How to Edit Website Code on WordPress
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that’s frequently used to build websites. It’s actually one of the most popular CMS software platforms out there. In fact, it’s so popular that people use it to build their personal websites as well.
But if you’ve ever edited code on WordPress before, you’ll know that it’s not exactly the easiest platform to work with. It often requires a fair amount of experience to get things done. That’s probably because WordPress was built with web developers in mind and not designers. It was built to be as easy to setup and use as possible.
However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways for inexperienced designers to edit their WordPress sites. In this article, we’ll discuss one method that allows you to quickly and easily make changes to your WordPress site’s design while keeping things organized and tidy.
The Best Way to Edit WordPress Code
When you edit WordPress code (often referred to as “theme code”), you’re actually making changes to the look and functionality of your entire site. That means that if you want to make some design changes, you’ll have to go through the entire code of your site, which can be a cumbersome process. In addition, if you ever want to make additional changes to your site’s design, you’ll have to go back and edit the code all over again.
A much better way to edit WordPress code is to use a WordPress theme designed specifically for designers. Once you’ve installed this type of theme on your site, you’ll be able to make design changes simply by modifying the template files that make up the theme’s design. You won’t have to go through the entire code of your site to make these changes.
This method doesn’t just apply to making design changes to your site. You can use the same approach to modify the way your site functions as well. For example, you might want to use a different layout for a specific page or set of pages on your site. Or, you could add additional content to a specific area of your site. The possibilities are endless.
Finding a Suitable Design Theme
As mentioned above, WordPress was designed with web developers in mind. That means that when you look for a design theme to use with WordPress, you’re going to be presented with a selection of pre-made templates that can be customized to fit your needs. These templates usually fall into one of two categories: free and premium.
Free themes are excellent for quickly building a prototype site or a site with very limited functionality. They’re also an excellent choice if you don’t have a large budget to spend on premium themes. Free themes often come with a drag-and-drop page builder that allows you to quickly and easily create a functional website.
Premium themes, on the other hand, offer more features and are usually more polished than their free counterparts. They also cost more money, which means you’ll need to make a larger upfront investment. This can be a good choice if you want your site to have a certain look and feel (i.e., a professionally crafted website).
Using the Right Tools
Another important aspect of editing website code on WordPress is using the right tools. If you have experience editing HTML or CSS code on a regular basis, you’ll have no problems using tools like Notepad++ and Sublime Text to edit the code of your site.
If, however, you’ve never edited code before or are looking for an easier way to do so, you might want to consider investing in a tool specifically designed for WordPress. There are several options for WordPress tools out there, but if you have an active Facebook account, you might want to consider trying out Canva’s free WordPress tool. Canva makes creating websites easier by offering templates that you can use to build your site. With these templates, all you have to do is choose a layout and add content to the boxes on the template.
Once you’ve installed Canva on your site, you can make changes by simply clicking on the page and editing the template code as needed. It doesn’t get any easier than that!
Setting Up WordPress
Once you’ve found a suitable design theme for your site, you can set it up with WordPress. This process is very similar to setting up a regular website. You’ll first need to visit http://wordpress.org/ to get the official WordPress help website. From there, you can follow the instructions to create a new WordPress account if you don’t have one already. (You’ll need a WordPress account to use the CMS).
Once you’ve created a new account, you can Log in and go to settings > general > theme. Here, you can choose which theme you’d like to use for your site. Remember, you can’t use plugins with WordPress themes you create yourself (they’ll conflict with each other). Once you’ve selected a theme, click Save and your site will be updated with the new theme.
Making Simple Design Changes
If you’ve edited code before and are familiar with the process, making design changes to a WordPress site should be a simple matter of editing the theme’s template files. These files are located in the theme files > templates > page-templates folder. On the left side of this folder, you’ll see a list of all of the different templates used by the theme. (You can click view page source to see the code of any individual page).
To make simple changes to one of these templates, you can either use your favorite text editor or browse the folders manually. (To browse the folders manually, just right click on any of the template files and choose open in folder from the pop-up menu).
Once you’ve opened one of the page templates in your favorite text editor, you’ll see code that looks similar to this:
<h2>Title</h2>
<p>...<p>
</h2>
Each of these elements is contained within one of the page template files. To change the title of the page, simply change the h2 tag to have a different title.
To change the look of a page, you’ll need to edit the code inside the p tag. To do this, simply replace p with div. Now, when you refresh the page, you’ll see something that looks similar to this:
<h2>Title</h2>
<p>...<p>
</h2>
Each of these elements is contained within one of the page template files. To change the title of the page, simply change the h2 tag to have a different title.
To change the look of a page, you’ll need to edit the code inside the p tag. To do this, simply replace p with div. Now, when you refresh the page, you’ll see something that looks similar to this:
<h2>Title</h2>
<p>...<p>
</h2>
Each of these elements is contained within one of the page template files. To change the title of the page, simply change the h2 tag to have a different title.
To change the look of a page, you’ll need to edit the code inside the p tag. To do this, simply replace p with div. Now, when you refresh the page, you’ll see something that looks similar to this: