WordPress Themes

Choosing a Wordpress Theme

The theme or design of the blog comes with 2 basic templates. You can upload any template that you want and there are so many free Wordpress templates out there that it will make your head spin. (Start at Choose a theme - http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ or just Google Wordpress themes)

Each theme comes with directions for installing it but basically it is really easy. You just choose to download the theme to your computer and save it to your desktop keeping it in one folder which is usually zipped. You then go to your cpanel and go to the file manager that is listed under the files heading and click on the file manager – a new window opens usually. Click on the file folder public_html and click on the folder where your blog is and then go to wp-content, and then themes. It is sort of like navigating through your files on your computer but you are doing it on the server./public_html/folder where your blog is/ wp-content/ themes

Where the black arrow is point up there is a link that says upload file. Click that and upload your Wordpress theme into the theme directory. Once it is uploaded then you can click on the compressed file and in the right hand navigation, choose ‘extract file’ and it opens a new window and extracts the files!

Some things to consider when choosing a theme are the plugin compatibility, the comments features as well as the readability of the blog. Some also vary in little things like whether or not they display the date/time and author of post and also how they show comments or direct readers to the section where they can make comments. All of these things will affect the results that your blog gets in attracting readers and keeping them coming back. The rss feature is also needed to be visibly displayed.

To turn on your new theme go to your Wordpress dashboard (admin panel) and navigate to the presentation tab. Your theme should be there in the choices so all you do is select what theme to use! That’s it!

Choose the theme that is the best for reading and following. I usually change the theme every so often just to have a fresh look.