Themes are the key to the appearance of your WordPress blog. A key element of WordPress is that your content (pages, posts, comments etc) is stored separately from the theme or display data. What this means is that you can change your theme – and still use 100% of your content. In fact, when you preview your theme, as shown below, you even get to see your own content in the preview.
Previewing and activating themes
Instructions
If you’re not sure about a theme and want to try it on for size before wrapping your live blog in it, that’s easy enough to do. You get started by logging into your site, going to the dashboard, clicking on Appearances and then Themes.
Once you are at the Themes menu you can preview any theme by clicking on either the title or the actual thumbnail image of the theme. This will give you a full screen preview of the theme – using your specific home page content. If you like the theme all you have to do is click on Activate Theme. There is no delay – your theme will be active in a second and your very next visitor will see your new look.
Wrap-Up
WordPress Themes provide control over the look and presentation of the material on your website. Whether your blog is brand new or well established – trying out and installing a new theme is a breeze. If you find that you like exploring new themes than get ready for WordPress 2.8 which will make installing themes even easier!
See my Using WordPress series for more tutorials on how to use WordPress!
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Don
I’ve just set up a local server using XAMPP and downloaded Wordpress.
When I went to the Wordpress site, the current stable release was 2.8 so that’s what I’m looking at locally.
The theme that is initially shown in the video above is Albeo, which coincidentally I’ve been trying to find, I couldn’t find it in the Wordpress 2.8 themes… is it in there somewhere, do you know?
Looking to the future, I know that you use Thesis theme… is that the one you would recommend for a website / blog rather than just a blog.
Thanks for your great posts, I think finding your series on “using wordpress for a small business sites” was what got me interested in Wordpress.
Hi Keith – thanks for your comment!
There were a few changes to the database in WP 2.8 and some themes and plugins are still catching up. I’m not sure about Albeo…
I do use Thesis and highly recommend it if you are building a very customized blog/website based on WordPress. It is pretty plain looking out of the box, however, so expect to spend some time customizing it for your own style.
If you are building a small business website for an “offline” business, I have a theme specifically designed to get up and running quickly called the Expand2Web SmallBiz theme. When you activate the theme a custom options panel appears in the WordPress Admin that allows you to customize settings easily. Check it out if you are building that type of website.
Don
Many thanks for your reply.
I’ll take a look at Thesis and your SmallBiz theme.