WordPress Theme Installation

Before you begin, you will already need to have your site hosted somewhere and installed with WordPress. If you don’t have a web hosting account already, please see our list of preferred hosting vendors and get one setup before continuing.

The following instructions are for WordPress 3.3.2. We strongly recommend using the latest version of WordPress.

Getting Started

1. After you have downloaded the latest version of the theme from your customer account dashboard, you will need to upload this into WordPress.
2. Login to your WordPress site (http://www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php) and then under the “Appearance” sidebar menu, click on “Themes”.
3. On the top of that page, click on the “Install Themes” tab.
4. Just under the “Install Themes” tab, click the “Upload” link.
5. Now you should see a message that says “Install a theme in .zip format”.
6. Click on the “browse” button and navigate to the .zip theme file you downloaded earlier and select it.
7. Click “Open” or “Ok” and then click “Install Now”.
8. After the theme is uploaded and installed, you will see a message that says “Theme Installed successfully”. Below it, click on the link “Activate” and the theme will be turned on. If you get an error message during this process, you will have to manually upload the file via FTP. See the “Uploading Your Theme Using FTP” page otherwise continue reading.
9. Next you should change your WordPress permalinks away from the default value (i.e. http://localhost/blog/?p=123). Under the “Settings” sidebar menu, click on “Permalinks”. Note: This may have already be setup for you.
10. Select the “Custom Structure” radio button and then enter one of our recommended custom structures /%postname%/ or /%post_id%/%postname%/as the value. The first option will make your blog urls look like the following: http://www.yoursite.com/blog-post-name/. The second option will look like this: http://www.yoursite.com/blog-post-name-3487/ which is a more unique option.You can use other structures as well if you prefer. We’ve put together a detailed guide on WordPress permalinks If you already have a permalink structure in place, any change might break existing links on pointing to your site. If this is a brand new site then you don’t have anything to worry about. Regardless, please be careful and read more about permalinks before moving forward.

    You can always come back and change this later but after you launch your site, it’s not recommended to change it again. If you get an error message while trying to save then just follow the instructions on the screen. This is a WordPress error message and not related to the theme.

11. Now visit the new theme admin pages and go through to setup everything before you launch your site. See the specific install guides for more information.

install theme wordpress

Categories: Tutorials

Written by: David on July 13, 2011. Last modified by: Shannon on April 29, 2012 6:29 am.