How do I change my theme in WordPress?

You can change your WordPress Theme at any point however, it’s important to be on the save side and create a back up of your website before you start. I’m making a note of that as some of the widgets and custom fields are theme-specific and if not careful that info can be lost or invisible.

When choosing a theme the main things to check are Cross Browser Compatibility and Loading Time. You can test the demo theme for those especially if you are going to buy a theme.

In WordPress, there are few ways to add a new theme and those are Admin Upload, FTP, and Trought the WP free themes page if you have not decided on what theme to use.

Add new WordPress theme trough WP Admin Upload.

Login in your admin panel and from the left menu select Appearance > Themes, after the page loads on the top left corner select Add New and then click Upload Theme on the same place. Now you should see the upload button tap it and pick the file containing your theme. After the Instal Now button has become active select it and after installation is done hit activate. Please consider that using this method you need to have a ZIP file containing the theme.

Change WordPress theme through FTP/SFTP client.

Connect to your server through your favorite FTP client and navigate to \wp-content\themes\. Upload the folder containing your theme to that folder, please note that if you have only ZIP of your theme you will need to unzip it. When the theme up on your server go to the WP Admin and click on Appearance > Themes, find your new theme and click on Activate.

Install WordPress theme trough Free WP themes admin menu.

What I mean by that is the “little invisible” main screen of Appearance > Themes > Add New (on the top left corner of the page). The main screen here is and always was offering us a selection of free themes, adding one simply narrows to clicking on the Install button. After the installation has completed you just need to click on the Activate button and you are ready to roll with a new theme and you can start setting it up.

Few considerations after new Theme install.

Start working on your new theme by Testing all functionality and plugins. Check the sidebars as those are something that can be missing a widget or two. The menus may need adjustments as the locations will be different.
Also, important pieces of your checklist should be the Post Types, Taxonomies and Shortcodes if your site is using those

Theme VS Template

In WordPress, a theme is the overall look and functionality of the website when Template refers to the page templates which are part of the WordPress theme. If you are actually looking for how to create a page template, please refer to our article How can I add a WordPress page template?

I hope the answer to this frequently asked question was helpful.
Have a great one!