How To Select And Install A Theme
After your content, the theme is the most important aspect of your blog. Theme options could fill an entire book by themselves, so I’ll just give you the basics. There are dozens of websites that offer free WordPress themes. Start by looking at these, if you don’t find something you like, type “free WordPress theme” in the Google search bar. You can literally spend days doing this. If you find one you like on one of these websites, you can download a zip file and I’ll show you how to use it in just a minute.
Free Theme Websites
http://www.freewpthemes.net/
http://www.templatesbrowser.com/wordpress-themes/
http://wordpresstemplates.name/
http://wpthemeland.com/
http://bestwebsitetemplates.org/freetemplates-wordpress.html
http://wpweaver.info/themes/twenty-ten-weaver/
http://www.wpthemes360.com/
Choosing A Theme From WordPress.org
WordPress.org also offers hundreds of options. To see them, click on Appearance, then Themes, then Install Themes. Select a couple of options and click Find Themes. I usually only select a color so I get hundreds to look at. If you choose the color Blue, you’ll get 17 pages worth of themes to look at.
When you find one you like, you’ll see Install and Preview links underneath the name of the theme. If you click the Preview link, it will open another window and give you a close up look at a demo site using that particular theme. You can scroll around, click the links, just sorta “try it on”.
When you find one you want to use, click the Install link. I am going to use Magazine Basic because I am very familiar with it and it is highly customizable.
When the theme is installed, you’ll come to the following screen, where you’ll want to click Activate.
Once the theme is activated, you’ll see a message telling you that this theme supports Widgets and that you should go configure them. But before we configure our Widgets, lets talk about other theme options.
If you found a theme that you liked on one of the free theme websites listed above, you would have downloaded a zip file to your desktop. To use that zip file, go to the Install Themes tab, but this time you want to click Upload.
First, you’ll want to click the Browse button and locate the zip file on your desktop, then click the Install Now button. When the installation is finished, it will bring you back to the window where you can Activate it.
It is possible to install several themes and switch among them to decide which you like the best but you shouldn’t do much customization before you make your decision, because it doesn’t carry over from one theme to another; you have to re-do it on each theme.
Premium Themes
While we are still on the subject of themes, let me give you a few premium theme sites to look at, in case you haven’t found one that is just right for you yet. Prices for these themes range anywhere from 9.99 to $50+, but sometimes it it worth it to get just the right look.
www.wpremix.com
www.templatic.com
www.woothemes.com
www.elegantthemes.com
www.markettheme.com
www.weborithm.com
In our next session, I’ll show you which basic plugins you need, how to install and configure them.
If you’ve already set up a website, but have questions, send me an email or leave a comment – I’ll be happy to help.
Talk to you soon,
goldie
The rest of the series:
1 – Announcing Jewelers Website Assistant
2 – Pointing Your New Domain To Your Hosting Account
3 – Two Methods To Install WordPress
5 – Basic Plugins You’ll Need And How To Install Them
6 – Setting Up Static Contact, Privacy, and About Pages