Installing New Themes

Posted 04th October, 2018

A Theme is a set of files that dictate a Wordpress website's appearance and design. Themes can be easily changed in the Wordpress Admin area, without disrupting website content or uptime.

Wordpress ships with three default themes, but new themes can be easily added either through the Wordpress Admin Area, or from third party sources.

Themes can also be self-developed by web developers, uniquely for a website.

Contents

• Managing Themes
• Browsing themes in the Wordpress Admin Area
• Installing Third Party Themes

Managing Themes

Themes are managed in the Wordpress Admin Area. Navigate to Appearance followed by Themes. This will show a list of all installed themes. Themes are installed when there is a copy of them local to the Wordpress install.

There are two options for each installed theme:

• Activate. Make this the live theme for the website.
• Live Preview. View the site as if this theme were active. This will not affect the live site.

Browsing the Wordpress Repository

Many popular themes are part of a central Wordpress repository, which makes them available for anyone to install through Wordpress itself. This repository can be found by going to Appearance > Themes > Add New.

Searching or Filtering will show themes that are specific to a niche such as property or dogs, or a design style such as minimal or dark. To install a theme from the repository just click install then activate. This will make it the default template.

Installing Third Party Themes

Many themes are not included in the Wordpress theme repository. These could for example be custom themes just developed for one site or purchased themes downloaded from directories such as Themeforest.

Installing third party themes is as simple as uploading the theme content to the wp-content/themes directory. This can be done in two ways.

Automatic Upload

Third party themes can be installed in the Wordpress Admin Area.

1. Navigate to Appearance > Theme.
2. Click Add New.
3. Upload the zip file of the theme and click Install.

Manual Upload

To install the theme manually follow those steps:

1. Unzip the zip file of the theme.
2. Connect over FTP to the web host.
3. Navigate to the wp-content directory.
4. Navigate to the themes subfolder.
5. Upload the theme's folder.

The theme can now be activated from the Wordpress admin area.