Author Presence: Putting your Theme in Place.
Last time we met it was choosing your Theme for your blog. Let’s say you looked at the links I gave you and you picked one out. I’m going with the Coraline Theme for my example Blog. One of the things we might do today is install the About.me Widget, so go ahead and log into your About.me account in another Tab or Window. This isn’t a must today but I am going to cover it.
You are going to actually pick your blog and activate it on your blog today and chose the layout. All very simple.
- Log into your WordPress.com Blog.
- Click My Sites
- Click The Gear on the top right of the image of your blog
- Click Go to Admin Dashboard
Now you will see a long list of words on the left side. If you take a moment you will be able to do some common sense figuring out of things. For now, since we are going to actually pick out your Theme and apply it to your blog, we are going to change the Appearance of your Blog.
So guess which of those words we are going to click on?
Yep-Appearance.
Technically you don’t have to click on it, but instead just place the cursor over it and it will show your options, but either way works.
Click Themes
Now you are going to want to Search for your Theme.
On the Right side click Free. Now there is normally a Search field here, if not, you can do the search function on your computer, or simply scroll down until you find your Theme. I am going to choose Coraline.
Once I find it, I will place my cursor over it and click Activate.
I click the x at this point because I don’t want to Customize, which means things like Add a Header Photo.
Right now I want to choose the layout. Each Theme has at least one layout. If it has more than one option, then you will see under Appearance something called Theme Options.
For Coraline click Theme Options.
I’m not worried about that Color Scheme yet that is at the top of the screen. What I want is to take a look at the Default Layout. I can’t tell you which one to go with for certain here as you will want to pick your own flavor.
- But I am going to choose the one that says Sidebar-Content. That means my Sidebar will be on the left and my Content, that is my posts/articles will be on the right.
- Then I click Save Options.
Now you want to see what it looks like, right?
Look at the top left of your screen and you will see the name of your Blog. Mine says Ronovan Author. Click it. Now if you are in Coraline you will see some things already in your Sidebar. Don’t worry, you will be putting your own things in there but what’s in there at the moment is just fine.
Now you have a choice to make. You can do one of about four things right now:
- Put a Header Photo in
- Put your About.me Widget in
- Write a post
- Or really if you have had enough for the day, just stop. This post will be here tomorrow as well as the next day.
I think most people go straight for that Header Photo. Yes, that image is important, but I say let’s go with the About.me Widget. After all that time we worked on them, and even put possibly two images in there already, let’s put them to use. You are your image. Period.
Again we are back at the Dashboard and under the Appearance toward the bottom, right where we just left from. In fact you could click the back arrow on your browser to get there.
Once there you want to click on Widget that appears after you click on Appearance or hover over it with your cursor.
The About.me Widget is the easiest to find. Why? Because they are alphabetical. Yes, it’s the first one you come to. In the Coraline Theme on the right side I have Seven Widget Areas. I am only concerned with the Primary Widget Area right now.
- Click on the About.me Widget.
- Primary Widget Area is already selected so all you have to do is click Add Widget.
Under your Primary Widget Area on the Right your About.me Widget has appeared with a lot of information in it.
- The ‘Your about.me URL’ is what you are looking at right now. Notice most of it is already filled out.
- I know mine is Ronovan. So I just need to type that in. So log in to your About.me account and see what name shows up. Really it might say Home, but click on your name in the top right and edit and the name should appear in the URL.
- Put that name in and click Save. Now let’s go see what it looks like.
Now all of that stuff that was there before is gone. Your image is there along with your bio and your Social Media Apps Buttons. Think about all you’ve done with this one Widget.
Not all of that information has to be shown. Back in that Widget area you can always go in and uncheck the boxes you don’t want to appear. If you keep your Bio up on your About.me Widget then you might not need the About page at the top of your Header Photo. The About page is one of the most popular spots on my personal Blog. Why do I not show my Bio from my About.me account? Because it takes up a lot of Sidebar space I use for other things. But if you are a minimalist in that regards do what you like. I am just going to show you what is possible.
Well that’s all for today.
See y’all next time.
Much Respect
Ronovan
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Lit World Interviews 