The first thing your WordPress blog front end needs is a face (design and layout). You want to create an environment that is both eye-catching and practical. In the long run, you want your visitors to easily find information on your blog. You don’t want visitors to be discouraged by the colors you choose or the non-intuitive and unpractical way in which information is displayed. Your design can cause instant distrust of your blog or instant acceptance.

Start your search for a theme as soon as your WordPress platform is installed. The look and feel of your blog relies on the theme you choose. Your readers will first notice the overall appearance of the blog, before even taking a look at the content. Choose a theme that looks great, but also works for your unique content needs. The default theme that comes with your WordPress blog installed is Twenty Sixteen — while it’s a good starter theme, you’ll want to choose a theme that is more unique to your blog and compatible with your niche.

Here’s a quick checklist for choosing your theme by searching within blog dashboard:

1. Read the description: Most themes come with a short description of features and functionality. By reading it, you should have a rough idea if the theme matches your needs and how customizable it is.
2. Check the ratings: Popular themes will have star ratings that are visible in the preview and under
   theme details. They should give you a clear idea how good the theme is.
3. Preview the theme: Preview the theme to get an idea of the overall look and layout.
4. Check for responsiveness: Aim for a responsive design that will work on desktop browsers and mobile devices. This is recommended by Google.

If you find a theme that takes your breath away, cool down. Once you install a theme you like, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t look quite right. Your theme is just a skeleton of your blog.To make it appealing, you’ll have to fill in content (text, photos, videos, etc.). Earlier, we showed you how to add content to your blog.

Free, premium, and custom themes

For many visionary novice bloggers, the world is not enough. The stash of free themes (more than two thousand themes are available on wordpress.org) does not satisfy their particular desire for look and feel. There are two other options you can take a look at, premium and custom themes. But they incur a cost, sometimes a tiny one, at other times a huge amount.

For the most part, it’s hard to choose the right theme from such a wide variety. At Teknize, we’re doing our best to make that process easier for you.

Premium themes are created by both single developers and dedicated showcase websites. Top sources for premium themes that are worth checking include ThemeForest, StudioPress, Elegant Themes, ThemeIsle, ThemeGrill and Colorlib. The price range for a single-use licenses ranges from $30 to $500, depending on which premium theme you choose.

Custom themes are created by an individual developer (coder and designer, or agency) who will either customize an existing theme or create a brand new theme for you. While coming with clear-cut advantages, they are not the ideal choice for beginner bloggers due to their high cost. Prices to customize a theme range from $500 to $2,000, depending on the features you want.

Examples of good free and premium themes

Based on our experience, we recommend the following free and premium themes for new bloggers.

Free themes

• Poseidon

Poseidon is a theme that’s near-perfect for showcasing your content, especially if you also use crisp and captivating visuals. It offers a full screen image carousel,  offset by plenty of negative space. 

• Hemingway

Hemingway features a two-column design that’s well-suited for blog sites. It is clean, with a simple layout that draws attention to your content over everything else. This theme is perfect for many types of blogging sites, simply because it’s clean enough for simple blogs, but also extensible for more complex sites.

• Writee

When it comes to personal blogs – and a bunch of great content about food, travel, fashion, or other lifestyle topics – Writee is worth your consideration. The charm of this theme is that its design belies its ease of use. In other words, Writee looks great, and lets you get cracking on creating content – ideal for new site owners.

Premium themes

You can find different premium themes online from the resources mentioned earlier. We recommend you to check the themes series from Themeforest. Their services and support are top notch and all of their themes are highly customizable. Here are three themes that are suited for the blog.

• Newspaper

Newspaper is a WordPress theme that lets you write articles and blog posts with ease. We offer great support and friendly help!

Create a great news website with our newspaper WordPress template. This bestseller theme is perfect for blogging and excellent for an e-commerce, shop, store, WooCommerce, news, newspaper, magazine, publishing or review site. It supports videos from YouTube. AMP and mobile ready. GDPR compliant, the theme is fast, simple, and easy to use for cryptocurrency, fashion, food, lifestyle, modern, personal, travel, luxury, viral, minimal, minimalist projects, web development, and more websites.

• Jannah

Jannah has Content Marketing covered with fresh responsive designs, amazing new features, complete 1-click website demos & lifetime free updates.

Jannah has a fully responsive design that not only adapts to all of today’s modern devices but responds to the most up to date mobile devices for swipeable content. It also appears to think for you with intelligent menu features that adapt to the user’s device to ensure they have the best, most seamless experience possible while consuming your content.

• Newsmag

Newsmag is a modern WordPress theme that lets you write articles and blog posts with ease. We offer great support and friendly help! The Newsmag template is excellent for a news, newspaper, magazine, publishing or review site. It also supports videos from YouTube and features a rating system. It uses the best clean SEO practices, and on top of that, it’s fast, simple, and easy to use. In addition, News mag supports responsive Google Ads and AdSense.

If you still find it hard to set up your blog and want Teknize to setup your blog, please Contac Us.

In this guide, we will take a closer look at managing your WordPress blog. You will learn how to customize your blog, make design and layout changes, create your first post or page and much more.

The WordPress front and back ends:

The WordPress platform consists of two areas: your blog’s front end and back end. The front end is what your visitors will see when they come to your blog. Many of the tasks performed in the back end will be visible on the front end, such as theme customizations, plugin functionality enhancements and content publication. There are also actions that can be performed by you and your visitors directly from the front end of the blog, including commenting and social sharing..

The Backend

The back end, known as the WordPress dashboard, allows you to fully manage your blog’s content, community, functionality and design. It is accessible only by users who you designate and assign an account on your blog. In order to access your WordPress dashboard, you need to type: example.com/wp-admin in the address bar of your browser and log in using your WordPress username and password.

Navigating the dashboard.

The Dashboard is the center of blog administration. It consists of three main parts: left side menu, top toolbar and middle section.

The left-hand column of your WordPress dashboard is where you’ll find all of your admin options and where most of your creative effort will be focused. This column includes menu options for each of the following functional areas.

Updates

Find updates to the WordPress platform along with plugins and themes you have installed.

WordPress, like any popular CMS, releases both minor and major updates to their platform in order to introduce new features, fix bugs and increase security. In the past, you would be given the choice to update to the latest version of WordPress through your Dashboard using a oneclick install process or by downloading the latest version and installing it yourself.

For anyone who has WordPress 4.3 or above, updates to the core WordPress platform are automatically installed on your website like you see on our website, we have the latest WordPress version installed. You are still responsible for updating your plugins and themes when updates become available. If you don’t want WordPress to automatically update the core of their platform, you can find directions on how to configure automatic updates in the WordPress Codex.

Posts

The Posts menu allows you to control the new content you add to your blog. Blog posts are published on your blog in descending order (newest first). In the Posts menu, you will find the following options: View All posts (blog content), add a new post, view and create categories, view and create tags.

• All Posts: A list all of your posts in the dashboard. You can use the listing to quickly edit single or multiple post categories, tags, status, author and ability to comment.

• Add New: This is where you go to add a new post to your blog.
• Categories: View all of the categories your posts are listed under, edit them and add new categories.
• Tags: View all of the keywords your posts are tagged with, edit them and add new..

Media

View your media library (images, documents, audio and other file uploads) and upload new files. In the Media menu, you will find the following options: Library & Add New.

• Library: View all of the media uploaded to your WordPress blog.
• Add New: Add new media to your Word-Press blog.

Pages

Pages provide static content or information to the readers. Standard pages that WordPress bloggers use include: About, Contact, Advertise, Products, Services and Resources. The following options are available on the Pages menu, you will find the following options: All Pages and Add New.

• All Pages: A list of all pages in the dashboard. You can use the listing to quickly edit single or multiple pages’ status, author, parent, template and ability to comment.
• Add New: Add new pages to your blog. You can create an individual page, or create a page as a subpage of another by selecting a parent page on the right side of the screen.

Posts vs. Pages

Your blog content will be displayed in pages and posts. While they have similarities, they serve different purposes and have different behaviors.

They both have the following in common:

• A title/headline and specific content.
• Meta information (author, date of publishing, etc.).
• They can be added, deleted, updated or edited.
• They will be available for everyone or only a limited number of users based on your choice of settings.
• They can contain anything from plain text to media-rich content (video, audio, photo, links, etc.).
• They can be altered or extended via plugins.
• What sets posts and pages apart:
• Pages are generally not a part of your main blog’s content. For example, if you have a travel blog, you would write posts about your latest travels. You would reserve pages for things that relate to you and the blog, such as a page with information about you or a page with a contact form to contact you.
• Posts are part of your main blog’s content. They will show up as new entries within your blog and your RSS feed (Rich Site Summary is a web feed used to distribute information from your blog to subscribers.) Pages will only be displayed when you link to them directly and never within your RSS feed.

Comments

Comment manager where you will approve or delete new comments on blog posts and pages. The Comments feature is the best way to manage reader interaction. It allows readers to add comments on the topic, ask questions and provide feedback. It allows you and your readers to stay engaged with the community and interact around your specific niche market. Both blog posts and pages can accept comments. Most WordPress themes come equipped with comment layout functionality. However, it is up to you to engage with your readers and encourage them to leave comments on your blog. Check for new comments regularly. Approve them promptly and reply to them as needed.

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Appearance

This menu is where most of the activity of changing the design and layout of your blog will take place. Here you can search for and install new themes and make additional customizations to your blog’s header image, colors and background.

In the Appearance menu, you will find the following submenus below: (We’re presenting options that are commonly available. Keep in mind that options will vary, depending on the theme you choose.)

• Themes — This is where you can search for themes on the WordPress network or install themes you have downloaded from elsewhere. We will talk about theme selection momentarily.
• Customize — Depending on the theme you have chosen, you will be able to use the Customize section to make changes to the theme’s design in a visual editor. Things that can be customized include: Title and Tagline, Color, Background Image, Static Front Page, and Featured Content.
• Widgets — Widgets are boxes you can add to various areas of your WordPress blog. Depending on the theme you have chosen, this can include the homepage, header, sidebar and footer. Adding widgets is a simple task, and it works using a drag & drop building experience. Widgets can showcase a social media links, a search bar, subscription links, about text for the blog, most recent posts, most recent comments, links to other blogs you like, and more.
• Menus — Depending on the theme you have chosen, you can create one or more menus that will appear horizontally in your header.
• Header — Depending on the theme you have chosen, you can upload a graphic at a specific size (determined by your theme) which will be displayed at the top of your blog.
• Background — Depending on the theme you have chosen, you can change background colors or upload your own background image.
• Theme Editor — The editor is for advanced users and involves code knowledge. It gives you the option of editing theme code for specific functionality and design changes. Because visitors will be able to immediately see any changes that you save in your theme’s code, it’s usually safer to edit copies of your files offline, test, and upload your changes when they are verified. If you are going to use editor, always make sure you backup current version of your blog before editing your files. If there is a problem, you can always upload a previous version of the code to fix it..

Plugins

Plugins are bundled pieces of code which affect the way your blog looks or feels. They can add new functionality to your blog, extend your theme’s capabilities, and customize your blog as a whole or in part. While a majority of plugins are free, there are plenty that are offered for a fee based on their unique functionality.

• Installed Plugins: this shows you plugins you have already installed.

• Add New: click here if you want to add new plugins.
• Plugin Editor: you can make direct edits to your plugin here, but it is best that you don’t unless you know what you’re doing. Editing your plugin code may introduce conflicts that break your site.

Users

This section allows you to add new users to your WordPress blog, customize your own user profile, and edit users you have added to your WordPress blog.

• All Users: shows you all who are registered on your WordPress website. You can see the role that has been assigned to each user as well as other info, such as the number of posts they have published on your site.
• Add New: this option lets you add a new user and also assign a role to them

• Profile: this displays personalization options for the currently logged in user. Here, you can customize your wp admin dashboard to look different for you. Let’s say you are tired of the blue WordPress dashboard. You can change the default WordPress color scheme to a different set of colors. You can also personalize the look and feel of WordPress editors, and make changes to your profile details.

You can assign each user the following roles: analyzing your website traffic.

• Administrator: Able to perform all actions on the blog. This should be reserved for you as the site owner and only those you trust highly with your blog as they have the power to do anything, including lock you out of your own site.
• Editor: Access and edit all posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and links.
• Author: Publish and edit articles, posts, and upload media.
• Contributor: Write and edit own posts, but is not able to publish without consent.
• Subscriber: Can only read and comment on posts or pages.

Tools

Tools to import and export content to and from your WordPress blog.

Settings

Edit general blog settings, writing settings, reading settings, discussion (comment) settings, media settings and permalinks (URL formatting for your blog).

In addition to the general menu items in the left hand column mentioned above, you’ll also find menu options for plugins you have installed. Depending on the plugin’s purpose and coding, it’s settings can be added to any standard menu (posts, pages, comments, appearance, plugins, users, tools or settings) or as a new menu item anywhere in the left-hand column.