In order to understand how to install and configure the theme and other minor nuances, we will look at an example using a template named “Aldehyde”, which can be easily found in the free WordPress project templates.

We go to the administrative panel of the site. Go to the menu section “ Appearance/Themes". Click on the add new button.

In the search, type the name of the topic you are looking for, in our case it is “Aldehyde”. Click on the “install” button and then “activate”. After that new topic will earn. Now we need to customize it for ourselves.

Setting up a theme using the “Aldehyde” template as an example.

In order to start customizing a theme or template, you need to go to the “Appearance” item in the menu and click on the “Customize” button.

In the Header settings section:

• in the sub-item “title, tagline & logo” you need to add the title, logo and site icon.
• In the “social icons” sub-item we set social icons. Here you need to provide information in the form of links to social media. site owner's network.
• Next comes the sub-item “header image”. Here the background image of the header changes.

In the second section Design and layout You can customize the design and layout of the site. In this section you can set the desired display of content on the blog (one or more columns). In addition to displaying content, the section allows you to activate or disable the display of side columns on some pages or even on the entire site. In this section you can also apply various style sheets and set information in the footer of the site.

The Design and layout section contains the following sub-items:

• Blog layout – blog feed design
• Sidebar layout – turn on and off the sidebar (side column)
• Custom CSS - Editing CSS styles template for advanced users.
• Custom Footer Text – Adding text to the site footer.
• Theme Skins – select a color scheme for the template.
• Colors. This section allows you to select the color and background of the resource name and description.
• Google Web Fonts. This section will help you choose different fonts from Google.
• Background image. Here you can upload the necessary photo or image for the background.

In the next section called Main Slider(Main slider) you can select the appropriate settings for it. But in the initial stage it is not necessary, so it is not recommended to pay special attention to it for now. The disadvantages of the main slider include high resource load. Moreover, this component can rightfully be called an adversary mobile versions sites.

Next comes the Custom showcase section(Custom showcase). Here you can beautifully design 4 blocks with links to important pages of your site.

Next, we will offer sections on widgets and the static nature of the main page; it is recommended to skip them for now, because the static nature of the main page was already customizable, and it is more convenient to configure widgets in the main menu of the designer. To do this, go to the appearance section and click on the “Widgets” button. After this, various widgets for application and use will become available on the left side. By dragging with the mouse, you can move the widget you like to the footer or side columns of the site. After that you need to produce them easy setup and save all actions.

It is very important not to load the side columns of the resource with widgets; it is much more effective to leave only the most necessary ones.

Setting the display and appearance of the menu.

In order to practically customize the display of the resource menu, which can be found in the “Appearance” category, you should resort to the following instructions.

1. You need to give the menu a name and click on the “Create” button.
2. Add the most necessary top-level pages there.
3. In the settings of such a page, use the link text for its subsequent display.
4. You must check or uncheck the box automatic adding top level pages.
5. Select a location to display the menu on the website. This theme supports two menus in the header.

Dear readers, in this article we will learn how to edit a WordPress template.
For those who are not yet familiar with the structure of a WordPress template, this article is a must read. The content of the article:

I see two main reasons why we need this:

• Most blog settings involve editing code – html or css. In many of my articles I write about what needs to be edited specific file Topics. If you don’t know how to search for these files and what is the most convenient way to edit them, this article is for you.
• When creating a blog, you installed a theme (template) from the Internet on it and want to change something in it, add design elements or function blocks. But to do this, you must have at least minimal knowledge of HTML and CSS. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or have experience in creating websites, for editing WordPress template you must understand what it consists of and what each part is needed for. So first, let’s look at the structure of a WordPress template.

WordPress Template Structure

The WordPress template HTML code is split into several PHP files. This is done for convenience: repeated on different pages pieces of code are placed in separate files and connected to each page using the include function. The header, footer and sidebar are in separate files, and the file for each page type contains only the central area: The most commonly edited WordPress template files are:

• index.php – The template starts with an index.php file that outputs home page site.
• header.php - Website header. This file contains the information that is repeated on every page of the site. top part. It starts with a tag , contains completely , into which most scripts are inserted when setting up a blog. It opens a tag and a logo, slogan, Top Menu and other header elements.
• style.css is the main style file of the template, which sets the appearance of the site elements. To edit a WordPress template, you most often have to work with this file.

Other files:

• single.php – is responsible for displaying each separate entry. Those. the appearance of the page on which you are now reading my article is configured in this file.
• page.php – output of a static blog page. New pages are created in the “pages” section in the left menu, and their appearance is configured in this file.
• sidebar.php – is responsible for displaying the sidebar (blog side column), where the widgets are located. This part of the pattern is also repeated on each WordPress page site, therefore included in separate file. Usually you don't have to edit this file because all changes are made in the . However, no one forbids you to write some code directly into the sidebar.php file.
• functions.php – file with theme PHP functions. All of them affect the appearance and operation of the site, and determine events for certain user actions.
• footer.php – footer (footer) of the site, its lower part. This is also an element repeated on all pages. It usually contains traffic counters, copyright and contact information.
• category.php – this file is responsible for displaying a page with a list of all posts in a certain category.
• tag.php – output of an archive of posts for the corresponding tag is written in this file.
• archive.php – an archive of all entries for a specific month (year) is configured here.
• search.php – displays blog search results.
• comments.php – displays comments on posts and pages.
• 404.php – 404 error template – page not found.

Depending on the chosen theme, other files may appear in it, then you will have to independently figure out what they are needed for.

How to Edit WordPress Template Files

I want to warn you right away that you shouldn’t get into the code and try to remake it yourself if you don’t understand anything about CSS and HTML. It's another matter when some lesson says to insert a certain code into a certain place in the file. Be sure to back up your files and database before making any changes! To edit files WordPress themes site I offer three options:

Setting up a WordPress theme in the admin area

If you downloaded and installed ready-made template WordPress, then many settings can be made without getting into the code. You can edit each WordPress theme through the blog admin panel.

Go to the section "Appearance" — "Tune", a window with basic theme settings will open. Here you can enter the name and description of the site, which will appear in the site header after saving. You can also change the background color or background image and other settings are not difficult to figure out. Most of the WordPress theme settings can be done in the section "Appearance" -> "Name of your theme".
Here you can upload your logo, favicon, etc. There are a lot of settings, but to be honest, I never use them, since it’s easier for me to work with code to edit a WordPress theme.

That's all! Choose a convenient method for editing a WordPress template depending on the situation and never forget to make backups. so as not to miss new useful articles.

P.S. I would like to remind you, dear readers, that if you notice errors in my articles, do not be lazy to click “ Ctrl + Enter"so that I can fix them with my help.

After you have purchased a domain and ordered hosting, it’s time to configure WordPress. The blog cannot be used in its current form. You need to properly configure permalinks, select and install a theme (design), and connect all the necessary plugins.

All these settings are needed to ensure that the blog has a neat appearance both for future visitors and for search robots. Which will have a positive impact on further search engine promotion.

You also need to understand the console menu. The console is also called the “admin panel”. You may have noticed that there are quite a lot of additional settings in the admin panel.

To get to the blog admin area, you need to go to site.ru/wp-admin/. Replace site.ru with your domain name.

The main page contains basic information about the entire blog. From this page you can add an article, produce basic settings topics or see the latest comments made on a post.

2. Updates

In updates you can see the current version of WordPress and whether it requires new updates. As soon as the developers release an update, you will see it in your admin panel.

Don't forget to update if you are asked to do so. This will protect you from hacking attempts by intruders.

3. Records. All entries

In this menu you can see all the recordings made over time. You can also see how many comments each article has received and what category it belongs to.

Hover your mouse over the article and a submenu will appear with which you can edit, go to, or delete the article.

If you are after WordPress installations did not change anything, then you will already have the first test record. Point it at it and delete it. If you delete an entry by mistake, you can always restore it from the Recycle Bin. If the entries are no longer needed, do not forget to empty the trash.

3.1. Add new

Before you start publishing articles on your blog, you need to make a few very important settings. Make them in paragraphs 8.1 and 11.3. After you have set up permalinks, or as they are also called (CNC), you can start publishing articles.

The title is written at the top. It should not be too long and not too short. Once you enter the title below, a permanent link will appear. It will look like this if you install a special plugin, which is found in paragraph 8.1.

Below you will find tools with which you can format text, add pictures and place active links. If you are familiar with Word program, then there will be no problems with this.

If this is your first time encountering such an editor, then watch video tutorials on YouTube on how to add an article to WordPress blog. Once your article has been added and formatted, select or create a category for it. One article per category, remember this!

Upload a thumbnail, this is a small picture for your article. Such pictures support most themes. Once everything is ready, click on “Publish”. Now go to your blog's home page and see what your post looks like.

Working with pictures

When adding photos, try to always include the “Alt” attribute. If you use your photos, this will allow you to attract traffic from search engines from the “pictures” section.

2-3 words about what is shown in the picture itself are enough. If you don’t know what to write, it’s better not to write anything.

The photo can be aligned to the center or edge. If you have a large picture and you want it to open in full size, then select “link to media file”. If you need to redirect to another site, then use a custom url.

In the size setting you can set the size you want. Remember that the width of the blog itself is rarely more than 1000 pixels wide. I recommend setting it to full.

Make sure that all your photos have a name in Latin letters before uploading to your blog, for example, moy-dom.jpg.

3.2. Categories

This menu is intended for creating categories. For example, you have a blog on culinary recipes. The headings could be:

• Salads
• Snacks
• Beverages

Write your category in the title. In the label, write the name of the same category, but only in Latin letters. You can also write it in Cyrillic, but I recommend doing it as in the example.

Rubrics may have subcategories. For example, “Salads” may include the following subheadings: “Chicken salads”, “Simple salads”, “Salad recipes for the winter”, etc. Subcategories can be created in the “Parent” menu.

Write 2-3 sentences describing your section. State the essence. Be sure to make it unique. This means that you must come up with this description yourself, and not copy it. Once all the fields are filled in, you can click on the “Add new category” button.

3.3. Tags

Tags are needed to make a large website more user-friendly. If you do not plan to create a large portal with many categories and subcategories, then it is better not to use tags.

4. Media files

In this section you will find all the photos that have ever been uploaded to the blog. You can also add a new photo to your library. We practically won’t need this menu, since you can add a photo to your article in section 3.1.

5. Pages

Do not confuse this section with posts! Such pages are needed mainly for information. For example, on my blog there are separate pages about the author and about the blog. You can create a page with your organization's contacts or any other information.

Now you have a test page. Look at it, try to edit it and then delete it.

In this section you will see all the created pages. If you need to create a new one, then simply go to the “Add New” menu and use the editor, as in menu 3.1.

6. Comments

Here you can see all the comments made by your users. Comments can be disabled, approved and edited.

7. Appearance. Themes

By default, WordPress provides 3 themes. Their design is so-so and rarely anyone uses them. You can see all three topics in this menu. There are a large number of sites on the Internet that offer to download free templates.

I recommend installing themes from the official WordPress store. Firstly, they are free, and secondly, they don’t have malicious code or a virus. To install a new template, just click on “Add a new theme”.

You will be taken to a section where you can select the topic that you like. Hover over any template and see what it will look like. You can select a topic by filtering the characteristics you need. Once the selection is made, click on install and activate.

Don't be afraid to put different themes. It is very difficult to find one that you like the first time. You can always delete all unnecessary topics at any time.

U free templates there are also disadvantages. They are poorly optimized for search engines.

Or you can immediately buy an inexpensive template for your project, which will eliminate all technical errors. Install the theme, customize it once and use it.

If you have any questions about setting up the theme, the Russian-speaking support service will always help you free of charge. I recommend choosing from these three templates.

Also in this section you can always change your password and email.

10. Tools

You can safely skip this section, there is nothing interesting here yet. When adding new plugins, some of them will be located here.

11. Settings. Are common

For some reason the most important menu is at the very end. Before you start publishing articles and creating new pages, you need to make settings.

Write the name of your site. The description should be short and clear. It should contain the entire essence of your niche. Short description you can skip it. If you have something to write, then fill it out. You can write some slogan.

WordPress address and website address. Here you can specify how your blog will be displayed. For example, with or without www. https or http. This is a very important parameter, be sure to fill it out.

If you registered a domain and hosting in my opinion, then you must have a secure https protocol certificate. So, set the settings as in the picture. Select the date and time format that you need. We skip the “writing” menu.

11.1. Reading

11.2. Discussion

In this section you can configure your blacklist. If you see that someone is leaving spam comments for you, you can blacklist them. It is enough to add an IP address, which can be seen in the comments or create your own list of stop words.

For example, if you add the words: www, http://, download, free, then such comments will not undergo automatic moderation. You can safely skip media settings.

11.3. Permalinks

One of the most important WordPress settings is located right here. This is the permalink setting. Check the “Custom” box and paste the following template there:

/%category%/%postname%.html

Yandex metrics

To find out how many people visit a blog, you need to install a special counter on it. This counter will show detailed information about the user. I recommend installing Yandex Metrica.

If you do not yet have mail from Yandex, then register it right now, it will take a few minutes.

Once you are inside, click on “Add Counter”.

Next, fill in: the name of the counter and the website address, check the “I accept the condition” checkbox, create a counter. Check the box for web viewer and click save. Below you will see the counter code that needs to be installed.

Copy it and go to the admin area of ​​your blog as shown in the image below.

Find in the right column and click on “Header (header.php)”. Paste the copied code into the free space. It's better to do it where it ends.

Click update file. Return to the list of counters by clicking on “Counters”.

After a few minutes, the counter will update and turn green. If this does not happen, log out of your account and log in again.

Ready! After some time, the counter will record all visitors to your blog. Click on the name and you will be taken to the main menu.

If you want to understand all the capabilities of this tool, then refer to the manual.

robots.txt

If you don’t know what robots.txt is and what it is needed for, you can read it in the Yandex help. In order not to suffer and not compile it yourself, you can simply download it.

Don’t forget to correct your site in the file by replacing site.ru and site.ru/sitemap.xml with yours. Also enter http or https. Now you need to upload it to your server in the root folder where your blog is installed.

If you use Beget hosting, which I recommend, then you can download this file as follows. Log in to your hosting and click “File Manager”.

Find the folder with your site and go into it by clicking 2 times. You should see this:

Go to this folder by clicking 2 times. You are now in the root folder of your site. Now click "Upload Files" and "Browse..."

Select the file and click on the "Upload" button. The file has been uploaded to the site.

Now you can check. Enter in search bar such a request: https://site.ru/robots.txt replace site.ru with your website. Also consider the meaning of https or http.

Registering a Domain. Setting up Hosting. Let's install a blog!

Order hosting and buy a domain >>>

Conclusion

Now your blog is completely set up and ready to go. Start filling it with quality articles for people. Start to slowly understand SEO (search engine optimization).

As soon as your blog reaches 500 visitors per day, then buy a unique theme. If you have any questions, be sure to ask them in the comments below.

Best regards, Sergey Smirnov.

1. Template setup

1.1. Adding a copy

1.2. Sales and SEO

1.3. Copy structure

1.4. Outsourcing or DIY?

1.5. Adding content to the site

2. Other pages

2.1. Adding and customizing a contact form

2.2. Adding Google Maps

Together we have already established the most important elements, it's time to talk about the content. In this tutorial, we'll take a look at other types of websites and all the aspects associated with them. Let's start with the basics and create the first post on your site. Let's write, for example, something like “Hello, world!”

To start creating your first post, go to your dashboard WordPress/Posts/Add new. Here you will see many editing options. Here are some basics of creating posts on a WordPress site:

1. Don’t use hackneyed phrases and clichés. Be original.

2. Know your audience and try to communicate with them in their language. If your readers like humor, be funny. If they need as much information as possible, be direct and informative.

3. Don't overdo it with punctuation.

4. Don't adopt a condescending tone.

5. Create easy-to-read texts. Make sure the information is relevant to the overall topic:

- Headings;

— Subheadings;

— Markers;

— Numbered lists;

- Bold font;

— Italics and underlining.

6. Be passionate about what you write about. This is the only way to create a meaningful post and grab the reader's attention.

7. Headings in tandem with exciting and interesting content are more than important.

8. Pay attention to titles.

9. After you come up with a title, ask your friends and acquaintances for their opinions. If they're not happy, try to come up with something else.

10. Avoid obscene words and expressions if they are not used in an ironic context.

11. There should be no slang vocabulary.

12. Use videos/images to illustrate texts.

13. Don't be afraid to be original.

14. Play with words.

It is very important to SEO optimize website pages, especially if you are selling something through your resource. There are several reasons why your website content should be user friendly. search engines. First of all, SEO optimization increases loading speed and increases traffic. This functionality is vital for any website whose goal is to attract visitors and turn them into clients. Remember that your content must be informative and easy to read if you do not want to lose a large part of your audience.

Don't overload your text with long keywords and phrases. Even if your site ranks high in the results Google search, but the site content will be Low quality, you will not see a noticeable change in traffic growth. The point is that you must also develop a proper marketing strategy related to the topic of your resource and the material published there.

Writing SEO optimized texts is actually much easier than it might seem. Just follow the rules below:

Work with 1-2 keywords in the text. The same keywords can be used in meta descriptions, titles and URLs;

Optimize images and use alternative text. Important: Use one short keyword in picture descriptions.

Use links. This point is very important. Link the publication with 1-2 posts already existing on the site on similar topics that have a high rating. It is also recommended that the keywords be related to each other and each link opens in a new window.

If you do not want and are not going to write texts for your website yourself, you can always delegate the task to freelance writers.

It makes no difference who will write texts for the site; in any case, you will publish them. Let's figure out how to add new content to site pages.

Before logging into the WordPress admin panel of your site, follow these steps:

1. In the toolbar, select Records;

2. Click Add new;

3. Fill in all fields, starting with the title;

4. Enter your text or copy it into the text field;

6. When you are done editing your post, click Publish.

It's time to talk about adding plugins that can be useful for your site.

Contact form is a must-have plugin for any modern website or blog. Our Cherry Framework includes already built-in Contact Form 7. Let's see how you can customize it.

1. Go to Plugins/Installed.

2. You will see that the Contact Form 7 plugin is already installed.

4. Here is the default contact form. To configure it, click Change.

5. Change the name of the contact form and save the changes.

6. In the field Form template you can insert between tags.

7. In the block Letter you can also change the settings in all available fields.

8. Copy the code Contact form and paste it into your post.

Another plugin that may be useful for your site is Google Map. You can use it to show your address and indicate coordinates on the map so that users can determine your location.

That's it at this stage. We hope you didn't have any problems customizing the template.

If you missed our previous WordPress tutorials, use the links below to fill in your gaps.

Each design theme has a number of settings that can be changed from the CMS control panel. The variety of parameters may vary from template to template, but almost every theme allows you to customize the logo, background, fonts, sidebars, title, and description of the site from the admin panel.

Despite this, the site owner may want to change some little things that the control panel does not allow. In this case, you can hire a webmaster, but if you don’t have money or have time, you can easily figure out the template and make the necessary changes yourself.

The engine theme consists of many files. Knowing what part of the site each of them is responsible for, you can easily edit the design of the CMS template to suit your needs.

The theme files contain HTML, PHP and CSS code. There is a separate reference book on HTML/CSS on the site, but PHP knowledge is basically not required to create a design.

So, any WordPress template has the following files.

1. index.php. The file forms the main page of the site and calls other theme files.

2. header.php. Creates the top, “header” of the site - usually it contains a logo, name, description of the web resource, as well as horizontal menu. HTML container is also in this file.

3. footer.php. Contains the code for the bottom part of the site, its “footer”.

4. style.css. Cascading style sheet file. Since it is usually quite large, style.css well commented. Unfortunately, most often in English, but basic knowledge will be enough to understand which part of the code is responsible for the design of which elements. Read more about CSS here.

This is a required base for a WordPress template, but there are usually many more theme files, and here are the most common ones.

1. single.php- separate post.

2. page.php- page.

3. sidebar.php- side panel/panels.

4. archive.php- archives of articles.

5. search.php- search results page.

6. comments.php- output of comments.

7. 404.php- error page with code 404 (File not found).

8. function.php- a file containing theme functions. You can add your own PHP scripts to it.

Of course, templates usually contain much more files than described above, but they usually do not need editing. In addition, you can learn about the purpose of each file from its name and comments inside.

Editing templates is often required to correct or add some small detail. Below are a few common situations.

Add menu

Menus can be placed not only in places set by theme(this is done through widgets), but also in any other part of the site or even on a specific page.

To insert a menu anywhere, add the line:

directly into the page code where you want to place it. The line will work if there is only one custom menu on the site. If there are several, you should add a line like this to the code:

"Menu_1")); ?>

where instead of Menu_1 you need to enter the name of your menu.

Change 404 page

If the link leads to a non-existent page or file, WordPress takes the user to an error page with the code 404 (File not found). The file is responsible for it 404.php, stored in the active theme folder. Often English text is displayed on the screen, and the desire of the owner of a Russian-language site to translate it into his native language is quite understandable.

To change the contents of the page, open the file in the editor 404.php, find the lines with the text displayed in the browser and change them (the displayed text is most often enclosed in quotes). For example, in one of standard themes(twentyfourteen) you will be interested in the following code:

Replace the text in quotes (not where twentyfourteen is, but something else) with your own and get a modified 404 page.

Register copyright

At the bottom of the site it is customary to write official information, in particular, the years of operation of the resource and copyright. In the vast majority of cases, your “label” in the file footer.php left by the authors of the themes, and webmasters, naturally, want to replace this information with their own.

As we know, the “legs” of the site are responsible for the file stored in the root of the active theme footer.php, and you should look for the code responsible for copyright in it.

For example, the flat-white theme hides supporting information in the following lines of this file:

" title=""> ">

Russify text

Often, WordPress templates are not fully Russified or not translated at all. Knowing the file structure of the theme and the fact that the text shown to the user (if it is not a variable) in the code is always enclosed in quotes, it is easy to find and independently translate the desired fragment, and it is not necessary to search for the word manually - for this you can use the automatic search, which is present in every code editor.

For example, in the flat-white template you immediately want to Russify at least two inscriptions: “READ MORE” and “Leave a Comment”, since they are visible on the main page.

The file is responsible for the main page index.php, located in the root of the theme directory, therefore, you need to edit it. But there is no text for the inscriptions, so you need to understand the code to find out where they are stored. In our case, the file is responsible for the information under the posts on the main page template-parts/content.php, connected by string

If you go into it and in the code

"; ?>