Lesson One-Improve appearance of your blog

In this blog post, I will share some tips on how you can improve the appearance of your blog.

First, you will need to log into WordPress admin; for this, you can go to the link http://yourblogname.wordpress.com/wp-admin, and you will be prompted to ask username/email and password. Once you enter these details and log in, you will see your dashboard(something like below).

Among all the link tabs on the left-hand side of your dashboard, you will find a tab, ‘Appearance.’ Putting your mouse over the tab will show you a few more sub-links under it(as in the image below): Themes, Customize, Widgets, Menus, Header, Custom Design & Mobile. Let’s talk about these options one by one.

First option: Themes

The first & foremost step to improving your blog’s appearance is to find a nice theme; to do this, click on the link “Themes.” Once you click it, you will see a page that will show your blog’s current theme, and below it, there will be several other available themes as well. This collection of themes will consist of free and paid designs, so you may surf around those designs and select the best one for your blog. Once you find an appropriate theme, you may click on the link “Activate” which is present below every theme, and your blog design will be changed instantly, which you may view at http://yourblogname.wordpress.com

Second option: Customize

The customized option will help you change your selected design theme’s font style, colors, background, headers, etc. After you click on the link option “Customize”, you will see your blog and a big vertical tab on the right-hand side of the browser that says “Customize your blog”.After you put your mouse over this vertical tab, it will show you a few options like Colors, Fonts, Header, Front, Site Title, and CSS (Please note that a few of these options may not be available to you if you have a free/trial version of any paid theme).

Colors: This option lets you change the color of your blog elements, such as texts, borders, and backgrounds.

Fonts: This option lets you change headings and body text font style.

Header: You can upload and display your header on the blog.

Front: You may choose between your latest post and a page to be displayed when your blog is opened.

Site Title: You can set the title of your blog (e.g., Web Development Singapore) along with the tagline of your blog (e.g., Best Web Developers)

CSS: This option is suitable only for web developers or bloggers aware of CSS codes. It is generally available with premium/paid themes.

Third option: Widgets

Widgets are one of my favorite sections for taking control of widgets/boxes that I want to appear on my blog’s Sidebar(s). This section allows you to drag various options like Blog Stats, Blog Stats, etc., and drop them on the right-hand side panel (Sidebar) as shown in the image below:

Fourth option: Menus

This section allows you to manage the menus on your blog’s header. You may add/delete the menus from this section; e.g., you may add menus like About this Blog, About me, About my services, Contact us, etc. The screen for this section looks like the below:

Fifth option: Header

In this section, you may decide what will be displayed on the header area of your blog. You may choose to show only your blog title along with a tag or only the header image. You may also choose to display both of them and in this area, you can modify the header image and message as well.

Sixth Option: Background

In this section, you may select a background color or image for your blog.

Seventh Option: Custom Design

This option is usually available with paid/premium themes. This section allows you to take greater control of your theme design, but again, to do this, you will need the help of your web developer , who can help you with CSS codes, etc.

Eighth Option: Mobile

As we all know, everyone is going mobile these days, and many internet surfers use their devices to access websites, so it’s a good idea to make your blog a ‘mobile compatible blog’. And why not when WordPress.com allows you to do so without technical skills? In the mobile section of your ‘Appearance’ tab, you can choose your blog’s behavior over mobile devices; e.g., it allows you to show ‘only posts’ for mobile devices or ‘only page’ with the option to browse the posts or you may opt to hide headers from the mobile devices due to the space constraint and so on. Please note that to make these settings, it’s vital that your theme should support a mobile-friendly version.