How To Change Your WordPress Blog Header

Customizing your blog header image is very easy! You will, however, need to upload your new image using your hosting control panel or use an FTP program. A free (and good) FTP program is CoreFTP. Here are the steps:

NOTE: If you have downloaded the WordPress Theme to your computer already, skip to Step 3.

Step 1 – Go to your blog. Right click on your header region below. Depending on whether you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer, you will see a screen as shown below. Click on View Background Image (FIREFOX) or Save Background Image (INTERNET EXPLORER).

Step 2 – Save the image to your computer, as shown below. With a Firefox browser first right click on the image and then choose Save As, as shown below. With an Internet Explorer browser, you will immediately see the screen shown below after Step 1.

Step 3 – Find the Header.jpg file for your theme. If you downloaded the theme to your computer, find the file named Header.jpg, contained in the images subfolder. If you downloaded the Header.jpg file directly from your blog, find this file in the location you saved it to in Step 2 above. Right click on the Header.jpg file and then choose a program to edit it in, as shown below. If nothing else, you can edit in Paint, although I would recommend some other program since Paint will produce some graphics distortions when you save as a jpg file. Here are some graphics programs to consider for editing your Header.jpg file.

  • Gimp – this is a free program that will do most anything you want, but there is a learning curve involved. My son uses this a lot and is great with it. I have dabbled with it.
  • Paint – free and already on most PCs. But jpg files get distorted. PNG files do not get distorted but you need a jpg here!
  • Photoshop – does everything, costs a ton ($699!), and is considered bigtime overkill for many. But it is the gold standard.
  • Photoscape – a free program that does a LOT. Granted you can not do graphics like Gimp or Photoshop, but you can paste graphics in. I use this a LOT and I highly recommend it. You can produce logos, edit photos, apply effects,  and a lot more.  Sometimes I will produce graphics in Paint saved as bitmaps or png files and then edit them in Photoscape and save as a nice clean jpg file. So you could edit your Header.jpg file in Paint and save it as a PNG file and then open it in Photoscape and save it as a .JPG file.

Step 4 – After you edit your Header.jpg file, you need to upload it back to your blog image folder on your server. You can use your host control panel to do this or you can use an FTP program like CoreFTP to do this (see below).  Note that your blog theme image folder will be located at /public_html/wp-content/themes/themename/images/ on your server where “themename” is a generic name for whatever your theme is named. Also note that if your blog is in a subdirectory, this subdirectory will be listed after public_html and before wp-content.  Once you upload your new Header.jpg file your blog will now display this file. Note: Often you have to reload the page twice to see the new header image!

Featured below are screen shots of before and after. Note that I created the text logo below using Photoscape. Since there was a little space available under the blog title, I also added a separator line to my Header.jpg image.


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