How to choose a theme.

Welcome to day 3!

So the last couple days have been exciting. You’ve now decided on your niche, domain name, and you have your blog all set up with bluehost and ready to go. So whats next is to make it pretty.

How to pick a theme

Your theme is what makes your blog look unique. All wordpress blogs are different so its a great way to brand your blog. I recommend choosing a simple theme with a lot of white space so your blog won’t look busy.

With your bluehost account you can log into your wordpress dashboard. In the dashboard is where you can customize your blog. Here is where you can change the theme and add plugins.

You just go to “Apearance” on the right menu. In the pop up menu you will find themes at the top. Here you can choose a free theme from the wordpress library or you can click add new at the top and upload your own. 

I recommend getting a paid theme because they are more professional. They have more features that you will want as well the should load faster which is essential for a money making blog.

It’s important to choose a theme that loads quick because this can directly affect your income. If your blog loads to slowely you can end up with less views.

Each blog theme works differently so you’ll have to figure your way around it yourself. I Recommend buying a theme that has excellent support. If you buy a theme make sure to read the reviews to see what past customers have said so that you won’t be starting off on the wrong foot.

There are many themes out there to choose from you can find them on etsy, themeforest or many other locations if you do a google search. Here are a few that I recommend:

Genesis theme from studiopress

Acabado theme by income school

Foodie pro theme by feast

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To upload a theme:

1. Appearances> Themes
2. Select “Add New” at the top of the page
3. Select “Upload theme” at the top of the page
4. upload you zip file

Plugins

Plugins are a bunch of add-on pieces of software that will help you customize your blog so it will function any way you like. There are plugins for almost any function like design, comment moderation, pop ups and more.

It’s easy to install plugins on your computer. 

1. Go to plugins on the right menu in your wordpress dashboard
2. Click “add new” at the top of the dashboard
3. You can search in the search function here
4. click install click “install now”
5. After click “Activate”

Or if you have downloaded a plugin from a different site then select the “upload plugin” at the top of the page.

Here are some plugins I recommend when you are first starting out:

Short pixel, this is a great plugin for making your pictures smaller which is essential for your blog to load quickly.

Yoast SEO. This is a really popular plugin that will help you to optomize your blog.

Akismet, this is for filtering out spam comments on your blog posts.

MonsterInsights, This will let you view your analytics so you will have to install google analytics to your blog as well.

It’s important to not upload to many plug ins becuase they can cause conflict on your blog. Try to not have any more than 10 running on your blog. As you blog more and more each day you will learn which plugins are important to you. So I recommend deleting the ones you don’t use anymore as you go.

So now you should have a well functioning and pretty blog up at this point and now you are ready for the next step which is getting traffic to your blog so you can start making money!