How to Install and Customize Themes in WordPress?

In simple words, Themes are pre-built templates that represent the look and feel of the website. Themes denotes the appearance of the website. There are over 15000 themes available in the WordPress repository among which the user can select any one depending on the needs of the website.

The WordPress themes are arranged in different categories such as personal, business, professional, shopping, biography, etc.. The user can select the theme depending upon the niche of the website. Most of the themes are available for free download whereas few themes are paid ones.

The themes can be customized according to your needs. The look and appearance can be changed. The font size and color can also be customized as per your needs and your website needs. All this customization will be possible with the options available in the WordPress dashboard.

Tips for choosing a good theme –

• A theme should be neat and clean.
• Avoid selecting complex themes. Complex themes takes a lot of time to load, and search engines will not prefer the websites that loads too slow.
• If a user wants to write and publish content then a simple and sweat theme is more than enough.
• If a user wants to represent his/her business then a professional theme with good appearance is enough. Don’t go for more functionality like animations etc.. A theme with simple slideshow is good for representing business.
• Viewer experience plays a vital role in the appearance of user’s website in search results. Thus, the website should be neat, clean without any complexity.
• Page load time is one of the factor to remain top among the competitors. The themes with more functions consumes more time to load thereby affecting the website’s search engine ranking. A lightweight theme must be preferred over the other themes.

We already learned the installation process of WordPress. If you haven’t gone through our earlier post till yet, then kindly refer ‘How to Install WordPress in No Time?‘

Now it’s time to install a theme in the WordPress which we installed earlier. The steps are as follows –

• After logging into the WordPress dashboard with admin credentials, there are lot of options available like Dashboard, Media, Pages, Comments, etc., in the left hand side of the panel.
• Among the options there is an option named ‘Appearance‘ with the help of which the user can be able to select theme and activate it and can change the theme whenever required and can customize the fonts and colors of the theme as per the user’s need.
• Under ‘Appearance‘, the user can find the options of Themes, Customize, Widgets, Menus, etc.. These are the options with the help of which themes can be installed and activated.

• After clicking on Themes option, WordPress dashboard will show the user, readily installed themes, If the user wants to add new theme then he/she has to click ‘Add New‘ theme then the WordPress dashboard will show a collection of featured themes, among which the user can select any one theme. After selecting the theme, the user will find the option of install and activate, which the user has to follow.
• If the user knows the theme name which he/she needs to install then the user can use the search themes option and then install and activate it.
• The user can make use of filter option available at the top to narrow down the search results of themes.
• If the user downloaded the WordPress theme from outside then there is a option of ‘Upload Theme‘ at the top of the screen with the help of which the theme can be uploaded to WordPress. All the uploaded and installed themes will appear at one place on the screen under ‘Themes’ option.
• The user has the choice to activate any theme (i.e., uploaded or installed) at any time.

In this way the user can install or upload themes in WordPress and activate them.

After installing and activating theme, the user can customize the theme as per the needs and requirement.

• On the left side of WordPress, under ‘Appearance‘ there is an option called ‘Customize‘.
• The user can edit the appearance of the theme visually. Most of the themes provide the options for changing their own appearance.
• The user can select which widgets to display and and which ones to remove.
• The user can change the color and size of the fonts as per his/her needs. The look and feel of the theme completely depends on your customization.
• Simple themes provide very less options of customization whereas complex themes have plenty of options.
• The user can add logo of website, site title and description, and site icon in the header section of the theme under ‘customize’ option.
• The user have to check all the options of theme customization available and use them to make sure that his/her website looks great.

If the website looks great without any complexity and the viewer experience is nice then the user’s website will remain top in the search engines.