My wife and I installed the Flexx theme from Ithemes and decided we wanted to brand ourselves with a header that is unique to our individuality.  Why?   Because the header is usually the first thing that grabs the attention of the eye.  We are concentrating in attraction based marketing.  We are selling ourselves before we sell any product.  Within seconds, the person seeking information will make the decision whether or not to bother reading the blog. This is why the attractiveness of the header is so important. 

Free WordPress headers:

• Bloggertalk offers four pages of beautiful headers including nature, animals, and even Disney designs.
• Theme Headers has a great archive of headers with a variety of themes, some of which feature beautiful photography. Click on the “archives” to view them all.
• FreeWebPageHeaders.com contains a huge database with 90 pages of great header banners. While the site is based on “web page” banners, these files are identical to blog banners.
• Balko Photo offers this amazing collection of beautiful photographic header images for free.
• Header Art Free header art for WordPress template.

Tools to Create a Custom WordPress Header

• PhotoShop-Pack provides this very easy tutorial on how to create your own blog header image using Photoshop.
• GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages. (more…)

How to Install a WordPress Header

Fortunately, installing a WordPress header is very simple. Follow the steps below, and you’ll have your blog looking exactly the way you want in just minutes.

First: Make sure the image for your header is uploaded to the “images” directory within the WordPress folder on your website.

Second: In the theme directory (/wp-content/themes/), find the file called “header.php.” Download this file to a location where you can edit it. If it isn’t in the themes folder, you may need to search for it.

Third: Within the header.php file , look for the section as follows.

#header {
background: url(“<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_directory’); ?>/images/wc_header.jpg”)
no-repeat bottom center; }
#headerimg {
margin: 7px 9px 0;
height: 192px;
width: 740px; }

Finally: Replace the standard WordPress image with the name of the new image that you’ve uploaded to the images directory.