I just created a blog at wordpress.com for a small project and wanted to give my wordpress blog a different look without much work. I chose to use the standard Kubrick theme. The easiest way to achieve a different look is to change the header image. You can create a quick and effective header for Kubrick and other themes using the process described below. Now although this is written from the perspective of using the Kubrick theme with the options on Wordpress.com the principles are similar for any header image for Wordpress (how you apply it and the sizes required will be different of course).
- Go to iStockphoto, join if you haven’t already.
- You need to find an image now. The iStockphoto search functionality is very powerful, this is probably the most time consuming part - i.e. choosing an image that suits your blog.
There are a bunch of tips on ways to find great images on iStockphoto on this Squidoo lens: iStockphoto Tips (scroll down to the section called ‘iStockphoto Tips: finding that perfect photo’).
What kind of image do you need? That is really up to you, but if you are going to have text over the image you need to make sure the image is flat enough to read text on (you can always manipulate/filter the image to achieve this). You can search iStockphoto just for photos with a horizontal orientation by selecting the option in the left-hand column when searching. Remember you can apply effects and crop the image to achieve what you want. Ideally you are going to need an image at least 760 pixels wide (the standard Kubrick header image is 760 x 200 pixels), so you probably need the “small” size which is normally two iStock credits.
Remember you could save a dollar or two by looking at what iStock is currently offering as a free stock photo, or you could raid the dollar bin. Below is an example image from the dollar bin that could be used as a background by cropping and manipulating the image in Photoshop.
- Found your image? Purchase/download it and then open it in Photoshop or your chosen image editor.
- You are going to need to crop it to 760 x 200 pixels - so choose the slice you want.
- Apply any filters you need … Hopefully you chose an image that would work with text over it, but if the image too busy to read text placed over it you have two options. You could just add your text to the image and then hide text over the header, or you can flatten or reduce the colors by applying filters and other effects. Be creative!
- Go to your blogs admin area at wordpress.com and choose ‘custom header image’ under the ‘presentation’ tab. Upload your image. You can always revert if you are not satisfied. You have the option on this page to hide text over the image or change the text color from the default if necessary to make the text more readable.
That is it! Finding the image is probably the most time consuming part, but iStock makes that easy.
