I love WooThemes – Premium WordPress Templates. My favorite theme of all is Fresh News by WooThemes. I use the theme for several of my blogs, and it looks spectacular on them all. This is my Woo Themes theme on one of my other blogs, FreakyFrugalite.com.
Fresh News theme for Freaky Frugalite.com blog.
It’s easy to customize the Fresh News header, called the “logo.” The creator of Fresh News, Magnus Jepson, has integrated the theme interface to change the logo from the WordPress Dashboard.
I’m going to assume that you already know how to install the Fresh News theme, that you know how to create a logo header, and that you know how to work within the Fresh News theme a little.
Things You Need:
Image-editing software
Fresh News theme
Logo design
How to Customize the Fresh News Woo Themes Header
1. Open your image-editing software. I use Paint Shop Pro, but you can use whatever you like: Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Pixelator, etc. Just make sure that the software can convert files into .png files.
2. Create your logo. IMPORTANT! The logo must be the exact dimensions of 520 x 80 pixels unless you are willing to tinker with the theme a little. My logos for a few of the blogs are a little wider, like 720 x 80. You may or may not be able to do that with your theme.
3. Save the image as a .png file, and remember the saved location. The .png file format will make the logo’s background transparent, if you so choose. You can see this in action by looking at the default Fresh News logo that came installed with the theme. Go to the Fresh News folder, and then to the Images folder. Look for the image named “logo-trans.” You can see the transparency of the default logo in the screenshot, below.
The .png format makes the background transparent. Done in Paint Shop Pro X2.
The transparency is a nice feature because through it, you can see the patterns of the the header background, as in the screenshot for Freaky Frugalite, in figure 1. Of course, it is not a requirement to have a transparent background; however, you must save the logo as a .png file. Now– there are several versions of the Fresh News theme, so in some of them, you may be allowed to use a logo in a .jpeg or .gif, perhaps. Depends on what you have.
4. Log in to your WordPress blog Dashboard. Look in the sidebar for the section titled “Fresh News.” Select “Theme Options.”
5. You are now in the area “General Settings.” Look under the “Custom Logo” area and click the button “Upload image.”
6. In the new dialog window, search for the location where you saved your logo image. Click to confirm the upload, and allow it to upload. Depending on your connection and your web host bandwidth and speed, it may take a few moments to upload and/or display the change.
7. That’s all you need to do! Go to your website home page and check out the new logo header. You may need to refresh the page to clear your browser cache and display the changes. Should you want to make additional changes to the logo header, or upload a different one, just repeat steps 4 through 6 to make the changes. Easy as that.
In Summary
1. Create your image with the dimensions 520 x 80 pixels. Save it as a .png file.
2. Log into your WordPress blog. Go to Fresh News > Theme Options.
3. Look under “Custom Logo” and click “Upload Image.”
4. Locate your logo header and allow the upload.
5. Go to your home page. Refresh your browser to view the changes.
Additional resources:
- Woo Themes Support
- Woo Themes Forum
- Free Themes by Woo Themes
Note: You must be a registered Woo Themes user to access the Support Pages and Forum.
I am a Woo Themes member and affiliate. Please know that if you click on the links and purchase a theme from Woo Themes, I am compensated a small amount. It costs you nothing but it does help me in a small way. Thanks for reading.
October 24, 2010 at 10:52 am
Hi,
Thank you for this post! I’ve been programming computers for 30 years but I find web page design and formatting to be a VERY humbling experience. I don’t know if it is CSS or WordPress, or the various WordPress theme authors, but I find it very hard to understand. Your post showed me the information I needed to move forward with the Fresh News theme. Thanks again.
Buggsy
December 30, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Hi – Do you know how to remove the “related sites” and “information” columns from the sidebar in the “News” theme from woo themes?
August 24, 2011 at 9:51 pm
thanks a lot!also in the post you we’re able to download the zip file of the fresh news, but when I bought it my wordpress.com theme just automatically changed, and I wasn’t prompted to download it, I assume that you are installing becuase your on a worpress.org hosted site right? but how about if I only bought the theme for my worpress.com site? sorry im new to this, or the fresh news theme zip that can be downloaded is for .org sites only and is that another payment?
please help me.
August 25, 2011 at 9:11 am
Rafael: even though both our blogs are “WordPress powered,” they are very different. Your free version is limited, and you are not allowed to upload themes to the WordPress server space. So this explains why you saw no zip file and why WordPress.com automatically installed the theme.
Yes, I would assume that the Fresh News theme that you download from WooThemes is one payment. The other theme that you purchase from the WordPress.com theme store is another payment. It’s kind of like getting the same book from two different bookstores. You may buy “The Holy Bible” from one bookstore, and if you go to another bookstore, you will have to pay again for “The Holy Bible” there.
August 24, 2011 at 11:24 pm
hi your blog posts really make me learn something new.
uhm can I ask if I can apply the same steps for my wordpress.com site?
I am also using the fresh news theme but I think my version is only for wordpress.com cause that is where I host my blog,
I hope to hear from you!.
August 25, 2011 at 9:00 am
Hi Rafael.
Self-hosted WordPress blogs are different than WordPress.com blogs. I wrote a brief post about the difference here: WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.
I don’t know how much you can customize the theme for a WordPress.com blog. Looks like you’ve already got a customized header, though!
August 25, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Thank you very much, I have learned new few things.
August 26, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for visiting, Rafael! Let me know how the WordPress.com theme works out for you!
August 26, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Hi again, my costumization for my theme is going pretty neat now,but I think the logo space is only small plus my theme doesn’t allo for the image to be aligned center so as you see in my blog its in the left. Also you floating share buttons are pretty neat, I assume its a worpress.org plugin, but I cant see it in my wordpress.com plugins. any workaround? I think I should post about this floater request in the .com forums.
What do you think? ^^
Thanks a lot!