Appliedi.net Windows Web Hosting Blog

In our earlier WordPress tutorials we covered how to:

• Install WordPress with just one click via the control panel.
• How to configure the basic settings for wordpress, including Search Engine Friendly URLS.
• How to upgrade WordPress to the latest version manually
• How to automatically upgrade WordPress if you’re running 2.6 or later.

In this video we’ll cover how to update your WordPress blog with one of the million+ custom themes available from the WordPress website.

The Video

Here’s a video that you’ll be able to use to watch as I install and configure a couple themes in our fictional/development blog at acme-hosting.net.

[flv]http://www.appliedi.net/blog/uploads/themes-final.flv[/flv]

Getting Started

To get started you’re going to want to log into your WordPress dashboard, this is the area you’ll use to administer your blog. It’s found at www.domain.com/wp-admin where www.domain.com is your actual domain name and it usually looks something like the below picture:

After you’ve logged in you’ll click on ‘Appearance’ in the left hand column which will bring up the Manage Themes options:

Testing & Activating a new theme

By default you’ll only see two themes in your installation the Classic theme and the Default theme. But these are good enough to demonstrate how to test and then activate your theme. In my image above I have two themes you probably don’t have japan-style and Pixeled, I’ll explain how to get these themes in the next step, for the time being though we’ll try to activate the Pixeled theme.

To select a new theme design just click on it’s thumbnail image and you’ll get a popup window showing you what your blog will now look like with the new theme applied:

To accept the new design, just click on the Activate “Theme Name” in the top right corner:

If you prefer not to use this theme design, then click on the ”x” in the top left corner:

and select another Theme.

Once you’ve activated your theme you’ll now have a fresh new look for your blog and can begin experimenting and tweaking it as you please.

Getting More Themes

WordPress has over a million FREE themes available in their repository and many more available across the Internet as premium/paid themes for a small fee. You can access the theme directory at: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/.  You’ll want to find a theme you like and then click the download link to download that theme to your local computer as a compressed ZIP file. You’ll then extract that folder to your hard drive and upload it to your website.

You’ll upload the theme to the wp-content/themes folder under your blog folder. For my blog site at acme-hosting.net this folder is shown here:

As you can see I FTP’d into my site, navigated to the wp-content/themes folder and then copied over my theme folders (japan-style, pixeled and ZZZZ). Once I’ve uploaded my themes to my wordpress site I can then go back to the wordpress dashboard and refresh the Appearance option and should see my themes appear for use on my blog.

Conclusion

I hope you have found this tutorial useful. There’s millions of great themes out there for your wordpress blog and with just a little web experience they are extremely easy to publish and use on your wordpress blog.

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Applied Innovations is in the process of a website redesign and part of that process will involve revising our customer testimonials page. We’re changing the testimonials page by converting the testimonials into case studies where we’ll feature different hosting customers each month.

Every day we’re asked how to get a listing on the AppliedI.net website and a link. It’s no secret that the AppliedI.net website has a high ranking with the search engines and that a link from an established, trusted and high ranking website like www.appliedi.net will help your own search engine rankings. In addition, many of our clients offer services and products that our other clients would find useful and beneficial. These services include: web development, graphic design, marketing advice and services and various software offerings to just name a few. So here’s your opportunity to get featured and expose your company and resources to over 25,000 other websites and online businesses.  For your efforts we’ll not only feature you on our website but we’ll credit your hosting account with $25!.

What’s Required To Be Featured?

The requirements are pretty simple but here they are:

1. You need to be an active customer with Applied Innovations. 
2. We’ll ask that you submit a video testimonial. If you don’t have a digital video camera or don’t know how to take your video and put it online to send to us, NO PROBLEM! We have a few pocket video cameras and we’ll send one out to you to create your video with and then mail back to us (all postage paid by AppliedI).  
3. We’ll send you an email interview. We’ll have our writers take your answers and write a compelling article around it and then send it back to you for your approval before posting it.
4. We’ll ask that you send us a high resolution picture of yourself or your business. You don’t have to run out and hire a professional photographer, we’re all real people and we want real people photographs. It should just be a picture of you enjoying what you do.

That’s it. From there our experts will take that content create a new case study page around it and post it with your video testimonial and feature it throughout our site.

An Interview What Kind of Questions?

Everyone always worry about what they’re going to say or what they’re going to be asked. In this case, it’s quite simple. We want to tell your story. We want to know what brought you to Applied Innovations, how Applied Innovations has made a difference for your company and what is it that we do that you love the most about Applied Innovations. 

Video? What would I say?

Just like the Email Interview this would be your opportunity to tell your story about your company, how you came to find Applied Innovations and what impact Applied Innovations has had on your company. The great thing about video is now it’s personalized and it allows everyone to see a real person telling their own story.

Why are we doing all this?

Applied Innovation in a few weeks will turn 10 years old and we want to spotlight our customers and let them tell their story. Applied Innovations has already been about the customer and helping the customer solve their problems and then grow their business online. We think this is a great way to get this message out there and at the same time a great way to promote and say thanks to the people that have also helped us grow.

What do I do next? How do I get started?

Ready to get involved? Great! send us an email at sales@appliedi.net and we’ll get started immediately and in a few days your video testimonial will be online and live.

Popularity: 2% [?]