Tips on how to install and activate your WordPress theme

This tutorial can apply to WordPress blogs that are running on a self-hosted environment, this means that you have installed WordPress unto a web host of your very own choice.  But it doesn’t apply to blogs hosted on free WordPress.com accounts.

Installing a WordPress theme can be somewhat straightforward. WordPress themes available for download from various places on the Internet are typically packaged in .zip files (i.e. theme-name.zip). By installing a WordPress theme that involves nothing more that simply unzipping the .zip file to the appropriate directory of your desired WordPress installation, and on activating the theme through your WordPress administration console.

The Structure of a WordPress theme

In order for you to get your installation of your new WordPress theme correctly, you’ll first need to understand the basics of how the WordPress system interacts with the themes you have. A WordPress theme needs three essential files in order to work correctly with the WordPress administration:

-        An index.php file – such file is the very controller of a WordPress blog. Majority of WordPress themes also have other PHP files that represent different sections of a WordPress page, however index.php is only the truly important PHP file.

-        A style.css file – this file controls the very look and also the layout of the WordPress based website using the style definitions. It also contains the information that is used in the Manage Themes section of WordPress to display the theme name, version, author, and description.

-        A ‘screenshot’ image – this image is utilized to create a special preview of the corresponding theme you have in the manage themes section of your WordPress administration. It can be any of the common web graphics files (png, jpg, gif), but it needs to be named screenshot.  Like for instance, screenshot.png, screenshot.jpg or screenshot.gif.

If you’ve gotten your theme from a known designer that knows quite well what he’s doing, then you don’t really need to worry too much about making sure the theme is set up correctly. If ever you’re not too sure of it, then you might just want to double check that you have got the basic files that are needed for the installation of your theme.

WordPress Directory Structure

The WordPress directory structure has three folders in its root directory.

These folders are:

-        Wp-admin

-        Wp-content

-        Wp-includes

At the wp-content folder there is a folder that called themes. Inside such folder is where you’ll need to deposit the folder that contains your theme.

Here’s one example. Assuming I’m installing a theme for a recipe blog. The theme is called Recipe, and its folder structure looks like this:

recipe-blog/
index.php
style.css
screenshot.png

This theme would normally be packaged in a .zip file. To use such theme, you would need to unpack the file, and then upload it with the use of FTP into my WordPress themes folder. If I have WordPress installed on my web server under a directory called blog, then the directory structure would look like this:

/WordPress/wp-content/themes/recipe-blog/

index.php

style.css

screenshot.png

How to activate a WordPress theme

After uploading the theme to its right directory, you can now go to the wordpress administration in order to activate it. After logging in to the WordPress admin section, I go to Appearances->Themes.  As you can, that the new themes is then installed correctly and ready to bew activated, this is because you can it in under the available themes on the manage themes page.

By this time, all you have to do is simply click on the activate link that’s associated with the new theme. The new theme is then now active on the WordPress blog.