WordPress theme determines how your website function and how it looks like. It allows you to customize your blog & site and make it unique for your brand. There are thousands of free and premium themes available to download from inside of the WordPress admin panel, but also sites like Creative Market, Themeforest and more!
Picking the WordPress theme seems like a daunting task – I remember picking my own when I started working on my site over 3 years ago. But with self-hosted WordPress and some coding skills, you can transform your website so it doesn’t look anything like the theme that you’ve chosen (in that case, the theme functions are more important than the look itself).
Today, I wanted to talk about how you can install a WordPress theme on your blog & website. I’ll discuss three different methods on how to do that. Let’s dive in, shall we?!
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HOW TO INSTALL A WORDPRESS THEME
METHOD 1 – USING THE WORDPRESS THEMES SEARCH
This is probably the easiest and least complicated method to install a WordPress theme.
1. Log in to your WordPress as admin – yourwebsiteurl.com/wp-admin
2. On the left sidebar scroll down to Appearance > Themes
3. Here you’ll see the theme that is currently set up and other themes that you’ve installed
4. If you want to install a different one, click Add New > and search for the theme
5. Hover over and click Install then Activate to change your current theme
6. DONE 😉
METHOD 2 – UPLOADING THE WORDPRESS THEME
The second method is for those who want to install a WordPress theme which is not available in the WordPress themes directory, so it has been downloaded from a third-party website.
1. Log in to your WordPress as admin – yourwebsiteurl.com/wp-admin
2. On the left sidebar scroll down to Appearance > Themes
3. Here you’ll see the theme that is currently set up and other themes that you’ve installed
4. If you want to install a different one, click Add New > Upload Theme
5. Choose a zip file with the theme files from your computer > Install
6. Then Activate to change your current theme
7. DONE 😉
METHOD 3 – MANUALLY INSTALLING VIA FTP
The third method is the most advanced one and it requires technical knowledge. If you don’t feel like it, hire a WordPress developer or designer to do it for you.
I don’t recommend editing your files via FTP if you’re not familiar with it.
1. Connect to your WordPress website via FileZilla using your FTP credentials
2. If you’re hosted on SiteGround* find a folder called public_html
3. Find wp-content and double click > Themes
4. This is where all your WordPress themes are stored
5. On your computer extract the zip file on your chosen WordPress theme
6. Now from your computer, drag and drop this folder to your Themes folder on the right
7. On the bottom left, you can see Queued files. Once the transfer is done, go back to your WordPress dashboard > Appearance > Themes and install and activate the theme from there
8. DONE 😉
When it comes to picking up your WordPress theme, I highly encourage you to go with light-weighted one – personally, I love OceanWP theme! If you’re looking for WordPress website design or redesign, make sure to check my brand & web design package by clicking the image below!
Which method did you use to install your WordPress theme?
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