Custom WordPress Theme - DNA for Your Blog

Brand yourself? Be recognized and remembered? Create a better experience for your visitors? Be the ONLY ONE with your theme? Then you really need to get a custom WordPress theme. If you're okay with "vanilla" then don't worry about it.

Customizing your blog is especially important if you want to be recognized as the "go to" expert in your business category. Your custom designed blog can match your website or it can BE your website - in which case I like to call it a blogsite. (Note: My definition of blogsite is a blog that is used like a website; i.e. lots of pages arranged within a standard website style navigation hierarchy.)

A blog is really a kind of Content Management System (CMS). Content Management Systems enable the owner or administrator of the site to be able to create new content - usually with a WYSIWYG "what you see is what you get" style editor like MS Word - without having to know any HTML or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and without having to be a graphic designer or worry about accidentally messing up the site design.

The problem is, most of the themes available for WordPress are BORING. Plain. Limited. And creating a custom WordPress theme is NOT something your run-of-the-mill web designer even knows how to do. So probably, unless you are an advanced web designer, you won't be able to create a custom WordPress theme. At least not without a lot of trial and error.

You can hire a web design company with experience in that area - usually the cost in US dollars is upwards of $1000 for a high-quality, truly custom WordPress theme. Or, you can hire a blog-savvy Internet marketing company to create a custom logo and header for your blog, and maybe a few custom forms. Then, you can get the Thesis 1.6 Theme for WordPress and customize the rest of your blog yourself - saving you a LOT of money - but still achieving a one-of-a-kind custom WordPress theme effect! I LOVE saving money, don't you?

Here's how it works:

1. You get your domain name.
2. You get hosting.
3. You install WordPress on your domain or in a subdirectory on your domain. Pretty much every decent hosting company makes it easy for you to download and install WordPress with just a few clicks.
4. You get Thesis Theme. It comes as a zip file which you download to your desktop. It costs about $87.
5. You upload Thesis to your themes in the WordPress Dashboard it's easy - don't worry. (Note: You login to your WP dashboard at www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin. When you installed WordPress, you created a WordPress username and password.)
6. You can do a lot of customization of Thesis yourself. Thesis has a lot of tutorials to help you. For example, you can change the background, the width and number of your columns, the style of your font, the look of your navigation tabs, and more quite easily.
7. Finally, to get that truly custom theme, hire a web design expert to create a custom logo and header and anything else you want to be 100% truly unique, thus creating your own virtual custom WP theme!

Once your blog is customized the way you like, you can relax and start publishing content as usual. SEO Tip: Remember to do your keyword research before you create your content to increase your chances of drawing in traffic.

Sally Dillon is the owner of Meta-Bee.com Internet Marketing Company which offers custom WordPress Themes, web design, and a comprehensive suite of Internet marketing services.