One of the most common way to customize your blog is to use themes. If you are a WordPress user, you should be familiar in the concept of themes. But even though there are literary thousands of free themes out there, using them will not really help you to stand out – as everybody is doing the same thing. A quick calculation will tell us that in average one theme is used by more than tens of thousands blogs. That’s why customizable themes is the solution. During my quest to find a good customized WordPress theme, I found Platform, a theme that can be easily customized by dragging and dropping the elements.
Customizing The Look
Let’s start by downloading and installing the theme. Go to the admin area of your WordPress blog and choose “Themes” from the sidebar menu, then continue with “Install New Theme” tab. Do a search and click the “Install” link.
Confirm the installation by clicking the “Install Now” button.
After you have activated the theme, you’ll see a new item appear in the sidebar menu. Clicking it will open the “Platform Theme Options” and its own list of customization items.
The first option that you can find is the access to “View Site“, “Docs” and “Forum“. Anytime you need help on using the theme, you can visit the Docs and/or Forum links.
Now let’s explore the theme’s menu. First the “Global Options.“. This is the place to customize your blog’s header image and favicon. All that you have to do is to upload the image that you want to use. While there is no restriction on the header image, the favicon that you want to use must be in “.ico” or “.png” format and the size is 16×16 pixels.
Here are where your header image and favicon will appear on your blog.
Other than the two items mentioned above, Global Settings will also give you access to set: Twitter Integration (requires Twitter for WordPress plugin), and Page Content & Body background color. Next is the “Template Setup“. Here is the place to set what elements that you want to show in each template. You can drag and drop the items that you want to the “Displayed Page Content Area Sections” on the left, and the ones that you don’t want to the “Available/Disabled Sections” on the right.
There are many templates that you can customize. Each comes with its own elements. So take your time and go through these templates and items one by one.
Go to the “Layout Editor” to choose what kind of layout you want your blog to be. You can also set the dimension of each area of the layout simply by dragging the borders of by writing down the dimension in the available fields below the layout editor.
Further Customization
Since there are too many customizable items that you can tinker with, the best way to get familiar with Platform is to install and play with it yourself. For example, you can choose to show or hide the “News/Blog RSS Icon” from the “Header And Nav” menu.
Or to select the content layout for post pages from “Blog And Post” menu.
And also set the text for social links and choose which social network icons that you want to show/hide at your blog footer.
Or to add custom scripts to your blog, such as Google Analytics script.
The customization process could be a little bit overwhelming, but never forget to save your changes. The save buttons are available at the top and the bottom of the page.
Restore, Export And Import Settings
One of the best features of Platform theme is its ability to export the customization that you’ve made to be used in another blog. So, you only have to tweak the theme once, export the setting and import it to your other blogs if you want to.
Have you tried Platform? Or do you use other customizable WordPress themes? Please share your experience in customizing your blogs using the comment below.
