YNOT – In previous articles we saw how to manage articles, pages, links and multimedia content of your portal built with WordPress. Today’s article will focus on the element that, perhaps more than any other, can determine the success or failure of a site: its appearance.

Establishing unique look and feel in the user’s mind is a very important factor that can establish the success of a portal. On the other hand, a layout that looks “too common” can be confusing and allow your site to become lost among a sea of other similar sites.

The menu of WordPress has a special section (Appearance) specifically dedicated to the theme of your portal. You can manage the site’s look by selecting a pre-installed template layout, purchase one from many online designers, or create your own and upload it. The dashboard allows enabling themes on the fly, deleting themes that are no longer in use and preview those under consideration to see how the site would look before you commit yourself.

When you are satisfied, simply click the Install button.

Many WordPress themes are free, but some of them must be purchased. I recommend you do a simple Google search to find a theme that represents something similar to your ideal aesthetic. If you can find a free theme, good. Otherwise, you may wish to pay for a theme that you can adapt to make your site completely unique.

Many of the design packages, once installed, will create additional entries in the WordPress administration menu in order to allow a more detailed customization. Many times you can manage the width of individual columns, the position of banners, and font properties.

Some themes also implement a set of default colors that can be changed, allowing for various palette effects that may be adjusted at will.

When working with WordPress, the theme becomes an element to be treated with the utmost care. Although themes may be changed, once you establish a look and feel for your site and enrich the pages with the various features available, it will not be easy to modify the design without creating compatibility problems or accidentally losing content that may be important.

In the next article, we will focus on widgets of particular importance for the management of all aspects of your portal. We will see how to search, install, uninstall and delete a WordPress plug-in.

This article was written for YNOT.com by Eng. Antonio Lodesani. For more information, visit ingoccupati.blogspot.com (in Italian).[/lang]