themes Directory. On the first page you'll find a list of featured themes. Alternatively you can use the "Filters and Tags" interface to narrow your search to themes specific characteristics. Finally, you can also use the search box if you are looking for something specific. For example, if you are creating a website for your company, you could search for "business" or "corporate."

If you can't find a good theme in the directory, try using Google. Do you want to create a blog about swimming? Search on Google for "swimming wordpress theme." Do you want to to create an online store to sell products? Search for "online store wordpress theme." So on and so forth. Remember that you'll be able to customize your theme later on, so just worry about finding something that fits your general requirements.

Depending on your budget you might also consider purchasing a premium WordPress theme. It will cost anywhere from $20 up to $60, but the quality is usually higher when compared with the free themes. One website we recommend for premium themes is ThemeForest.com. The prices are quite affordable (around $30 per theme), and they have over 2,000 themes for all sorts of purposes and requirements.

Once you find a theme that is suitable for your website (either a free or a premium one) simply download the .zip file to your computer. Now you'll need to log in the WordPress admin panel. You can do that by typing www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin into your browser. After entering your username and password you'll be redirected to the Dashboard of the admin panel, which looks like this:

You'll have time to familiarize yourself with all the features and links you see there. For now just open the "Appearance" menu on the left, and then click on "Themes." On top of that new page you'll find a tab called "Install Themes." Go ahead and click on it. Now select "Upload", and choose the theme file you have downloaded to your computer. On the next page you'll need to put in your FTP information (you'll find this in the email you received from the hosting company as well). Click on "Proceed" and WordPress should upload and install the theme for you.

If for some reason the automatic theme install fails, you can always do it manually. You'll just need to unzip the theme on your computer, and then to upload it to your server via FTP. We recommend that you use a free program called FileZilla to do that. With the program running, connect to ftp.yourdomain.com, using the FTP username and password provided by your hosting company (you can leave the "Port" field blank). Once the connection is established, open the "public_html" folder you'll find on the right side of the program, then open the "wp-content" folder, then open the "themes" folder, and finally upload your theme there (the whole folder).

Now log back into the WordPress admin panel, click on "Themes" under the "Appearance" menu again, and you should see your theme listed there. Simply click on it to see a preview, and then click on "Activate," on the top right corner. Once your theme is active you can visit your website URL to see how it looks. Here is a screenshot of a sample theme we activated:

Step 5: Customizing Your Design

Once your selected theme is active, you can start customizing your design. The first decision you must make is whether you want a static front page or a dynamic one. If your website will be a content based one, like a blog where new articles get published frequently, then you probably want to go with a dynamic front page, displaying all the latest articles and posts there. In this case you don't need to change anything, as WordPress comes with a dynamic front page by default.

If you are making a website for your company, to sell products or to offer your services, then a static front page is a better idea. You can create one by opening the "Pages" menu on the WordPress admin panel, and then by clicking on "Add New." After that simply write the title and the content of your page. You can add images, video and scripts if you want. Once you are happy with the page, click on "Publish."

The page should be live now, but it is still a normal page. In order to make it the front page you'll need to open the "Settings" menu, and then click on "Reading." Right on top you'll find a check box you can use to determine what should be used as the front page. Simply select the one you just created, and click on "Save Changes."

You can also customize any other aspect of your design by opening the "Appearance" menu and clicking on "Editor." Each file present there controls a different aspect of your theme. The "Stylesheet," for example, controls the general design settings like font size, color, theme widths, headline styles and so on. These settings apply to all pages of your website.

The .php files, on the other hand, control the layout of specific pages. The index.php file, for instance, controls the content of your front page. The single.php file controls the content of the single post pages. The footer.php controls the content of the footer of your website, and so on. Just remember to backup each file (i.e., copy the text to a word processor) before you start changing it, so that if anything goes wrong you can restore the working version.

Another section worth exploring is the "Widgets" one (you'll find the link inside the "Appearance" menu as well). On most WordPress themes you can add or remove design features (e.g., menus, links, search boxes) simply by dragging and dropping the widgets into your sidebar.

Congratulations, Your Website Is Ready To Roll!

At this point your website should be up and running. Now it is just a matter of adding more content, promoting it, and further customizing your design and layout. We have more articles that will explain how to do each of these things and a lot more, so check it out:

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