Need a blog makeover? Learn how to do it yourself!

Do you desperately want to change the look of your self hosted WordPress blog? Do you often think about giving your blog a makeover but find the thought of changing it all rather daunting?

If this is you and you want to refresh the look of your blog, then read on to find out how to save money by doing it yourself!

A few weeks ago I showed you how to enable Rich Pins for your WordPress site and now I want to show you how you can get your blog looking the way you want it.

Giving your WordPress blog a much needed makeover is a lot simpler than you might think, you simply just need to know where to look.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to have any coding skills or have any understanding of HTML or CSS! Phew.

A lot of bloggers these days will hire the help of a web designer/developer. What you may not realise is that a lot of these people are only using a prepaid theme. This is something you can do yourself fairly easily.

It really is a simple to do as that.

The hardest part to this is actually finding a theme you love. All of the themes I have ever used have come from a place called themeforest.net. They currently have close to 10,000 wordpress themes to choose from and this is updated daily. The hardest part, is actually finding a theme that suits you.

Depending on your blog, you can choose a theme that has woocommerce functionality (the ability to sell directly on your blog) or not.

If you choose a theme with this it is usually a bit more expensive.

A standard non woocommerce theme will cost you around $30-$39 with a woocommerce theme costing up to around $49-$59.

Then thats it, no web developer costs and a makeover which will cost you no more than $30-$60.

Easy right?!

So the first step is to download all of the files once you have made your purchase.

Next locate the main zip file of your theme, it will usually be the theme name followed by .zip (you may notice another zip folder called themename-child-zip, dont worry about this one if your skill set is beginner).

In your WordPress dashboard, down the left hand side go to Appearance —> Themes —> Click the ‘Add New’ button —> Click the ‘Upload Theme’ button and locate your .zip folder and click ‘Install Now’.

Once installed click the ‘Activate’ link and you are all ready to start customising.

For the next steps you will have to refer to the theme documentation for this, as each theme is different so the layout will be slightly different.

Each theme usually comes with theme documentation in the form a web link that when clicked and opened will walk you through the necessary steps.

This will cover:

  • where to upload your own logos
  • how to adjust the theme colours to match your brand
  • adding your social links and where they will appear
  • how to add your Instagram to your footer or sidebar (a lot of themes nowadays have this built in)
  • And much much more

whathannahdidnext

I know this reads like a sponsored post but I can assure you it isn’t.  In this day and age of saving money, I wanted to share my tips to help out other bloggers who may be looking to do this soon.

If you have any questions or need any advice leave a comment below and I will come back to you.

Thanks for reading and if you manage to change the look of your blog, then I’d love to see what you end up with.