Step 3 - Choosing and Activating a Theme
Now it's time to pick a nice Theme for our website. When you set up a website and start working on it, it's not like you're going to get a blank page that you're supposed to design from scratch. Instead, there are thousands of themes that are offered within your dashboard that you can choose from. The theme is like a build in template of the layout of the website, design etc. It shows exactly where you should write your posts, on which side you're going to have ads, images, where your logo will be located, etc. All of those questions just mentioned need to be decided by you before choosing the theme, so you can get exactly what you want. So, keep in mind what you want to do with the design of your website. One possible suggestion is to maybe draw it on a piece of paper to make it easier to visualize. Then will you be able to scroll through all the themes and pick one that you like the best and the one that will reflect exactly what you drew. Some questions that will help you draw a layout of your website are:
1. Where will my logo be located? 2. What size image do I want in my header? 3. Where will my ads/banners be located? (top of the page, left side, right side?) 4. Where will my posts go? 5. Do I want my website to look professional, fun, girly, busy, simple etc?
Like I mentioned above, there is going to be an overwhelming amount of the themes to choose from. Answering these questions and creating your dream layout will help narrow the options.
In order to go to Themes, log in to your Dashboard, and on the left side go to Appearances. Next, choose Themes. You're already going to have two or three Default Themes there and a big empty table with a plus sign inside. Click on that, as that's where we want to go to choose our theme. Now, you can click on Features, Popular, Latest and Premium Themes, etc. Simply scroll down and when you find something you like, hover over that theme and click Details and Preview. You're going to be doing this quite often as I'm sure you will want to see multiple themes on a bigger screen to check exactly what they have to offer. Because there are so many themes to choose from, it will probably take some time. One thing to make the search easier is another option you can choose from at the top Menu in Themes, which is Feature Filter. Say you want a website in a certain color scheme, here you can check everything you want your website to have and click on Apply Filters. Maybe you will cut the number of the Themes in half using this method. And I wouldn't take this task of choosing a perfect theme lightly. It might not seem as important to some, but if you're a frequent Internet browser, you know that your first impression of a website determines whether you stay on it or leave. So, take your time and be selective. With my first website it took me a couple days of browsing in order to choose the perfect theme I wanted. Keep on doing what I told you to do, which is to click on any Theme you want to preview it. If you are ready to install it, either
1. Hover over a Theme just like how you Preview it. Click on Install Button from there, or 2. When you clicked on a particular Theme to Preview it, on the top left side you will also see the Install button. Click on that.
After clicking on the Install button you will see this:
1) Downloading install package from https://wordpress.org/themes/download/minamaze.1.0.5.zip… 2) Unpacking the package
3) Installing the theme
4) Successfully installed the theme Minamaze 1.0.5.
Preview Live Preview | Activate | Return to Theme Installer
You can install as many Themes as you would like. Click on Preview again to see how your website is going to look like with that particular theme. When you are all set, click on Activate. You can always deactivate your Theme by activating a different one. If you are going to deactivate your theme, I recommend you do it at this stage, not later on while you are already working on other things. Experiment as much as you want, and hopefully you will find what you're looking for.