Give your blog a facelift and make it stand out from the crowd

If you read our article explaining how to create a self-hosted blog using the Wordpress blogging software, you should now have a working blog. However, it is unlikely to impress anyone: the generic design and imagery Wordpress applies to all new blogs means that yours currently looks just like a million others.

In this article we’ll explain how to give you blog a distinctive edge. We’ll also explore ways to make posts more interesting, with embedded photos and videos. So, let’s get started.

Producing proper posts
If you don’t already have self-hosted Wordpress blog up and running we’d recommend reading through our article explaining how to set up a Wordpress blog before rejoining us.

Rather than using the Quickpress box at the top right of the Wordpress Dashboard to make posts, for longer or better-looking entries, use the Edit Post screen. Log on to your website (the link will be similar to www.yourwebdomain.co.uk/wp-admin), click Posts in the left-hand column and then Add New.

Type a title and use the box below for the article’s body. Word-style icons allow you to apply italic, bold or underlined formatting, for example, while the fourth and fifth icons on the toolbar (above the text-entry area) can be used to create bulleted and numbered lists.

Clicking the ABC icon will check the post’s spelling: misspelt words are underlined with a wavy red line.

The fifth and sixth from the right (which look like a chain and a broken chain) are used to create and remove links to other web pages. Select some text in the body of the post and click the chain icon to add a link.

Type in the full web address (including the ‘http://’ bit) and give the link a title. To remove the link later, just click the broken chain icon.

Use the next icon (two small, stacked rectangles) to set the break between the article body and preview text (that will be shown on the blog’s home page). When you click this icon, a ‘More’ line will appear: this will be invisible when the full article is displayed on the site.

Clicking the right-most button reveals a second toolbar with more tools, for style, pasting text and an Undo button.