How to Make Your WordPress.com Blog a Little More Fancy…For Free!
Last time we talked about redirecting your WordPress.com subdomain on your own domain name.
If you’d like to stick with the WordPress.com infrastructure, that’s ok. There are plenty of things you can do in order to make it your own.
Theme
Think of themes in WordPress as the skin of your website. Theme controls everything from font to design and everything in between.
You’ll be able to choose from many themes (paid to free!) by going to Appearance > Themes.
Make it a website
By default, your WordPress.com site is a blog, so it is set to have a stream of your latest posts. If you’d prefer more of a website (with a traditional homepage, other pages, and specific page for your blog feed), you can convert your blog to a website in just a few easy steps.
First, you’ll need to create the page you’d like to use as your homepage. In order to do this, go to Pages > Add New and create your page. My recommendation would be to create a page called “Home.” Add your content and publish.
Then, create a page for your blogposts to go. Here, my recommendation would be to create a page called “Blog.” Do not add any content here. Publish the page.
Last but not least, go to Settings > Reading and change “Front page displays” from “your latest posts” to “A static page.” Then, select the page for your front page (“Home”) and your posts page (“Blog”). And you’re done!
You can add additional pages to your site by going back and simply adding more pages.
Menu
You may find that if you create new pages, they aren’t showing up on your website or blog. Depending on the design you chose, you’ll need to add pages to your menu.
This is a simple drag and drop function. Go to Appearance > Menus and follow the instructions to add a page that you’ve created, then drag it to the order you’d like it to be in!
Additional Options
Check out the options within the Settings menu in order to make additional changes to your blog or site.
With WordPress.com, you’re limited by being unable to add plugins, but you are able to make changes to things like social media options, commenting, and more!