editing themes….you gotta be a programmer!?

  • Ok i thought that the big thing about wordpress was how easy it is to use. I am trying to take a plain theme like “clean simple white” and add my own header image and stuff, but when i go to theme editor you have to understand code and know what to edit! clean simple white HAS no default header image so i have no idea how to replace their plain blog title in the header with my image logo. i don’t know how to work with php. this is NOT so easy.

    to top it off, there is a little sentence in italics underneath each page of code in theme editor “if this page were writable you could edit it.” which tells me that i CANNOT edit it?

    help! this is supposed to be so easy!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • well, you have an issue with your file permissions…that’s why you cannot edit.

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Changing_File_Permissions

    WordPress is very easy to use. You are not talking about using…you are talking about customizing. Customizing takes code, that’s how it works.

    If you don’t know how to do that, the choices are learn, pay someone, or find a theme that does what you want. There are a lot of themes out there, many offer the ability to change header images or a tonne of things through a menu

    But if you are dead set on a theme that doesn’t do what you want, you’ve got to figure out how to edit it.

    Thread Starter snapaholics

    (@snapaholics)

    ok so now i figure you have to edit the theme outside the dashboard…so i am using adobe golive and i’m here with all the code but still have no idea how to add an image as a header. how do people who don’t know anything about code do this???

    Thread Starter snapaholics

    (@snapaholics)

    ok so i got what you are saying. so if you want to customize a theme, you have to be able to edit the code. that would be ok except for i am not used to php. i have a theme with no default image in the header and i’m trying to ADD one.

    also if you are going to use adsense, do you have to pick a theme that specifically says it’s adsense ready?

    you don’t really need to know php at first. The php controls the wordpress output, just leave it alone, don’t do anything between the <?php and ?> tags.

    the rest is html and css. if you are doing basic designing stuff, you will add little bits of html to the .php files, and maybe alter stuff in the style.css file. Simple things like the color:#ffffff can be altered to change colours, etc….

    I learned by google and the codex on here. Trial and error, looking at other themes.

    Make backups of your theme first, then if you break something, you can reupload the working copy

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Designing_Headers

    here’s an example of codex stuff…. but googling something like add image to wordpress header would probably get you a long way too

    Thread Starter snapaholics

    (@snapaholics)

    are file permissions the reason why when i try to upload any theme besides WP classic or the default, my screen goes white and i also lose the dashboard? it just goes white. when i try to browse to the site, it’s just an empty white page. ok modify that….for some reason lightword shows up too. but other ones like magic background and constructor and more…they cause white screens.

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Make sure that the permissions of the directories are set to 755 and the files are set to 644.

    Thread Starter snapaholics

    (@snapaholics)

    ok i used fetch and went in and checkced permissions and they are already 644 and 755.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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