I get asked this all the time, so here’s a quick reference. You change styles in Wordpress templates either by editing the CSS stylesheets for a template or the PHP templates themselves.

Before messing with a theme, you should create a ‘child’ theme — otherwise your changes may get overwritten next time you upgrade your installation. There’s a simple guide to creating child themes here and check the Wordpress Codex for more thorough installation guides.

If you’re not sure what you’re doing, it’s probably a good idea to start with a stock template and fiddle with its CSS. You can do this through the Appearance -> Themes -> and -> Edit function in Wordpress itself or edit the files on your desktop and then upload them. Better still, put a ‘test’ installation on your own computer and upload the whole ‘child theme’ when you’ve finished, then you won’t wreck your ‘real’ site — or display your mistakes to the public!

Click here for instructions on installing LAMP on an existing Ubuntu installation and follow the longer instructions for installing Wordpress here

As you get more confident, you can get more ambitious and – yes – it’s often easier to blend in bits of existing code but you really will need at least some understanding of CSS to get started. If you’ve never used CSS before, W3 Schools CSS Tutorial will get you started.

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