CSS is used with XHTML and HTML to define the way a web page appears and is formatted. For example, with CSS you can fancy-up and design your web pages so they have attractive text, create unique headings, have paragraphs with different looks, divide your page using columns and banners, arrange pictures and graphics with precision, and have text that is enhanced with rollover effects or styled however you imagine. There is much, much more you can do with CSS. CSS is cool stuff.

CSS is way to separate the presentation of a web page (the way it looks) away from its structure (its XHTML/HTML). XHTML/HTML is used to provide the structure of a web page, while CSS adds the design to the web page that makes the XHTML/HTML look good. Separating the structure of a web page from its appearance (CSS) will make your web page creation and management easier.

CSS The Missing Manual

If you want all paragraphs in your Web site to always appear in a certain font family, size, and color, you could accomplish this by adding a Font tag with the needed formatting attributes to each and every paragraph in each and every web page of your web site. This adds a lot of work to your web development, and swells the file size of each of your web page files because many instances of the same Font tag and its attributes will have to be added to format each paragraph.

With CSS, you can designate and define the look you want for all paragraphs on all the web pages of your Web site. You can place all of your CSS styling for your Web site into an external file and link to the CSS external file from within your XHTML/HTML web pages.

The web pages will use the style sheet to determine how the different parts of the web page look. When you associate an external style sheet with a web page, then the web page will use the style definitions in the external style sheet to create how the web page appears. This makes changing the way your Web site or blog looks very easy.

With an external style sheet, you can quickly and easily change the way how all of the paragraphs look on all of your web pages by simply editing the styles sheet file. There is no need to go back to each and every web page and change the Font tag and its attributes in each and every paragraph when you want to make the paragraphs look different.

With CSS external style sheet files, you change one file. This CSS file then is used by every page on your Web site to display content and information with the style you want. Can you see how much of a work and time saver CSS is?

CSS Benefits:

• CSS gives you many more formatting options than XMTL/HTML does.
• CSS can add a background image to your web pages, and you can control whether or not the background image repeats (or tiles).
• Because CSS eliminates the constant use of the Font tag to create a web page’s look, web page file size is less when CSS is used. Web pages will load faster when CSS is used.
• Because all of the styles that create how your Web site looks can be put into one special style sheet file, changing or updating the way your Web site looks is much faster and easier. Change one CSS file, instead of many XHTML/HTML files.

Here are some very simple examples of how CSS can change the way your content appears. I’ve created three separate paragraph styles and added them to the style sheet of my WordPress theme for this blog. The example text in the paragraphs feature an excerpt of The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln:

A paragraph CSS styled using font-size: large; font-weight: bold; color: Red;

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A paragraph CSS styled using font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; color: Blue;

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

A paragraph CSS styled using font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal; color: Green;

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

This paragraph is another example of CSS styling, a red border was added to this paragraph using CSS. All of the above example paragraphs had their styles changed without using the Format HTML tag. CSS was used instead, for example, here is how the first paragraph appears as code:

<p class="RedPara">“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”</p> <p>

class=”RedPara” is the code where the CSS styling is applied to the first paragraph. The class=”RedPara” means that I have created a CSS rule (or style) in my external style sheet named RedPara, and that CSS style should be applied to that particular paragraph. In this case, the text of the paragraph is shown in red, with a large font size, and in bold. Likewise, I created other CSS rules (or styles) for the above paragraphs shown with blue and green text.

You can do many, many, things with CSS to enhance the presentation of your Web sites and blogs. This explanation does not even scratch the surface of all there is to discuss about CSS. I’ll have more to say about CSS later!

A WordPress theme is what makes your WordPress blog look the way it does.

A theme is made up of many files (they are called template files) and they work together to create the presentation of your WordPress blog. The colors, where certain parts of your blog’s interface are placed, the graphics, are all part of your blog’s theme. A WordPress theme provides the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for your blog, it’s a way to "skin" your blog.

Many WordPress themes are available, many of them are free and some are premium themes that you pay for. There are good WordPress themes and there are bad ones too. Designing a WordPress theme is something you can learn to do. Many talented people design WordPress themes and earn money for their efforts.

When you have your own self-hosted WordPress blog, when you Own Your Own Blog, you can have whatever theme you want for your blog. You can even design your own WordPress blog theme from scratch if you want. Learn more about WordPress themes from the horse’s mouth at WordPress.org

You are not stuck with your WordPress blog theme once you choose it. Through the WordPress Dashboard, you can choose a different theme from the various themes you have installed with your WordPress blog. Changing to a new theme is as simple as making a few clicks. If you are like most WordPress bloggers, when you start your blog you probably will install a number of themes to experiment with until you find the one that’s perfect for you and your blog. That’s a great thing about WordPress themes … there is no "correct" theme. You select the blog theme that you want. A WordPress theme is not cast in stone, if you know how, you can tweak a theme and customize it the way you want.

WordPress has an official directory for locating themes you can use for your WordPress blog. These WordPress themes are free for you to download and use. You can search the WordPress Theme Directory for different styles of themes and you may preview the themes. Free WordPress Theme Directory

The theme I chose for www.wpblogsandwebsites.com is DeepBlue by Daily Blog Tips. This theme has two columns and I use the version with the narrower column on the right.

The description of this theme by its designer; "DeepBlue is an elegant, two column WordPress theme. It is advertising ready, and it comes with several advanced features, including Feedburner integration, author comment styling and search engine optimization."

I chose this theme because I like it and I think it represents well what I want to do with this blog. I am capable with PHP, XHTML, and CSS so I have tweaked the DeepBlue theme somewhat. I replaced the top horizontal navigation menu bar that came with the theme, to a drop-down horizontal navigation menu bar that I prefer. I also altered the header.php and the footer.php files (these are some of the theme’s template files) to change the appearance somewhat of the top and bottom of this blog. I am using various plugins to add some features to this blog, so I have gone into some files of the theme template and added some code to make these plugins work the way I want them to. Nothing to complicated really, just some minor PHP, XHTML, and CSS tweaking.

I wound up with a blog presentation that I like. Over time, I’m sure I’ll tweak it more, and maybe someday I’ll switch to a different theme if I think that needs to be done. Remember, WordPress themes are not cast in stone! You can switch themes and tweak theme as you desire.

It’s very easy to find free WordPress themes. Perform a Google search for "free WordPress theme" and you’ll get more results than Carter has oats. I got 45,600,000 results as I wrote this post. Browsing around for that perfect theme for your blog may take some time. Find one you like.

Here are a couple of videos about WordPress themes I think you’ll find helpful:

You might need to increase the volume with this below video. Or, maybe I need my ears cleaned out. Yeah, hunh!