New to WordPress and have few questions

I’m new too and not too impressed with the forum response currently!
i see you are lacking in that department too so i’ll try to help.
one place you could look is wordpress.tv
Graham.

Thanks!! I will check it out! I want to make a nice website and figure it shouldnt be to hard to find some good tutorials but google has failed me today lol.

Or what the best drag and drop visual editor plug in is?

You are looking for themes. There are drag and drop themes. But I don’t like drag and drop themes because they tend to sell you ‘the rest of the features’ as long as you buy the premium theme. There are good drag and drop, but I still prefer to take the few more minutes and learn how to make a good site.

Can anyone recommend a tutorial site on how to customize my site to make it look really nice?

From a the point of view of a beginner. The reason beginners use WordPress is because of the themes. Go to appearance>themes>install themes and look through those.

(quick tip. if you don’t want to have to wait the few seconds it takes for each page to load go here ) and check off one column, two column. This way you can see most of the themes. Then if you see something you like enter it in ‘install themes’ on your wordpress and install it from there.)

Yeah, you don’t even need to learn CSS. Look through the 700-1000 themes and see if there is anything you like.

Then there are things you might want to modify….

Header Picture (simply go to header and upload a different picture, only works if the theme has pictures)
What you have on sidebars (ex. widgets)
Where your blog is located
How your menu is arranged (ex. did you make a custom menu so you can order it as you like.)

Look at the theme options to see what the theme is capable of.

You won’t need to know programming to make a simple site.

Wow, thank you sooo much, you made me feel tons better about trying to do this myself ?? I was looking at Themeforest and Elegant Themes to try and get something a little nicer than the free ones, and I know that I want a responsive theme because that is what frustrated me and made me leave Squarespace was the lack of consistency throughout browsers for my site. Do you have a recommendation for a theme from either of those sites? I want something nice looking that doesnt scream “simple run of the mill blog” but since I am blogging about being a mom I dont need anything to sharp or edgy.

and I know that I want a responsive theme because that is what frustrated me and made me leave Squarespace was the lack of consistency throughout browsers for my site.

yeah, wordpress is great, and free, has high flexibility and freedom to customize, and is great for beginners to learn (especially b/c of the Wp community, ex forum and Wordcamps and regular people such as non programmers and bloggers who use it )

Do you have a recommendation for a theme from either of those sites? I want something nice looking that doesnt scream “simple run of the mill blog” but since I am blogging about being a mom I dont need anything to sharp or edgy.

sorry, I hadn’t used those sites before. I hope you find it! Finding the right theme feels great. (I’ve spent hours finding the perfect theme, and usually it ended up being one I already saw!)

Lol yes that is where I get so lost, I see soooo many good themes and forget the ones I wanted that I first saw. Are all wordpress themes customizable or is that a theme to theme basis. My problem with Squarespace was my site looked fine on Firefox, all my links were off on Chrome and the entire thing was smushed on IE, so I need a responsive theme so that doesnt happen right? Thank you for answering my questions, you are the most help I have had since starting blogging lol

Are all wordpress themes customizable or is that a theme to theme basis.

Yes. All wordpress themes are customizeable. You can change the backend code stuff by going to themes>edit theme (a little more advanced). The stylesheet is there and you can make changes for the whole site (you’ll later learn to a child theme is great for not messing up your theme, but that’ll come soon).

Also, the simple things that can be customized really easily are the sidebar widgets, adding on plugins, removing/changing photo on the header, changing the order, what pages/post categories are displayed on the navigation menu, and quickly which theme is being used.

Now certain themes have what’s called themes options which is listed under appearance. Usually the theme options are what make the theme unique in terms of what can be customized. The theme options part usually makes it much easier to make customizations in whatever is unique in the theme.

I haven’t tried any, but I bet paid for themes make this part much easier.

My problem with Squarespace was my site looked fine on Firefox, all my links were off on Chrome and the entire thing was smushed on IE, so I need a responsive theme so that doesnt happen right?

I haven’t tried squarespace. hmm…responsive theme. I’m not sure what you mean by that, but sounds like it’s a Squarespace problem. The only problems I had between browsers happened with internet explorer throwing something slightly off. It’s very unlikely you’ll have browser problems. I’d trust most free themes on the WordPress theme directory. And if you paid for it, it’ll probably be good too. Usually cross browser compatibility isn’t an issue when looking for themes.

haha, I’m glad I could help. I love when people(especially beginners) are able to do what they were trying to do.

@rafa1, Hi! Do you happen to know anything about this sort of issue?
– I edited some of the content through my wordpress dashboard yesterday. After that, it was reflected on the site too. However, after some time, the URL started showing, ‘This site is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.’ This has persisted for more than a night now. Please let me know if you have any idea about this problem.
Thanks very much.

hello deepakjoshi1! hmm…did you make any changes to theme files? btw, perhaps u want to make a new thread so more people can see your question