What are Themes?

Your theme controls the visual layout and appearance of your site. They typically allow for different kinds of customisation, and we would recommend you to have a “play around” different themes to make sure the one you use corresponds to your needs. We have theme recommendations below depending on the use you aim for your website.

Themes normally include:

1. Header –  the area at the top of a site where the site title, graphics, and possibly navigational links appear.
2. A content area – for your posts or page.  Posts are where you normally publish the latest update or new article.   Posts are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order with the most recent post at the top of the page.
3. Sidebar area – for your widgets.

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How to choose your theme?

You can re-visit the ‘before you start’ page to see some of the considerations you might want to think about prior to building your website and choosing your theme.

There are 100’s of themes for you to choose including:

1. Themes that can’t be altered and are “use as is”.
2. Themes that are “extremely customizable”  which allow you to change font types, font color, background colour and more.

Every newly created site has the same default theme which you can easily change using the Appearance > Themes area of your blog’s administration panel.

• Themes Recommendations depending on use:
  • Formal page
    • Conference: Generate Press
    • Professional portfolio: AltoFocus, Magazino, Noteworthy
    • Class project: Edublogs Default
    • News outlet: MesoColumn
    • Personal presentation: Writr
  • Personal blog
    • Personal journal: Anarcho Notepad, Notepad Chaos
    • Cooking blog: Tortuga
  • Accessible themes
    • 14-Glassy, Aperture, Aaron, Afterlight, Aguafuerte, Amalie Lite, Blogghiamo, etc.

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Let’s start with the basics!

When building your blog, you will normally follow the following steps regarding themes:

1. Decide the “feel” for your website or blog 
2. Peruse the different themes CampusPress has to offer
3. Choose your theme according to your needs or changing theme
4. Customise your theme by changing
   1. the header and menus,
   2. the footer,
   3. the background,
   4. the sidebars,
   5. and the main content area.

You will be able to explore all the theme customisation in the next section “customisers”.

Watch the video below for a brief overview of themes, their purpose and how you can make the best use of them.

Trouble accessing the video? Click on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDxg5ODEXEQ (opens in a new tab)

 

Visit the Edublog website for a full overview of what you can do with themes.

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