But have you looked at what WordPress created for you yet? Do you think it looks a bit, umm, ugly?

If you don’t, then I’m here to tell you: It’s ugly.

Luckily you can make it look much prettier with absolutely no web design experience. Even if you do know how to design web sites, choosing a pre-designed theme from WordPress is much quicker than fiddling with the design yourself.

Changing Your Site’s Theme

The appearance of your WordPress site is based on a theme. WordPress provides its users with several dozen free themes to choose from.

To view these themes, go to your Dashboard and click on the Appearance button on the left-hand menu.

This will bring up the Theme Browser. At the top of the page, you’ll see the theme that you are currently listed. The rest of the page is a list of available themes.

Take note that that is only the first page of the available themes. There are five pages worth of themes to pick from – a total of 60+ themes! Not bad for a system that’s 100% free and completely point-and-click.

When you find a theme that you think you like, click on the picture. This will bring up a full size preview of your site with the new theme.

Does it look good? If so, click the “Activate Theme Name Here” link in the upper right. Otherwise, click in the X in the top left and keep looking. There’s bound to be something in there that fits your tastes.

Not All Themes Are Created Equally

When choosing a theme, there are a couple things you should keep in mind.

Sidebars Are Important. Some themes don’t have a sidebar – they just have a list of posts going down the center. This would be ok for a very simple site, but a sidebar is a very useful tool when it comes to navigating your site. I’d think twice about picking a theme that doesn’t have a sidebar on the side. (Note: Don’t worry about what’s in the sidebar. You can change that later)

Wider Is Not Better. The main content area shouldn’t be too wide. About 500px (what you’re reading now) is a good size. Anything wider will make your lines of text too long – and reduce readability. This is especially a concern if you work with students that struggle with reading.

Text Formatting Is Important. Pick a theme because it’s readable, not because it’s cool. Pay attention to the color of the text and the color of the background. Something like “Cutline” (featured in the screenshot above) is very simple, but it’s also very readable. Again, you’ll want to pay special attention to this if your students aren’t great readers. If your site is difficult for your students to read, they just won’t use it. Lose-lose situation.

Play Around. Find Something You Like.

There are a lot of options, so the only way to find the right one is to play around a bit. Take some time to try out different themes before you move on to the next step.

You may want to ask your students for some input. Remember that they are the ones that are going to be reading it regularly! At least we hope so…

Navigation Links

• Start Over: Table of Contents
• Next: Navigation: Setting Up the Sidebar of Your Class Website
• Previous: Publishing Information: Posting Your First Assignment

To the right, you’ll see a screenshot of what the site looked like before these latest changes.
 

Changes You’ll Notice

Smaller Logos. The logos have shrunk somewhat (about 70 pixels tall) and they’ve been moved out of the “header” area. Now, they appear kind of on top of the screen.

RSS Subscribe Moved. The “Subscribe to RSS” button used to be just above the Search box. Now, it’s been moved to the very top of the screen.

Header Section Shrunk. The old “header” section (where the colored bars are) has shrunk from 160px to 70px tall. This is partially due to the fact that the giant logo is no longer in that area.

Prominent Location for About, Contact, and Blogroll. The new, smaller header section contains more prominent links for the About, Contact, and Blogroll pages. The original theme kind of neglected these important aspects to the website, but now it is quite easy for a new reader to find them.

Why the Changes?

There are a couple of reasons I made these changes.

First, I wanted to give a more prominent location to the About, Contact, and Blogroll pages. I initially started re-designing a few weeks ago to include these pages (they didn’t exist at all). Once I made them, I realized there was no spot in the old theme to put them.

By redesigning a little bit, I gave them pride of place without using up too much real estate.

That brings me to the second reason – making more efficient use of prime real estate. The old theme had a huge header section which wasted a lot of space. The logo only used 1/3 to 1/2 of the space alotted, leaving a lot of blank space.

By shrinking the logo and adding the small buttons in the header section, I’m using the space a lot more efficiently. Instead of just a logo, it now contains a logo, an RSS subscription button, and a link to four key parts of the site.

The sidebar section moved up quite a bit, too, since the RSS button is now in the header. This allows more of the sidebar to be seen above the fold.

Finally, this opens up some more possibilities for advertising down the road. A lot of sites I’ve seen like to include half banners in the header section. I can easily move the RSS button back to where it was and include a small banner there instead.

I’m not going to do this right away, but it is an option for the future.

Comments? Concerns?

Was the change a good move? A bad move? Notice something wildly wrong?

I’m always open to suggestions, so feel free to leave a comment.