Wordpress: Themes

Changing the theme on your WordPress site is where the real personalization begins. There are literally thousands of themes that you can add to your site. Many of them are free, but there are also themes that are "premium", which means you have to pay for them. If you are going for a professional website, paying $20, or $50, or even $100 isn't much to get just the look you want. For most people, however, going with free themes is a good place to start. You can see a sample of some of the free themes at the WordPress Theme Directory. You can also see some suggested themes from within the WordPress Dashboard. Let's begin by showing you how to change your theme in WordPress.

To change your theme you need to go to the Appearance Tab in the WordPress Dashboard.

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Once you're in the Appearance section, you can change many options that affect the look and feel of your site. For now we'll concentrate on Themes.

In the example below, you see the current theme selected is named Clean Retina. There are other themes (installed by default) that you can also choose.

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If you want to see some suggested new themes, called Featured, you can click the Install Themes tab and click Featured.

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Installing a new theme is as simple as clicking the Install Now link below your desired theme. In this example we'll install the theme PageLines.

When you click the Install Now button, behind the scenes the "theme package" is downloaded from WordPress and uploaded to your site. When the installation is complete, you'll get a message that your theme is successfully installed.

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Now, if you click the Activate button, your site will then being using that new theme you installed. (The example theme, PageLines, will give you a very detailed configuration page after it's activated). Your themes page will now display PageLines as the Current Theme and the other themes that are available will be shown below it.

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If we view the site now, the new theme will transform the look of the Home page, as well as all the other pages.

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Please note that a given theme will have its own somewhat unique way of displaying your content. Some themes use one column, two columns, or even no columns. It is completely theme dependent. You also have a certain amount of flexibility within a given theme, and you can change things such as the widgets, menus, header images, etc., in the Appearance section. If you want to choose a theme that has particular characteristics, you can choose the Install Themes tab and use the checkboxes to filter the types of themes that offer the structure that you want. The image below will show you the options you have.

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Beware, it can be fun and addicting to change your themes and see what you "new" website will look like. However, also be aware that if you are constantly changing themes, you are changing your users experience and possibly confusing them. Themes can also be frustrating sometimes in what they don't do. Try to consider the balance between form and functionality, but have some fun too.