This is the H1 Heading

Above this paragraph should be the H1 heading for your web page. If it is not visible, the design settings for the H1 tag is set to display:none which many WordPress Themes use to hide the blog title text and replace it with a graphic. Do not use H1 within your blog post area.

If the design in the H1 heading looks like your blog title or blog post title, then that is the style set for that HTML tag and you should not use it within your blog post area.

Inside of this test data section are most of the basic HTML and XHTML and CSS styles that you might use within your WordPress Theme.You need to know what that will look like as part of structuring your styles.

This is the H3 Heading

Is this the same heading as is in your post title or is this the section headings found within your sidebar? Or is it different? This is the post content heading for the HTML tag h3, as is the one below, H4, for section headings within your post to divide up topics. If there is an H3 or H4 tag in your sidebar, you will need to identify the parent HTML and CSS container for the sidebar and style those appropriate in your blog’s stylesheet.

For more information in searching for your styles in your WordPress blog, see CSS: Studying Your CSS Styles and Finding Your CSS Styles in WordPress.

Also notice how the links in that paragraph are styled so you can style links within your post content area. Links have three styles. There is the link color, link hover color, and visited link color. Be sure and design for each style.

Testing Font Looks – H3 Heading

You will need to test the looks of the different font styles, too. This is bold and THIS IS BOLD. This is italic and THIS IS ITALIC. This is bold and italic and THIS IS BOLD AND ITALIC. This is code and THIS IS CODE. And now let’s look at what the PRE tag, also known as the preformatted tag, looks like:

This is the pre tag.
It should be formatted as written
     so if you add spaces to the front of the line
  it will show the spaces and the <code> as written

This should be back to the normal paragraph style and we hope you have been paying attention to the margins and padding around each element, including the paragraph, so you can position things appropriately to the rest of the content.

Your CSS Here – H3 Heading

Let’s look at the blockquote, one of the most common tags used in most blogs. It is designed to “frame” a quote from another blog, website, or reference that you are “quoting” from. For the most part, there are three examples of usage:

This is a simple quote. It is either preceded or followed by a link within the text to the credited source. A blockquote must be designed to stand out from the rest of the text content, but it does not have to “really” stand out, just separate itself from the content so we know it’s not your words.

A second style to the blockquote is one that includes a citation. Under HTML guidelines, this citation should be wrapped in the <cite> tag and then that tag can be styled to be in italics, bold, or whatever look you want in your design.

Take care with the style of the <cite> tag as some WordPress Themes use it in the comments area. I recommend you style it specifically withblockquote cite {style declarations} in your stylesheet.

This is an example of a blockquote which also contains a link to Designing a WordPress Theme – Building a SandBox to help you see what links will look link within a blockquote.
Lorelle on WordPress, your guide to all things WordPress and blogging

The citation includes a link and text to help you see what a link and text will look like within the cite tag.

There are many tags that can be found within a blockquote, just as can be found within any container within your web page design, but a last example includes an unordered list. Many bloggers love to quote examples from lists, so this is a good tag series to test.

Within this web design sandbox test page, we’ve tested:

• Headings
• Text styles like bold and italic
• Ordered (numbered) and unordered (bullets) lists
• Links

Some elements in a WordPress Theme are controlled by the style sheet, while others are controlled by the Template files. Try to work on as much as you can from the style sheet first, then you can mess with the template files.

Remember, any changes you make to the style sheet and template files will be not available if you change themes. If you want them carried over, you will need to copy and paste them into the new Theme folder.

As a last element in the content area and throughout your site, check the hypertext links. These are the links to external websites and/or internal pages within your site. They come in three flavors: active, visited, and hover. Make sure you work on the styles for each of these.