Weblog Hits

Ok, I’ve had enough with the default masthead that comes with the WordPress, so I finally made something a little more eye pleasing. It’s not the best in the world, but not as embarassing as the default look. Well, I didn’t plan on doing this, but perhaps I should make this a quick tutorial in case anyone else out there would like to know how to do this.

Step 1:

To get started, first right click and save your default masthead to your desktop. It should be a blue masthead that looks something like this:

Step 2:
Using Photoshop or other image editing software, select the white border on the outside of the blue and then COPY the selection.

Step 3:

Hopefully you have already found a good background for your masthead. If not find one and open it up. Now simply pasted your selected area to this background picture. Add text or other graphics if desired:

Step 4:

What I do from this point is crop in the white area and then paste this on top of the original blue masthead image. By default, your masthead is probably stored in a location on your server at:

/wp-content/themes/default/images/kubrickheader.jpg

To make things easy, safe your new masthead as kubrickheader.jpg and upload over the old one. Save the old one if you like as a backup.

Now, your new masthead should show up on your blog. But, you probably notice your blog title overlapping your masthead making things look screwy. You will also want your masthead clickable so readers can use it to easily navigate to your home page. To do this you will need to go into your blog admin and click on “Presentation”, then click “Theme Editor”. On the right click the link that says “Header”.

It should say at the top: “Editing header.php”. Select and copy everything and save this as a backup on your computer in case you make a mistake. The section you will need to edit is near the bottom of the header.php file.

At this point I will send you to a more detailed explanation of how to edit the code. Click here to continue…

Now, what does this have to do with increasing traffic to your blog? Well, nothing directly. It has more to do with making your blog pleasing to your visitors…so they will keep coming back.

[tags]blog,blogs,blogging,Blogging+Tips,wordpress,weblogs,blog-tips[/tags]

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 5:53 am and is filed under Tips and Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.