Personalizing Your Theme
As I mentioned in the "Selecting a Theme" page, you won't have extreme flexibility when it comes to changing the look of the theme you choose if you only have the free version of the software. However, there are a few things that you can change.
Changing Fonts
Changing the look of your website's title and text can give your website a different feel.
Your website title, paragraph titles, and paragraph text can be changed by going into the Design Menu and selecting "Design Options." This will allow you to change the font, color, and size of the title of your website. These changes may not seem like they could change the look of your site, but they can actually change it quite a bit. Take a look at the screen shot below where I changed several attributes of the text on this website. It makes quite a difference!
Your website title, paragraph titles, and paragraph text can be changed by going into the Design Menu and selecting "Design Options." This will allow you to change the font, color, and size of the title of your website. These changes may not seem like they could change the look of your site, but they can actually change it quite a bit. Take a look at the screen shot below where I changed several attributes of the text on this website. It makes quite a difference!
Adding a Logo
Having a company logo goes a long way when you're trying to convey professionalism. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to have a graphic designer (or a degree in graphic design!) to have a logo! You can create free logos online (read the fine print - some of them won't let you use the logo online and others will) or you can get professional logos made for next to nothing (I've seen gigs on Fiverr.com where people offer to make you a logo for $5!!).
Adding a logo to your Weebly page is as simple as uploading a picture. Check out the screen shot below where I added a logo.
Adding a logo to your Weebly page is as simple as uploading a picture. Check out the screen shot below where I added a logo.
So you see that there are ways to make a website look and feel more personal or professional. If you really want a logo, try creating one yourself or have one made. Like I said, there are very cheap ways to get a logo and they go a long way.
A Trick for Using a Font Not Offered in Weebly
Let's say that you don't want to pay for a logo, but you don't necessarily like the font choices in Weebly. There are literally thousands of free fonts that you can dowload online. You can't import those fonts into Weebly, but you can use a free photo editing software, like Paint.net, to create a new text logo. I downloaded a free font that looks like the work of a graphic designer, but it's really just a free font.
You can do something like this yourself in just a few minutes. Here are the steps:
- Go to www.1001freefonts.com and find a font that you like.
- Download the font using the download button that corresponds to your operating system (I'm a Windows User, so if you're a Mac user, these instructions won't work for you - sorry!).
- The file will be downloaded in .zip format. Unzip the file and then place the font file on your Desktop.
- Go into the Control Panel of your computer and find the Fonts section. (I did this by clicking the Windows Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Fonts.)
- Open another window that shows the contents of your Desktop.
- Drag the font file that you just downloaded from the Desktop to the Fonts file.
- Open a free photo-editing software program (as I stated earlier, I use Paint.net, which you will have to download if you've never used it before, but I like it better than Paint, and it's free!).
- Create a new document and make the background transparent (you can do this by using the eraser function to erase all of the white background - make sure to set the brush width really high so you can quickly erase all of the background and not risk leaving some white there).
- Use the Text tool to write the name of your website. The font that you downloaded and pulled into the Fonts folder will be listed in the Font drop-down list.
- Save the file as a .png image (that's the only file type that will save the transparent background).
- Come back to Weebly and upload your image as a logo. It will hover over the background at the top of the page, and look like you chose the font within Weebly!
- Tah-dah!!