Installing and configuring themes is one of our favorite things to do with WP as the possibilities are nearly endless. This WordPress training session will cover the basics as the intricacies of editing stylesheets and template graphics is outside the scope of most folks. But that doesn’t mean you can’t the most out of your WP site — just try a few templates out and you’ll see what we mean!
Two Options for Installing WordPress Themes
The first option is to go to Appearance > Themes and then click the Install Themes tab.
You’ll then see a host of options for picking the kind of theme that best suits you. You’ll even be able to instantly preview a screenshot of the template; installation is just a click away. After installation, activate and see how it looks with your content!
Potential downside: sometimes finding a template this way is a problem because not all templates are up to date and work with WP V3. The most common errors people see are problems with the menus or lack of widget support. Fear not. All you have to do is try another template!
The second option is to browse through templates directly in the WordPress theme directory. The advantage to this approach is that you can find featured and updated themes — those most likely to work with WP version 3 right away.
All of the above is explained in a video below, if you need to see it visually.
Customizing Your WordPress Theme
Editing stylesheets and changing the base graphics with your chosen theme can be very complicated, so if you need further assistance, we can customize your theme in as little as an hour. Click here to take a short survey and get a cost estimate.
Site Sparker Clients – follow the instructions on the top right of this page.
Installing Themes – WordPress Tutorial Video
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I love the beat boxing theme music in the beginning. LOL!
Awesome overview here. I have a question about what you were saying in the written description above (Potential downside) about incompatible menus and widgets. When we are considering a new theme, how can we know if it is compatible with the widgets we would like to use, or may have installed in our current theme? Is that just a trial and error work flow? Or does each theme have a list of compatible widgets?
Thanks,
CK
All widgets will work with a theme that supports them. (All but the oldest of themes don’t have widget support.) But there can be wide variation in how each template has built in the widgets into it’s structure.
Menu support is different. That’s very black and white. Either a theme has WP3 menu support or it doesn’t. The quick way to find out is to build a menu, install a template and see if you can assign the menu to that new template. (In many cases WP will display an error saying the theme doesn’t have menu support.)