Week 2: Find a theme, install it and customize it

This post is the second in a weekly series that will take journalists through how to set up a professional-looking portfolio Web site. Find out more about the series and read the kickoff post if you missed it. Check back next week for more.

So, now that you’ve done everything that’s covered in Week 1, you should be ready for your next step: find a design for your site and install it.

Now I know what you might be thinking: “Wait, find a site design? You mean you didn’t make yours from scratch?”

Well, no. I’m not that talented.

WordPress has a fabulous community of designers who pride themselves in creating designs that you can download (often for free) and use on your own site.

In WordPress terminology these ready-made designs are called themes.

So, this week we are going to learn how to find free, professional themes and install them.

What do you need out of your theme?

Before you go pick a theme, consider what you will be using your site for.

• Is it going to house your photography portfolio?
• How about video packages?
• Maybe text stories with some multimedia?
• A mix of all of the above?
• Will you blog frequently?
• Do you want a classic color scheme or a bright one?

Some themes work better for certain tasks than others. Keep that in mind when you’re looking. (For instance, if you’re a visual journalist, do you want to have a big header image in your theme so you can play your photos big?)

Check out some themes

The best way I know to find a good theme is to look at oodles and oodles of them, download quite a few and try them out.

(Sidenote: Many many many WordPress themes are free. Some cost a bit – usually starting at around $20 and up. I’ve paid for a theme before, but the one I use now was free. Lesson learned: You very likely can find a free theme that you’ll love. If you want to pay up, you can, but you certainly don’t have to.)

Most themes will have a “live demo” or “preview” link somewhere. Meta-Morphosis here on the right is a good example of what you’ll often find.

If you like it, click the “Download” link that is most likely very near the “live demo” link. That will get you the zipped file for the theme.

So, where do you start looking? Here are some places to check out.

For everyone: 100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009

For photogs and designers, specifically: 21 Premium-like Free Photoblog Themes for WordPress

For everyone: Google search

Other options

• You can go to Delicious and do a search for WordPress themes to see what users have bookmarked. (I have a few under my account.)
• You can also use WordPress’s own search to find themes, but there are literally thousands to choose from. I like it when someone else has done some of the filtering for me. Nevertheless, the search is there if you want to use it.

Now that you’ve downloaded a few themes, it’s time to put them on your Web server space that you bought last week. To do that, we’ll use an FTP client.

Download an FTP client

Don’t know what FTP even means? Don’t worry.

Basically an FTP client is a program will take files from your computer and put them on your hosting space.

It gets things from here to there. (It’s much like when you copy and paste something from one folder on your hard drive into another.)

In our case, what we’re going to be transferring is a folder containing your WordPress theme.

Sidenote: Your hosting company probably has an FTP program built into its site somewhere. (Godaddy does, but quite frankly it’s not the easiest way to do things in the long run.) In my opinion at least, it’s much easier to download a handy dandy program on your computer that allows you to do the same thing but with fewer clicks.

So, what program should you get? (I’m sticking with free options for now. You can pay for higher-end FTP programs, but I’m trying to give you a bare-bones how-to on setting up a site for cheap.)

If you’re a Mac user, I’ll talk you through Cyberduck, the FTP program I use and love.

If you’re a PC user, I’ll give you some resources for how to use Filezilla.

(Ed’s Note Part A: I’ll apologize now to my PC-using friends. Because I’m a Mac user with no access to a PC right now, your instructions may be less detailed than those for your Mac-using counterparts. Sorry. I’ll always try to find online documentation to help you along wherever I can’t.)

(Ed’s Note Part B: You can use whatever FTP program you want. I’ll talk you through one that you can use on whichever operating system you’re on, but by no means are these the only two options. Thanks! -Emily)

For Mac users:

Download Cyberduck.

Once you download it and install it on your computer. You’re going to want to start the program and then select File->Open Connection.

This will ask for your server number, username and password. All of this can be found by logging into GoDaddy with your username and account there at the top of the homepage. Then go under Hosting->My Hosting Account and then clicking “Manage Account” next to the domain you bought.

Your server IP address should be listed in that first screen that will pop open. It will be something like 123.456.789.01. Copy that and paste it into Cyberduck’s Open Connection window where it says Server. Then put your GoDaddy username and password in where it asks for them.

This, hopefully, should get you logged in.

Sweet. Now you’re ready to install a theme.

Hopefully you’ve downloaded a ZIP file of some theme you like (really any will do for the purpose of just learning how to install one). If so, unzip it.

Now, that Cyberduck screen is much like a Finder window on your Mac. It shows you what files are on your server space. So, we want to find the right folder to drag and drop that theme folder. It’s going to be in one of two places. If you installed WordPress directly into your root folder (the base level of your server), you’ll find it by going here:

wp-content/themes/

If, however, you installed wordpress within a folder itself, you’ll need to go to:

wordpress/wp-content/themes/

Either way is fine and dandy. Once you get to that folder, you’ll likely see two other folders inside it: classic and default. Those themes come already installed with WordPress.

All you need to do is drag and drop that theme folder you unzipped over on top of that Cyberduck window. It’ll bring up a screen that shows the status of the upload and you’ll see when it’s reached 100%.

For PC users:

Download Filezilla and install it.

Go here for more instructions on how to use it. (I’m suggesting you use Filezilla mostly because these instructions are about as detailed as I try to make mine for Mac users.)

Some of the instructions on that page are probably more advanced than you’ll need. Going on a pure educated guess here, I’d bet that the portions that will be most useful will be under the following headings:

• • Using the Quick Connect bar
  • Navigating on the server
  • Navigating on your machine
  • Transferring files

Just like your Mac-using friends, you’ll be putting your theme folders under one of two places depending on where you installed WordPress. You’ll either be putting them in:

wp-content/themes/

or

wordpress/wp-content/themes/

Either is perfectly fine. Once you get to that folder, you’ll see two folders already inside it: classic and default. Those themes come packaged with WordPress when it’s installed.

That’s how you get your theme from your desktop to your server. Now you need to activate it. (This takes just a couple clicks, I promise.)

Activate your theme

Open Firefox or whatever browser you’re using and go to www.YourDomainHere.com/wp-admin/

Log in using your username and password that you picked when you installed WordPress.

Now, off to the left hand side, you should see a light blue bar that says Appearance. Under it should say Themes, Widgets and Editor. (If it doesn’t, just click “Appearance” and those options will slide down.)

So, click “Themes.” That will bring up a window that should show you a preview of every theme you have installed, which will most likely be 3 for you (classic, default and your new one.)

Click on the new one, let the popup window open and then click in the upper right hand corner where it says “Activate ThemeX.”

If you go to www.YourDomainName.com now, you should see your new theme in action.

You can install as many themes as you want, provided that you don’t exceed your hosting space limit, but you shouldn’t need to worry about that for a while. (I have probably a dozen themes installed for my site. I tried out quite a few before I settled on the one I have now. I’d recommend you try out a few, too.)

Customize your settings

Right now, the subtitle of your blog probably says, “Just another WordPress blog.” Not very original, huh? To change that, you need to go into your Settings menu.

In your WordPress Admin, look on the left hand side. You should see a blue bar that says “Settings,” and under it should be a list of sub-categories. (If these don’t show up, just click “Settings” and those options will slide down.)

You can change the “Just another WordPress blog” chatter under “General.” You can also change various settings including what page will appear as your homepage at www.YourDomainName.com.

The best thing you can do at this point is to click through those settings pages and just get a feel for what you can change.

Play around with things. I promise you won’t break anything so badly that it can’t be fixed with just a few clicks.

So, are you finding these tips useful? I’m curious to see who is following along with the series. If you would, post the URL to your site in the comments. I’d love to see what everyone has so far.

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