How To Edit Wordpress Themes From Your Dashboard
August 18th, 2009
If you are like most people, you are probably extremely cautious when it comes to tinkering with things that you don’t know much about. Who just goes under the hood of a car with a wrench and a dream? Likewise, who just opens up a Wordpress theme and starts changing things when they have no idea of what they’re looking at?
I do 
When I first began using Wordpress I didn’t know anything about PHP, but I knew HTML and I had a basic knowledge of CSS. These different programming languages come together to create the layouts that we use on the Wordpress platform. Yes, it sounds really technical and complicated, but you would be surprised at how possible it is for you to perform minor edits to your own Wordpress themes, on your own, without anyone else’s help.
And it all starts with the Wordpress Themes Editor.
In the left sidebar on your dashboard there is a section called “Appearance (on older versions of Wordpress it will be a menu selection along the top navigation bar). From “Appearance” you can select “Editor”, which is the Theme Editor. This tool will allow you to choose which theme you want to edit and then open up the PHP and CSS files for direct editing. So, if you know a little bit about CSS, try opening your stylesheet (style.css) and poking around. See what you find. Most stylesheets are written with labels for each section of code, so you will know where the sidebar style code is and where go to find the specs for the header logo and footer, etc. So, for instance, if you want to make the text in your header logo a little bit smaller, you can open the style.css file in the Wordpress Theme Editor, scroll down until you find the header and/or logo and see if you can’t figure out where to go and change the pixel size of the logo text.
Really, its okay 
Just make sure that you keep a record of anything you change so if you change the wrong thing you can restore it without any panic.
Although these languages are programming languages, they are still languages; you don’t have to be fluent in French to visit France. Most people learn popular phrases and try to gain a general understanding of the culture before visitng a foreign country. If you had to know Frech backwards and forwards before you took that trip to Paris, you’d never go! It’s the same with HTML, CSS, and PHP. If you at least understand the function of what you’re looking at, you can possibly navigate through it to find and alter basic functions.
It’s like how my dad taught me how to check the oil levels in my car with the dip stick and how to pour in oil, antifreeze, windsheild wiper fluid, and brake fluid. I’m by no means a mechanic and I have no idea how to do anything major, like change a belt, but I can recognize some very basic things and even repair them.
Below are some resources that will help increase your basic knowledge, so you can at least edit the color and size of your text and maybe even add some wiper fluid
Resources from the authority on internet programming standards, W3.org (World Wide Web Consortium):
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
Getting Started with HTML – http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/
To your continued success,
I.C. Jackson
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