There are several ways in which you can install a new Theme onto your WordPress blog, and I will be covering them briefly in this article one at a time.
Installing a Theme from within your WordPress blog Dashboard
There are two ways in which to add a new theme to your WordPress blog via your WordPress Dashboard. The first way is to search for a theme. To do this login to the Dashboard area of your WordPress blog and click on the ‘Appearance’ tab on the left hand side of the Dashboard, then click on the ‘Install Theme’ tab, then either type in the name of the theme you would like to install, if you know the name of a theme you would like to install or enter a term for what type of theme you are looking for. You will then be presented with a list of themes to choose from or the actual theme if you entered a name of a theme which exits. Once you have selected a theme you can click on install and this will install the theme directly from within your Dashboard. All you need to do now is click on the ‘Manage Themes’ tab and click on the ‘Activate’ link of the newly installed theme under the ‘Available Themes’.
The Second way is to upload the theme from your computer. If you have found a theme on the internet and have downloaded it to your computer or you have purchased a premium theme, you will have to upload it to your WordPress blog. To upload it from within the dashboard of your WordPress blog, again you will need to click on the ‘Appearance’ tab over on the left hand side and then on the ‘Install Theme’ tab at the top. Under the top tabs you will see a row of links, if you click on the ‘Upload’ link it will allow you to choose a theme from your computer to be uploaded to your WordPress blog. You need to make sure that the file you select to upload is contained in a zip file otherwise it will not work. Once you have chosen your theme to be uploaded click the ‘Install Now’ button. WordPress will now upload the theme for you and install it. You can now either click the ‘Activate’ button now to use the theme immediately or click the ‘Return to Themes page’ to view all your available themes.
Installing a Theme Via an FTP Server
To upload your themes via an FTP client you will need to have an FTP client installed and setup on your computer. If you don’t currently have one installed you can download Filezilla for free, check out Why You Need An FTP Client, this is a step-by-step guide showing you how to download and setup Filezilla ready to start uploading files.
Once your FTP client is all setup you are ready to upload your themes to your WordPress blog. First you need to find the directory of your WordPress blog on the right hand side of Filezilla under ‘Remote site’, then you will need to open the ‘wp-content’ folder and then the ‘themes’ folder. You will now need to locate the theme you would like to upload to your WordPress blog on your computers hard drive, over on the left hand side of Filezilla under ‘Local site’. Before you upload the theme make sure you have unzipped the folder and are only uploading the theme folder itself. You can now drag your new theme from the ‘Local site’ window on the left to the ‘Remote site window on the right, once you have done this you just need to wait while the files upload. Once your theme has finished uploading all you need to do is login to the Dashboard area of your WordPress blog and click on the ‘Appearance’ tab over on the right hand side. You will now see any Themes which you uploaded under ‘Available Themes’, to use the theme all you need to do is click the ‘Activate’ link under the Theme.
As you can see adding New Themes to your Worpress blog is easy enough to do and there are a variety of ways in which you can do it. Just by changing your blogs theme, you can freshen up your blog and make the look and feel of your blog that much better.
Alester
