Changing your theme

Your theme is what controls the look and appearance of your blog; this is what people see when they visit your blog.

Every newly created blog has the same default theme.  The last thing you want is to look like all the other blogs.

You can change your theme as often as you like!

Using the Theme Customizer

It is i really easy to change your theme using the theme customizer.

The theme customizer is designed to make it easier for you to customize your theme and see the results in real time without having to visit your blog.

It allows  you to customize any theme before you activate it.

Here is how you do it:

1.  Go to Appearance > Themes.

2.  Click on ‘Live Preview‘ below the theme you want to use.

Or if you want to customize your current theme, click on ‘Customize‘ under the current theme.

4. This loads the theme customizer. Now all you do is work through the control panels on the left to customize the theme to preview the theme changes in real time before activating it on your blog.

5. Once you’re happy with the changes you just click ‘Save and Activate’.

The following control panels are available on the Theme customizer:

Changing your Site Title & Tagline

Used to change the site title and tagline on your blog. Not all themes display taglines.

Themes like Edublogs Default 2011, Anubis, Benevolence. Blix, Connections and Contempt include an option to hide Header text. All you need to do is deselect the Display Header text option to hide the Site title and Tagline on these themes. This option is used when you want to use a custom image header instead of text for the Site title.

Changing your Theme Colors

‘Colors’ controls the color of the header text and background color. Which options are included depends on the theme. Not all themes allow you to change the header text color. Changes to header text color do take time and you will need to wait for the page to refresh to view the change.

Changing your Header Image

Almost all Edublogs themes include an option to upload your own custom image header.

A custom image header means you can obtain a much more customized look and feel adding your “own personal touch” to your blog.

Header Image is used to:

Upload a new custom image header — if your theme supports this option.
Or to select one of the default header images that comes with the theme you are customizing — if your theme includes a range of default header images.

Here’s how you use the header options:

1. Click on drop down link on Header image.

2. Click on ‘Select a file‘ (or drop file in upload area), select the custom image header that you’ve saved on your computer and then click Open to upload.

Please note:

• The custom image header is used as is and you can’t crop the header image using the customizer.
• Only the top part of the uploaded image is used if it is too large.
• For best results resize your custom image header to the recommended dimensions specified on Appearance > Header before uploading or upload the image using Appearance > Header (as this allows you to crop the image).
• Be patient when uploading the image header using the customizer. There is a delay before you’ll see indications that your image header is being uploaded.

3.  Or click on the ‘Default’ tab to select one of the default headers

Changing your Background Image

On many themes, much like custom header images, you can add images to your blog’s background. A background image is another great way of adding that personal touch to your class blog.
You upload a background image as follows:

1. Click on drop down link on Header image.

2. Click on ‘Select a file‘ (or drop file in upload area), select the background image you’ve saved on your computer and then click Open to upload.

Please note:

• The background image is used as is.
• For best results resize your background to make it smaller if using an image from a digital camera (otherwise only the top part of the image will display).
• Be patient when uploading the background using the customizer. There is a delay before you’ll see indications that your image is being uploaded — this varies depending on the image size.
• Most themes include a range of default backgrounds you can use. These aren’t supported by the theme customizer and you need enable a default background by going to Appearance > Preset Background once the theme has been activated.

Uploading Custom themes

Due to how our infrastructure is designed, we are unable to support the uploading of custom themes unless you are using an Edublogs Campus site.

This means you can’t upload any themes to your Edublogs.org blog even if they are available in the WordPress repository.

However, many of our Premium themes have customization options to change the colors, fonts and layouts. While most of our themes enable you to upload backgrounds and header images.