So, here we are. WordPress is all set up and ready to roll. Please check out Parts 1 and 2 of my WordPress
- HTML
What is HTML? HTML is the code that makes up a website. It is the 0's and 1's of the internet. Open up your web browser, and go to any web page you like. Actually, lets stop here for a moment, if you are running Internet Explorer, go and download Google Chrome or Firefox right now. Internet explorer is just bad news and I would hate to have not taken an opportunity to alleviate you from it. Ok, now that that's done, navigate to any web page, and right click anywhere on the page. On Google Chrome, you will see an option that says "View page source". Click on that option and behold! Pure HTML code.
- CSS
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. What it really means, is "Code to make your HTML code look nice". CSS is linked into your HTML code and tells it what the code should look like, whether to change your font colour, round the corners of a box, etc. Websites can be built without CSS, they just won't look very nice.
Hopefully you have had a chance to play around with the different themes in WordPress and gotten a feel for some nice ones. A theme is basically a template that someone has made, with HTML code, CSS and everything, to give your website a certain look. Some themes are just blank templates without any code or anything, but the majority actually do have some kind of styling. I will use my favourite theme as an example of the power of WordPress. I use a theme called Weaver. It allows me to change more or less every little detail in my site, without me having to go into the "Editor" which I am purposely not writing about yet. In Weaver, you can change your default font, header, background, site colours, as well as use CSS to style certain elements in your site.
Ok, definitions over, lets do some designing. First glances at your new site, you will probably be greeted by a blank page with a search box on it, a picture of a train as your header, and a nice little note at the bottom of your site saying that you used WordPress to make it. We want to delete all of this. Most themes allow you to change your header pretty easily, so go into your "Appearance" menu, and look for the header option. The same applies to your background, although a solid colour is recommended instead a full image, simply to reduce load times of your site. The search function on your page is a matter of preference, lose it or keep it, but if you do decide to keep it, at least style it a little bit with CSS. I will explain more about that in another article, as it involves using the "Editor" in most cases. It is easier to remove the search box for now, go to "Pages", locate the page you want to remove it from, click "Screen options" and then check the box that says "Discussion". Now scroll all the way down and un-check the box that says "Allow comments".
You may or may not have also seen some little buttons or pictures on the sides of your site. These are your widgets, I will talk about them in a later article, just know for now that they are the bread and butter of your site, in my opinion. Back to styling, though. To give you a basic idea of HTML and CSS, try this.
- Open notepad on your computer.
- Type this out: #myStyle this is your CSS.
- Next, make a div: <div id="myStyle">Put some text here</div> this is your HTML.
You have just made a box with text in it, linked it to your CSS, which tells your box how big it should be, and that it should be yellow.
That's all for today, as always, feel free to play around with your theme. I will talk more about the "Editor", widgets and plugins in a future post. Have fun!
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