How do I get my new theme onto my blog?

So you have your shiny new WordPress install. You have your lovely theme you've downloaded or had made for you. How do you get the theme onto your blog?

The least you need to know

If you already know what FTP is, then this is all you need to do:

download the theme you want to use
unzip the theme to your computer
upload the unzipped theme via FTP to your wp-content/themes directory
from your Dashboard > Design > Themes, preview and select the theme you want to use on your blog

If you don't know what FTP is, read on...

FTP for absolute beginners

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a way of moving files from one computer to another: in this case, moving your WP theme from your computer to the server where your blog is hosted. You'll need a bit of software to do this: there are numerous FTP clients around, but I like Filezilla because it's free.

Once you've downloaded Filezilla (or your alternative FTP client of choice), you'll need the following information from your hosts:

the host name: this is probably something like ftp.yourdomain.com or a numerical IP address
your FTP user name
your FTP password

All of this information should have been supplied to you when you opened your hosting account; if you no longer have it, you'll need to contact the hosting company or perhaps dig it out of your control panel.

To set up Filezilla to connect to your hosting account,

click the turquoise "site manager" button in the top left hand corner of Filezilla
enter the host name in the "host" box
change logontype to "normal"
enter your user name and password
click connect

All being well, Filezilla should now connect to your server. You'll see two windows: the one on the left is your computer, and the one on the right is your server. You can navigate through directories in these windows just as you can from My Computer.

In the left window, find where you unzipped your new WordPress theme to (you did note that at the time, didn't you? ). In the right window, you need to find the place where WordPress is installed. Probably this is within a directory called "public_html": double-click it to open it. You should now see some more folders: if some of them are called wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes, you're in the right place for WordPress. If not, you may have WP installed in a subdirectory, e.g. yourdomain.com/blog or yourdomain.com/wordpress, so look for that second folder and open it.

Once you have the right place, open wp-content by double-clicking it. See that themes folder? That's where your themes live. Go back to the left window, double-click on the theme folder you want to upload, and Filezilla will transfer it to your server.

And that's it. Now all you need to do is go to your Dashboard > Design > Themes to preview and activate the theme you want.

The Normal Person's Guide to WordPress Themes

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