How do I Install and Configure a Wordpress Theme?
- 06/06/2020 8:01 PM
Excerpted from: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes
What is a Theme?
Fundamentally, the WordPress Theme system is a way to "skin" your weblog. Yet, it is more than just a "skin." Skinning your site implies that only the design is changed. WordPress Themes can provide much more control over the look and presentation of the material on your website.
A WordPress Theme is a collection of files that work together to produce a graphical interface with an underlying unifying design for a weblog. These files are called template files. A theme modifies the way the site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software. Themes may include customized template files, image files (*.jpg, *.gif), style sheets (*.css), custom Pages, as well as any necessary code files (*.php). For an introduction to template files, see Stepping Into Templates.
Themes are a whole new ball game. Let's say you write a lot about cheese and gadgets. Through the innovative use of the WordPress Loop and template files, you can customize your Cheese category posts to look different from your Gadgets category posts. With this powerful control over what different pages and categories look like on your site, you are limited only by your imagination. For information on how to use different Themes for different categories or posts, see The Loop in Action and Category Templates.
Get New Themes
The WordPress Theme Viewer is the official site for WordPress Themes which have been checked and inspected, and are free for downloading. The site features the ability to search by type and style, and offers a demonstration of the page view elements of the Theme.
WordPress supplies two themes in its distribution for your initial use. You can switch between these two themes using the admin panel. Themes that you add to that directory will appear in the Administration Panels > Presentation as additional selections.
Adding New Themes
There are many themes available for download that will work with your WordPress installation.
Presentation Theme Panel
If the theme that you are installing provides instructions, be sure to read through and follow those instructions for the successful installation of the theme. It is recommended that theme developers provide installation instructions for their own themes, because themes can provide special optional functionality that may require more steps than the basic installation steps covered here. If your theme does not work after following any provided instructions, please contact the theme author for help.
To add a new theme to your WordPress installation, follow these basic steps:
Download the theme archive and extract the files it contains. You may need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Follow the guidelines provided by your theme author.
Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to contain your theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a theme named Test should be in wp-content/themes/test. Your theme may provide this directory as part of the archive.
Upload the theme files to the new directory on your host server.
Follow the instructions below for selecting the new theme.
