Jun
1
I know a lot of us are accustomed to personalizing everything we come in contact with. Things like cars (gotta get that cool stereo system), phones (all the ringtones that are happening), and blogs. When it comes to your own personal space on the tubes, what can you do to personalize your blog?
Well, let’s take my personal blog, as an example. (No really, take it). You can see that I started with Brian Gardner’s “Vertigo Red” theme. Now, I have to say that I really like his themes (all of them) and their simplicity, and they are so clean and not over laced with junk. You could really do a lot with an easy to understand theme and a little bit of knowledge of HTML and/or CSS.
What I did first was to open up the header image in Fireworks and change it around to a color that more suits my style, silver. Thought I’d say pink, didn’t ya? 
This particular theme had a logo embedded on to the header, so I Googled “R logos” and found a nifty logo for a restaurant with an “R” in it. I blocked out the name of the establishment, changed the “R” color and put my name at the bottom. Not too hard to do in Fireworks.
Also, I changed the hover on the links from a light gray to a dark red. Another thing I wanted to change was the titles of the objects on the sidebar. I am more of a “new stuff/old stuff” type of person, so this reflects my personality.
So, it just goes to show you, I’m a beginner at hacking themes, but look what I did. Imagine what you could do if you know more.
Hack away!
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My name is Roberta Ferguson and I’ll be putting my two cents in here and there regarding the very basics of blogging. Even though a lot of you already know about some of this stuff, some don’t. My normal haunt is music blogging at Earsucker, but what I’ve learned in my journey in blogging, I’ll be telling you here.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Darned spammers
How did that get through? Oh well… he’s gone now.
I checked it after it posted and was like ‘cool, I got a comment already’, checked it and was bummed.
Thanks for deleting that nonsense.
hack away !!! … man … you can hack anything now a days … DirecTV boxes, Software … Word Press Designs … LOL
Darin
I love that!! Hacking and modifying something to make it your own is the way to go!!
This is true, Darin….everything is hackable these days……I find it fun playing with wordpress themes….it’s easy and free.
I love modifying everything! Personalization is the best!!
I have mod’ed my theme, and I get emails all of the time from other theme users asking me how I did this-or-that!
I can be that easy, yes. Still, I am new to the world of WP themes and sometimes it’s slow going for me. I did manage to find some very simple, very clean themes for my blogs that really needed little to no change.
That’s the beauty of PHP – it’s very easy to learn!
I have been using WP for about nine months now, and I’m not and expert, but I have learned a lot through simple trial and error!
Saman, I love modifying everything, too. It’s definitely a way to put yourself into something, it’s a way of self-expression.
Angie, when I was still new to personalizing themes and figuring out where stuff went, I found that the themes that are the cleanest are the ones that get read the most. Why read junk that’s littered with nonsense that we don’t care about?
I’m using the same theme on my blog. Love BG’s themes.
Neo,
Very nice, I am a big fan of his themes, as well. They are just so neat lookin’.
I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed, btw. Good posts!
You make it sound so easy Roberta. When my motivation and time coincide, maybe I will give it a go..
Adam, it was pretty easy. I like getting in there and seeing what I can do with stuff like this. It’s fun, too.
Nice…well done with modifying the theme. I think the current theme you have is perfect for blogs, because it has a white theme, fast loading, and it’s easy on the eyes.