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One of the most important parts of your website is the design, as this is what your users will ultimately see.
The design of a site depends on the theme you use. WordPress allows you to switch WordPress themes easily, and don’t worry, you won’t lose your content so you can try different themes until you find one that suits what you’re looking for.
In this article you will learn the different ways you have to change a theme in WordPress.
Considerations before changing a theme in WordPress
Keep in mind that the design of your site will change and you may need to make adjustments in the menus and widgets again to fit the new design.
Before making these changes to your final website, I suggest testing a clone of your site.
There are many ways to try to make changes without fear of losing what you have.
Official default themes
Al will set you up some official default themesNew ones are added from time to time.
Currently WordPress has taken a standard of use the name of some years (in English) for the name of the themes that appear.
For example, to date, year 2020, the theme is installed and is active by default Twenty Twentyhowever as part of the installation it is also possible that you have the themes installed, although deactivated twenty nineteen Y Twenty Seventeen.
You can check the themes you have on your website from the WordPress administration in the menu Appearance > themes.
Install a theme from the official WordPress repository
Just as there are official issues, there are additionally themes found in the WordPress theme repository and that are free or partially free (freeware).
You can explore all the available themes from the official WordPress theme page, however another option is that you can do it from your site administration.
From Appearance > Themes > Add New.
You will see that a screen will appear from where you can explore all the free themes that WordPress has.
From here you have the option to view featured, popular, or recent topics, plus you can filter by a special feature or search by name.
When you hover over any of them you will see that you can directly install the theme or preview it first.
If you decide to install any of them, you will need to activate them for them to take effect on your website.
Install a theme from an installation file
The other option to install a theme is using an installation filethis is common especially when they are commercial issues.
You can install a new theme from the WordPress administration, in the menu: Appearance > Themes > Add new, as we have seen previously, the repository themes screen will appear, however at the top you will see the option to: upload topic.
You will see that a new section is displayed that allows you to examine the files on your computer, from there you can select a file and install it.
After installing the installation progress will appear as well as information about the file and also some links to activate, preview or to return to the theme page.
If you go to the theme page you will see that you now have a new theme installed, when you hover your mouse over the image you will see that you have the option to activate the newly installed theme or to preview it.
Install a theme from File Manager
The other possibility you have to install a new theme is directly through your hosting account.
After entering the file manager application, locate yourself in the themes folder, that is, in: wp-content/themes, there you will see that each theme has a folder, you can copy the files of your theme by creating a folder, however more practical is to upload the compressed file.
We use the option carryas shown in the following image.
Then a screen will appear to select a file from your computer, you can upload the file and at the end of the upload a screen similar to the one shown below will appear.
Upon returning to the original path you will see that you will now have the .zip installation file loaded, you can select the file and then use the extract option, this will unzip the file, creating a folder and the content of the theme.
You can then delete the .zip file using the same File Manager options.
When you return to the WordPress administration, you will see that in the Appearance> Themes menu, the new installed theme will appear from where you can activate it.
Note that in this case we have used the File Manager to install a theme, but it is possible to perform a similar procedure using FTPhowever in the case of FTP you will have to upload the already uncompressed folder.
Install business themes
If you have purchased a theme, check the documentationmany times the .zip file is not necessarily the installer of the theme, but it is a group of several files within which the installer is found.
Sometimes the text “…unzip-first.zip” is used as part of the name of the main .zip file.
Conclusion on changing the template in WordPress
You no longer have excuses to renew the design of your website! Changing the theme is a simple process, although it is always recommended do tests on a clone of your site first.
As we have been able to verify, There are different ways to install a theme.from the simplest, which is using the WordPress repository themes, to the most complex, using the File Manager of your hosting account.
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WordPress technical support at and regular speaker at Meetups and WordCamps in America.
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