From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Give yourself a new header.

12. Adding a Custom Header.

One of the features often requested on Windows Live Spaces was the ability to add your own header to your Space. On WordPress, most of the available themes allow you to do just that, so this how-to takes you through how to add your own header to your blog. To illustrate how to add a header, I’m going to use my testing blog on here which at the moment is using the Elegant Grunge theme.  To tie in with that theme, I am going to add a Grungy type header so first of all, I need to grab a free background that is both darkish and grungy. I do this by simply doing a search using either Bing or Google to find that type of background to use for my header.

Spaces to WordPress step by step. Using Live Writer with WordPress.

11. Setting up Live Writer with your new WordPress blog.

Quite a few Spacers like to use Live Writer for editing and publishing their blog posts. Up until now, Live Spaces was of course the default blogging platform in use in Live Writer, but now that we are all being transferred to WordPress.com, the new version of Live Writer will in future make use of WordPress as its default blogging platform instead. It works in exactly the same way with WordPress blogs as it has always done with Live Spaces, and in fact the new version of Live Writer also includes some new features for your WordPress blog which weren’t available in the older version and with Spaces as those features simply weren’t present on that platform.  So let’s begin using Live Writer with WordPress.

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Keeping in touch with friends.

10. Keeping in touch with your friends.

So you’ve moved your blog over to WordPress. You’ve settled in with a nice shiny new theme. Sorted out your Widgets. Published a post. But, how do you find your ex Spacers friends on here and more importantly, keep in touch with them and their blog posts etc?

1. Firstly, go back to Windows Live and try to access their Space on there. If they haven’t moved yet, you will still be able to visit it and also in a comment you could just leave your new WordPress.com address so that they will easily be able to find your new home on here. If they have already moved over here, but have not been able to use their old name etc on WordPress, you should be automatically directed to their new blog on WordPress when  you try to access their Space from their Profile page on Windows Live.

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Share and Publicise.

9. Let’s Share and Publicise!

If  you have friends on Facebook, Twitter etc, you can allow the Publicise option for all of your blog posts, so that an automatic announcement is made whenever you publish a new post to your WordPress blog. You can also enable a choice of Sharing  buttons to be placed at the bottom of every post to enable your readers to share that post if they enjoyed reading it. Firstly I will tackle the Publicise feature on WordPress. Of course, for those of you who don’t want everyone to know about your blog posts or to enable your readers to be able to share your posts, then simply ignore this particular post.

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Adding some Widgets.

8. Adding some Widgets.

As most of you ex Spacers will be aware, on Live Spaces, you could add a variety of Modules to your Spaces page.  Well, you can do the same thing on WordPress. The difference is they are referred to as Widgets. Usually they will be added to your other column on your Home page known as the Sidebar.  Depending on which theme you have chosen to use, this might be on the left hand side of your writing area, or the right hand side.  You can place as many Widgets in your sidebar as you wish, and most themes also allow you to also make use the area underneath your main post area as well for Widgets. Adding Widgets is fairly easy to do, so let’s add some shall we?

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Creating a Page.

7. Creating a Page.

For this how-to I’m going to be creating a page containing some info that I would like my readers to be able to access, but you can create anything in a Page. We didn’t have such things as Pages or Menu’s on Spaces and therefore its a new concept to learn for any ex Spacers. The new version of Windows Live Writer allows you to compose a WordPress page so easily that I will use that for this how-to.  I will be showing you all how to use Live Writer with WordPress at some time in the future, but as WordPress is now the default blogging platform in Writer, its as easy to set up as Live Spaces originally was.

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. A Theme with a Menu.

6. Choosing a Theme with a Menu.

1. In this post, we’ll change our theme again to another one, this time stipulating different features namely the inclusion of a Tabbed Menu for our readers to be able to access across the top of our Header. Firstly we’ll be uploading our own header into our theme and changing the background with our own. choice. So we need a theme that contains, Custom Menus, Header and Background. These are the features by which to conduct our theme search. From your WordPress Navibar, click on My Blogs, then select Dashboard as before and then Appearance, Themes.

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Adjusting other Settings.

5. Adjusting your other Settings.

Because the whole settings area on WordPress is so comprehensive  and would need quite as few posts to explain how to adjust each area in detail, I have decided that it might be more prudent to just show a screen grab of those areas that you might need to change to suit you, such as the Writing, Reading, Discussion, Privacy and Sharing areas. My tip is to work your way through each area of settings and see if there is anything that you might not feel happy about. If there is any terminology or settings that you don’t understand, then do get in touch with me and I’ll try my best to help if I can or point you in the direction of where you can get help if not. I need to move onto other areas that ex Spacers are more concerned about such as how to keep in touch with each other on here etc, so this post is just a synopsis of the rest of those settings, and my next posts will be moving onto other areas that Spacers seem more concerned about.

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. General Settings.

4. Changing those General Settings.

In later posts, we will continue to tweak our new theme by giving it a header and a background, but for the next few posts, I intend to take you through adjusting the basic settings that you may need to change in your WordPress Dashboard. I feel that the Dashboard is one of the best there is, but it contains so many areas to tweak and set up, that it can be a daunting task to anyone who is new to WordPress.com. It would take far too many posts for me to cover every single choice and area covered by the Dashboard, so I intend to only cover those areas that I feel are the most likely to need changing by most new users. So, let’s make a start shall we?

From Spaces to WordPress step by step. Choosing a theme.

3. Choosing a new Theme.

As soon as your new blog on WordPress has been set up, you will be assigned the Twenty Ten default theme. This theme is pretty versatile. You can choose to use your own header and select your own background, either a base colour or alternatively a background picture. So Twenty Ten allows you to personalise it and make it look pretty unique and different to other blogs on WordPress that use this same theme. Twenty Ten already gives some different choices of header pictures for you to choose from.  However, if this default theme is not to your taste, then its fairly easy to choose another one instead. Maybe you intend to use your new WordPress blog as a photo display blog and would prefer a darker background or a wider area in which to show off your pristine photos?  Whatever your personal tastes and requirements, there is sure to be at least one theme on WordPress that will fulfil your needs.