WordPress Theme | WordPress Max

When To Find The Right WordPress Theme

Finding The right WordPress theme is one of, if not the only thing most new bloggers think about. I often get a total newbie blogger that wants me to setup WordPress for them that is completely and totally focused on the theme. While the look of your blog or site is important, the first thing to focus on, for those new to WordPress is if you are going to stick to blogging.

The beauty of WordPress, and any CMS for that matter is that the entire “look” or theme can be easily changed without loosing any of the content on your blog or site. So if you are just starting out I suggest to find a nice free theme to get started and spend some time getting to know WordPress. Unless you have every little detail planned out your blog will evolve and you may find that the theme you originally picked out, maybe paid for or paid to have it customized will not fit your future needs.

What I mean by future needs is it is so easy to add items to the sidebar with widgets and upload images to posts that you may find that your theme is too narrow for some items. Or maybe down the road you don’t like that custom WordPress header image you paid for and paid to have added to your blog.

But if you determined to get started out with a custom or semi-custom WordPress blog or are ready to upgrade your WordPress theme then there are many nice themes to choose from. A quick Google search for WordPress themes will keep you busy for hours on end looking at themes. Make sure the theme is version 2.5 compatible and if it requires plugins make sure those plugins are version 2.5 compatible. Make sure it is “Widget Ready” and if it is AdSense ready, or has other embedded ads on it be sure to read the instructions for the locations of the ads and how to change them to your links or code.

There are more and more premium WordPress themes coming out everyday and these themes make it easy for someone with a little CSS skill to tweak and make them look totally original. Kyle Eslick over at Hack WordPress has a nice list of premium WordPress themes, check it out here: Premium WordPress Themes Gallery

WordPress theme

Change Color Of Links In A WordPress Theme

Have you found a WordPress theme that you really liked but one little thing like the color of the links stopped you from using it? It really isn’t that hard to change the color of the links in a WordPress theme.

The theme file you need to edit is the stylesheet or style.css. To edit this, or any of your WordPress theme’s files you need to set the proper file permissions on them on your hosting account. I suggest you just CHMOD the whole wp-content folder to 666 or 777. Or at least the themes folder in the wp-content folder. You could do this with an FTP client too but that will involve a few extra steps.

I prefer editing the files right from within the WordPress dashboard. In the dashboard click Presentation, then Theme Editor. Usually the first file is the stylesheet and is already open. Make sure by looking to the right and clicking it to open it in the editor. Before you make any changes in here copy all the text and paste it into Notepad or your favorite text editor. This way if things go bad you can restore it real quick. The code you are looking for looks something like this below:

a:link{
text-decoration: none;
color:#333;
}

a:hover{
text-decoration: underline;
color: #333;
}

a:visited{
text-decoration: none;
color:#333;

You can choose to have different colors for regular links, links that have been already visited and when a mouse is hovering over them. You can also choose to “decorate” the links. Just change the color # to any 3 or 6 digit hex color code you want and click update file on the bottom right. View your site and and admire your handy work!

Some possible text-decoration: