Template Customization

With Wordpress, there are literally hundreds of free templates and themes to choose from, giving you the opportunity to use different themes relating to niche markets that you are focused on.

You can download these templates from various directories online and use them 'as is', or take it a step further and hire someone to customize the templates, or take a shot at it yourself if you are proficient with editing CSS and HTML.

Regardless what you choose, you need to make sure that the theme is fully functional and provides adequate space for advertisements, affiliate product offers, and allows for a clean interface with well managed categories and pages.

Take some time to explore the different themes that are available before making your selection and don't be afraid to download multiple themes and installing them to see exactly how they look and function.

From within your Wordpress administration panel, you can activate and de-activate themes on the fly, making it exceptionally easy to change the templates instantly should you wish to update your website's scheme or evaluate different themes until you find one that will work for you.

Here are a few theme providers and directories worth checking out:

http://www.themes.wordpress.net http://www.wordpress.org/extend/themes
http://www.FreeWPThemes.com
http://www.ThemeLab.com
http://www.Fresheezy.com
http://www.topWPThemes.com
http://www.SkinPress.com
http://www.WPSkins.org
http://www.BlogOhBlog.com

In order to feature a theme on your blog you simply have to download the theme's template package, unzip it using a utility such as www.Winzip.com and upload the contents into your wp-content/themes folder.

Then, you log into your Wordpress admin area and activate the theme by clicking on the "Design" tab and choosing your theme. There is no limit as to how many themes you can upload to your Wordpress blog.

From within the "Design" area you can access different controls including Widgets, Themes and the Theme Editor (I do not suggest editing your themes code unless you are familiar with HTML and CSS). Go ahead and download a theme, and upload it into your Wordpress wp-content directory.

I would suggest sticking with one theme so that you can begin to brand your website so that when visitors return to your site they instantly recognize that it's your blog, rather than confusing them with different styles or color schemes on a frequent basis.

Any time you would like to log into your Wordpress' administration interface, you would visit:

http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin

If you install your blog into a different folder other than your root directory, you simply include the folder name: http://www.yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin

From within the "Design" area you can access different controls including Widgets, Themes and the Theme Editor (I do not suggest editing your themes code unless you are familiar with HTML and CSS).