Chapter 5

Enhancing Your Blog with Themes, Widgets, and Upgrades

In This Chapter

arrow Giving your blog a new look

arrow Enhancing your theme with features

arrow Adding widgets to your sidebar

arrow Upgrading your free WordPress.com blog

arrow Giving your domain a name

You don’t want your blog to look identical to everyone else’s, do you? Although WordPress.com doesn’t give you the vast array of design options that you’d have by hosting your own blog, you do have some flexibility.

The great thing about the WordPress hosted service is how easily you can change your theme to one of the alternative designs available. What’s not so hot is that you can’t create your own custom theme. As I note later in this chapter, you can pay a fee to customize the CSS of the template you choose to use, but you need to be familiar with CSS to use this upgrade — and again, you’re limited to customizing only the templates that WordPress provides.

Most of the themes available on WordPress.com are free; however, a handful of Premium ...

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