You will definitely want to know how to install a WordPress Theme for your site whether your blog or website is brand new or been running for a while. Whichever scenario describes your situation you will find that the process for installing a new WordPress theme is the same in both cases.
When you initially install the WordPress software for your site you will find that it is the default WordPress theme that is installed automatically for you during the installation process. Unfortunately this isn’t a very nice looking theme and everyone gets a free copy of it during the WordPress installation.
Find A Theme Appropriate To Your Niche
Before proceeding you will need to find a WordPress theme that you like and will do the job that you want it to do for your site.
There are many free themes available and many are now just as good as the premium themes that you have to pay for. In fact a these top free themes are now described as free premium themes – slightly confusing!
WordPress Theme Gallery or Google Search?
Just search in Google or you can go directly to the WordPress Theme Directory, where a huge number of great themes are hosted for free download on the WordPress.org website.
You can also access the gallery of themes at the theme directory within your site’s WordPress admin area from a link at the bottom of the Design or Presentation tab (depending on your WP version) under the heading “Get More Themes”.
Download Your Chosen Theme To Your PC and UnZip It
Wherever you find the niche you want you will need to downloaded it to your PC or Laptop, normally by simply clicking a download button or link.
A compressed (zipped) file will then be downloaded automatically to your computer over the internet. You may then need a software utility, such as Winzip, to uncompress the folder and extract the contents into a new folder you can work with.
On Vista if you just right-click on the zipped folder you can select Extract All from the pop-up menu to do this.
Upload the Unzipped Theme Folder to your Website’s Server using FTP
You now need to get the unzipped folder containing the wordpress theme files to your site folders at your web host. You will need FTP software to do this. I use WS-FTP because I have used it for years and got used to it, but there are many other good versions of free FTP software available, such as Filezilla or SmartFTP, and some of them are free. Just Google free ftp software to find them.
Copy the unzipped the Theme Folder, using your FTP software, into your domain’s /wp-content/themes folder at your site. On Hostgator this would be in the /public_html/wp-content/themes folder.
Login to WordPress Admin to Activate the New Theme
Now you need to login to your WordPress Admin for your site (yourdomain.com/wp-admin) and go to the Design or Presentation tab. There you will see the Current Theme and other the other Available Themes you can select from below…
Note: If you are using WordPress 2.7 what you see will be different than below as the Dashboard has been totally redesigned. Follow this link for instructions to activate a theme in 2.7: – Adding a New Theme in WordPress 2.7
The theme you have just uploaded will be in the list of available themes. Just double click on it to select it and in more recent versions of WordPress it will displayed for you do activate.
Then just click on the word Activate (top left corner) to make it the new WordPress theme for your site.
Your new theme will become the Current Theme in the Design/Presentation Tab and all you have to do now is go to your website in your web browser to see the new theme displayed.
SO EASY!
[...] How to Install A WordPress Theme [...]
Hi great job for with the detailed information,
I wan’t to mention the one click installation…
unfortunately these days there are still some servers/web hosts that do not have the one click installation of wordpress…
its a shame because it is so simple to install wordpress with either one click or CPanel(fantasticoDeluxe), it takes just a few seconds and you are done.
I have many Blogs all have the one click installation except one and I always have problems with that one, any ways the point of my rambling is if you do not yet have a web host please choose one with the one click installation, you will not have any problems and its worth its weight in gold.
if you would like some video tutorials on wordpress click on my name above. thanks Keith