One of the benefits of using WordPress is the flexibility it provides. The coding that controls the design is broken up into segments. This means you can easily adjust certain aspects of the blog, such as the sidebar or footer, without affecting other areas. You can also make certain changes to the main-page template that won’t affect the individual blog posts, and vice-versa. Pretty handy. Because of this segmentation, you can customize a WordPress theme more so than a Blogger template (another popular blogging program).

Of course, it helps to understand HTML and PHP coding. Your WordPress theme is mainly built around these two types of web code. So if you want to customize some aspect of the theme, you’ll need to be familiar with HTML /XHTML and PHP. Are you familiar with these things? If so, you simply need to find your way to the “Editor” section of your control panel, and edit the appropriate file for the area in question (header, footer, sidebar, etc.). If you’re not familiar with HTML or PHP, you’ll probably need to get help from someone who is. It really depends on what you’re trying to customize, within the theme.

The Parts of a WordPress Theme

See the image to the right, down below? This is a snapshot I took of the theme files within the WordPress interface. These are the files you would need to change in order to customize the appearance of your blog. To reach them, you would simply log in to your WordPress program and then select “Appearance” >> “Editor” from the left-hand menu. After that, you’ll see something similar to the image below.

The types and names of files that show up will vary, depending on the WordPress blog theme you are using. Some themes use a basic structure, and therefore don’t require many template files. Others are more complex, and require more files to support that complexity.

In the image to the right, you’re seeing the following items:

• 404 Template — You probably know this better as “Page Not Found.” If somebody searches for a page on my blog that does not exist (or has been deleted), they will see my 404 page. I can change the message they see by customizing this part of my WordPress theme.
• Comments – This one is self-explanatory. It controls the look and feel of the comments section of the blog.
• Footer and Header — These are also pretty straightforward. This is the coding that makes up the top and bottom of your site.
• Main Index — Any changes you make here will only apply to the main / home page. In most cases, at least.
• Page Template — This controls the appearance and structure of your pages.
• Sidebar — This is the area you were asking about. If you want to customize the sidebar of your WordPress theme, you would do it through this file.
• Single Post — This controls the actual posts / entries of your blog.
• Stylesheet – Here’s another important file. If you want to customize the appearance of common elements (like the fonts, colors and overall layout), you would need adjust your stylesheet.

Before You Customize Anything…

You should always save a copy of each file before changing it. That way, you can always put the original code back in place if you “break” something. I can’t stress this enough. Save the original first, and then make changes to it. You can do this in one of two ways. You can copy the code from the file in question, and then paste it into a text file. Or you can use an FTP tool to download the file in question from your hosting account, and save it on your computer. Either way, you need to have a backup before you try to customize a WordPresss blog with the theme editor.

I would also recommend making one change at a time, and then viewing the blog to see how it affected the design. It’s a lot easier to undo a single mistake than a dozen of them. This is also a good way to become more familiar with the inner workings of your blogging program and design files.

This article answers the question: How do I customize my WordPress theme design? If you found this article helpful, be sure to bookmark this site for future reference. There are many more blogging tips coming soon.

If you asked an Internet marketing company (which I’m not), they would tell you about all kinds of “secret” techniques for boosting your traffic levels. In truth, there’s nothing secret about the process at all. Do you want to know the one thing that will increase blog traffic, more than anything else? Here it is. Prepare to be amazed…

Create a high-quality blog that’s worth visiting.

If you can do this, everything else will take care of itself. Here’s what I mean. Let’s talk about the different ways people can find you online. Most people will reach your site in one of three ways:

1. They will come from another site that is linking to you.
2. They will find you through the search engines.
3. They will visit your blog directly, by typing the URL / web address.

If you publish great information on a regular basis, you will increase traffic through all three of these paths. The more useful your blog is, the more people who will link to it. This helps you with items #1 and #2 above. The steady acquisition of inbound links (from other sites) will improve your “site referral” traffic as well as your search engine rankings. As for item #3 above, people will remember your blog and revisit often if they find it useful or engaging in some way.

Here’s the bottom line. There are millions of blogs online today. Literally. So launching a new one is similar to putting another grain of sand on a beach. If you want to attract links, boost your search engine rankings, and increase traffic to your blog, you have to develop quality content. Everything else is secondary to this.

More Tips for Blog Traffic

This blog is just a hobby of mine. So I’m not concerned with how it ranks in the search engines, or how many people link to it. But I do put a lot of effort into my network of real estate blogs, and I’m very concerned with the traffic they receive. Here is how I increase blog traffic to those websites:

• I publish often. Quality of content is most important, but quantity helps too. I post at least one article per day on my other blogs. This gives people a reason to come back. It also makes those websites serve as valuable resources, which encourages other webmasters to link to them.
• I create useful, in-depth information. The Internet is overcrowded with “puff” pieces. These are articles people write just for search engine visibility. You’ve probably encountered this kind of content online. It doesn’t say anything specific, and it’s not very useful. It’s just full of puffery. Nobody will link to an article like that, and nobody will remember it either.
• I do plenty of audience research. The best thing you can do to attract a target audience is to find out what interest them. You can use keyword research tools like this one at Google to generate topic ideas. You can also visit web forums related to your industry to see which topics are generating the most buzz. Talking directly to your customers / readers certainly helps too. The more you can learn about your audience, the better you serve them with useful information.
• I seek feedback constantly. About once a week, I check my website analytics to see which pages / articles are generating the most traffic. This helps me understand what interests my audience the most. I also check my backlinks (links from other websites to mine) to see what pages are attracting the most links. It only makes sense to create more of these pages.
• I create a lot of lists and step-by-step tutorials. These are helpful to my readers, and they also attract links from other bloggers and web publishers. This improves the overall search engine visibility of any website.

These are just a few of the things you can do to bring in more visitors. Just don’t forget about the conversion side of things. All of the traffic in the world won’t help you if people simply leave the site. So you need to work on your lead- and sales-generation at the same time.

This article answers the question: How do I increase my blog traffic to find new customers? There are many more Q&A sessions on the way. Be sure to check back often.