Wordpress Q

[Handsofmodder]

I'm thinking about changing my blog, Pariah's Guild (www.pariahs-guild.blogspot.com), into .com blog using wordpress. But, wordpress themes look really bland. I want to know how do I add a header using photoshop and edit it using Dreamweaver?

[TechEvangelist]

WordPress uses templates, which are called themes. Most people just modify an existing theme. You will find the header file in your theme directory in /wp-content/themes/{your selected theme}/header.php.

Most theme templates use CSS heavily. The CSS file is found in the same directory and is usually called style.css.

[Handsofmodder]

So what theme file do I edit using dreamweaver?

[TechEvangelist]

Read the post. It says header.php in your theme directory.

[Handsofmodder]

Sorry. Alright, what if you want to change the whole look of the wordpress theme, not just the header?

[KDLA]

You can use CSS and totally restructure the coding's order. Just make sure to retain all the <php> includes in there.

[TechEvangelist]

There are multiple files to modify. Just look in the directory that contain your theme. The names of the files pretty much tell you what they do.

These are PHP files, so if you are not comfortable reading and writing code, you should probably learn how to so before you proceed.

[paintballdude]

What I recommend doing is this: (it's what I do)

Once you have a template design for your site, and want it to look identical for your Wordpress Blog, simply split the code in half like this:

Find in your html code for your main page where the top html code ends, and allows for the pages content to be written (for example, where the top links end and the Welcome page says, "Welcome).

Copy the code up to that point, and paste it into the header.php file (overwrite existing code).

Copy the code after the content and paste it into the footer.php file (again, overwriting existing code).

If you already have a css spreadsheet referred to in the header.php file, you should be able to

This should leave your blog looking like the rest of your site. You might have to tweak the style.css css to match the colors of your site (for instance, the sidebar may be blue, when you want it a shade of green).

What you have basically done is created an html wrapper - your code is "wrapping" around the wordpress structure. Hope this helps!