Step 4 - Customizing your Website
You picked your Theme now! Great! You can now type the name of your website in the browser and see what your not-so-ready-yet site will look like. Don't worry though! Obviously nothing has been done to it yet, so it looks 1) plain, 2) not exactly the way you want it to look, 3) has random things you wouldn't necessary put on the site and 4) lacks some more important aspects. We will take care of everything step by step and hopefully it will start to look like an actual website.
Let's start by customizing your website. Go to Appearances and Themes again. Find your theme and click on Customize. If for some reason you do not see it, maybe hover over your theme, as it should be visible though. The right site of the screen shows your website. The left column says: "You are customizing xxx website." Below you will find the following things:
1) Site Title & Tagline. Click on the arrow next to the wording and fill out the necessary fields. Put the name of your website there, just the name, not the address, so you don't have to type com: for example, bellebebeblog, and a tagline which can be either a little description about what is found on your website, or maybe a catchy saying that will draw people's attention. The tagline for my blog is, "Everything for a baby that a mom needs." If you are not prepared for writing your tagline just yet, simply save the information and come back here later when you are ready.
2) Colors. You can choose background color here. Simply click on Select Color and experiment with all the different shades.
3) Header Image. Here you can choose whatever image you would like to use as the header of your page. You could also put the image of your logo here (if you have one available). Do not worry if your logo is not set, or done yet. I will cover this subject later on.
4) Background image. Again, you can customize your background here. Many people leave it as it is, but you can always click on the little arrow and select your own image. Experiment as much as you can, as nothing will stay there permanently until you save the information.
5) Widgets. Let's leave it for now as it is a much broader topic that will be discussed more in depth later on.
6) Static Front Page. Here, when you click on the arrow, you can choose from two options: 1) you want your front page to display your posts ( go to bellebebeblog.com if you want to see firsthand what it means) or 2) you can choose a static page, which means that you will need to set up a page that will always show up when somebody types your website's URL. Only from there will people be able to click through pages and see your posts.