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Help with theme and customization

  1. babyrabies
    Member

    Hello all! This is my first post here, so I apologize in advance if this question gets asked a lot. I searched the forums, but couldn't come up with an answer to my question. I like the current look of my blog (Fresh Bananas) but for some reason I can't add links to my sidebar, only the blogroll. I added the links widget, but I'm not seeing where I can physically add the links so they appear on my page. Can anyone tell me?

    Also, I found a great free theme at wordpressthemes.com and have downloaded it to my computer, but I have no idea how to replace my current theme with it. Can that even be done?

  2. raincoaster
    Member

    You add links on Dashboard --> Blogroll --> add links. It's silly not to have them all the same name, but the widget is called Links and the back end is called Blogroll.

    If you want a completely different widget with a different list of links, you can use a text widget instead and just enter them in as HTML.

    As for the second part, no, it cannot be done. We here at WordPress.com share the guts of our blogs's software with everyone else using a given theme, so if you were able to change the template you'd change it for everyone. The only way to change the look of your blog is to pick a different template from those available on the Presentations page, add a custom header (several themes let you do this) or custom colours (which you can do in Garland), or learn CSS and then buy the CSS upgrade, which allows you to edit the CSS files to change the look.

    The downloadable themes are all for self-hosted blogs using software from WordPress.org; we can't use them here.

  3. babyrabies
    Member

    Thanks so much for your help! I'm looking into wordpress.org right now.

  4. sulz
    Member

    if i'm not mistaken, fresh bananas don't really allow widgets. another similar theme is fauna. if you try other themes that are available you can put any widget in and it will be displayed.

  5. justjennifer
    Member

    Apparently not all themes are created equal, but is there a way to preview a theme in the control panel without committing to it?

  6. raincoaster
    Member

    Not at present. But if you go back to your previous theme, all your widgets and such are still there.

  7. justjennifer
    Member

    Hmm, OK. Maybe as a future feature on the Global Dashboard? :)

  8. timethief
    Member

    @justjennifer
    Engtech has done reviews of the themes, their features and known bugs. http://internetducttape.com/tools/wordpress/wordpress-theme-reviews/
    Wp management and staff have said that they do not want to provide theme details.

    There are no "basic universal" theme templates. All are unique and every one brought over from wordpress.org must be adapted to run on the wp-MU (multi-user) software here. In most cases when the adapting is done the full features of the original theme are not available. I hasten to add that I'm not sharing this for the purpose of deterring you from sending in a feedback. If you want to request this as a feature please go ahead.

    P.S. Actually Fresh Bananas does have widgets. But Ambiru, Green Marinee, Fauna and Supposedly Simple do not have widgets, regardless of what the Presentation page says.

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