IT Admin

Awesome themes
To install a new theme, you must first pick one.  I recommend sticking with themes found on the WordPress site, but you can find WordPress themes all over the web.  Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ to find the newest WordPress themes.  When choosing a theme, it isn’t just about design.  Some themes have different capabilities.  Not all themes work with sidebar widgets, for example.  This simply means that you may have to experiment with a few themes before you find the one that is just right for you.

Once you select a theme, you will need to download it to your computer.  Simply click on the large red button that says, “Download.” The file you download should be a .zip file, which is just a way to compress the files so they down- load easier.  Once the file is downloaded, you will need to double click on the file to extract or expand it.  You will be prompted to specify where you want the extracted files stored.  I would simply extract them to your desktop so you can easily find them. Now that the files are extracted, you need to connect to your server.  I covered using FileZilla in the October issue.  If you need to, pull up that old issue and refresh your memory on connecting to your server. Once connected, you need to upload the theme files you downloaded to a specific folder on your server. Using FileZilla, navigate to /yoursite/wp-content/themes.  You MUST upload the complete theme folder to this location or the theme will not work.  Once the theme is uploaded, you can close out of FileZilla and return to www.yoursite.com/wp-admin.  Click on the Design tab, then Themes, and you should see your new theme as an option to install.  Simply click on the theme and then look at the top right corner and you will see “Activate Theme.”  Click “Activate Theme” and you are finished.  Your new theme should be installed and working.  If the theme wasn’t available in the Design / Themes tab, then it wasn’t uploaded to your server correctly.  I would double check everything and try uploading again.