How to Customize WordPress Theme (The basic)

Is it important to pick a right Theme for website/blog?

Definitely YES!

When begin start build a website most considering stuff is to choose and pick a right Themes that matched whit our blog content.

It will look awkward if  Your website content is about traveling but use the themes for online store, so I think this is really important.

Creating Pages for Contact Form, About, Term of services, Disclaimers, Privacy Policy is also very important thing.

One of the main reason your website not getting approved by Google Adsense or other Ads publisher program was a website with a bad navigation.

I am not an expert but in this article I will try to share tips how to customize your WordPress theme easily.

Let’s start with choosing the themes.

Pick the right Themes

If you plan to monetize your blog with Google Adsense my suggestions is to choose Clean and responsive theme, you can search inside WP Admin Panel just go to Appearance >Theme >Add New there is a lot of free and premium theme pick one that matched with your blog content and niche.

Invest your money for buy a premium themes will be a good idea if you have budget because you will get more benefits from using premium themes rather than the free ones especially for SEO Optimization stuff.

Customize Menu In Navigation  Bar

To have an ease to use navigation bar is a must for website or blog so visitor can easily discover what they looking for, by default usually you have only Home menu hang on Nav-bar.

To adding other menu is by creating new pages like I mention before for example: Blog-Privacy policy-Contact-About etc and create Categories for sub menu item example: Computers-Internet-Macintosh-Windows.

After finish creating pages and categories pages go to Appearance>Menu and check pages you wish to add in main menu than click Add to Menu button see picture below.

For creating sub menu item click on Custom Links and replace url with # Click Add to Menu see picture below.

Continue with click on Categories on the left Menu structure and add Categories you have create before to Menu under Custom Links drag all categories to the right one grid to create Sub item see picture below.

Now you can rename Custom Links like “Categories” or “Blog Menu” see picture below for Menu Structure example:

Your Navigation bar on website in live preview will look like picture below 👇🏼

Now we’ve done with the Navigation Bar its time to make it more attractive with adding some Widget and plugins into Sidebar.

Customize side bar

Sidebar in a blog page can be very useful for placing widget like your recent and feature post so your visitor can easily found related post for article they read about. And also place for put your Facebook page, your author box, social profile, banner ads etc.

For some people may leave their sub footer clean, it’s good for some kind of blog but in my personal taste I do like to add something on it.

Because when readers finish reading your content and reach the bottom of your site there is something will attract their attention. But! it depends on themes you use.

And be creative to put some widget on it, definitely it could be very powerful place for you to consider.

If you want you can easily manage what widgets to put on sub footer with Live Preview 

Useful plugins/add-ons

Page builder by Site Origin

WPForms For creating contact form page

WP subscribe

To install go to WP admin panel > Plugins > Add New and upload the plugins.

Or you can search directly from plugins search box.

Fine tune

Now look at your website preview! navigate your cursor to Home icon in top left of WordPress admin panel. see picture below 👇🏼

Mix match the composition, be creative and have fun whit it. When it looks and feels good then you have done with the basic web design congratulation! not too difficult isn’t it?

If necessary hire a web developer

Still not satisfied whit standard customization?

If you want a custom design for your website, and you don’t know how to coding, then you can hire people who expert in web design.

Or you can learning by your self In WordPress.org in developers section.

Also website like GitHub & w3schools.com is place you can learn how to code.

If you want take a courses, youtube is best source to find one. Of course it need some times for you to master it.

So if you just want to blogging and don’t want to get confused with HTML 5, CSS 3 etc. well! the instant choice is to hire a web developer, there is a lot of good web developer on the internet that you can find one.

Conclusion

The first impression is always appearance! so i hope this basic simple tutorial about how to customize WordPress theme can help you to start-up your website and later you could develop by your self for further more.

However the most important thing is to start writing! and fill your new blog with a lot of good and valuable content. It’s a waste when you have a fancy website but have no content. Writing a good quality content is not easy but it can be done with consistency and a will to learn and hard work of course.

You can do it!

Since I seriously interest with writing in blog, and what I’ve learning by doing so far I’ve found a quote that always inspire me.

So take more time to read, read and read. It could be anything Novel, magazine, newspaper, blog post etc. By reading will train us to know how to nicely crafting paragraphs, phrases etc.

Okay! Happy blogging! never stop learning! and don’t forget to leave your comment below.

Regards!