Chapter 11
In This Chapter
Finding free WordPress themes
Distinguishing between safe and unsafe WordPress themes
Downloading, installing, and activating themes
Browsing and installing themes from your Dashboard
Going with commercial themes
In previous chapters, I cover how to use the WordPress platform to publish your posts and pages. In those chapters, you discover how to categorize your posts, build your link lists, and set the publishing and profile options on the WordPress Dashboard. In this chapter, I focus on the visual look and format of your blog — in other words, how other people see your blog after you start publishing your content.
In Chapter 10, I introduce WordPress plugins and discuss some of the thousands of free plugins you can use to add functionality to your blog. Similarly, thousands of free themes are available for you to download and use. This chapter shows you where to find them and takes you through the processes of downloading, installing, and using them.
WordPress comes packaged with one very useful default theme called Twenty Fourteen (named after the year 2014, it was released in version 3.8 of WordPress). Most bloggers who use WordPress usually don’t waste any time at all in finding a theme that they like better than the default theme. The Twenty Fourteen theme is meant to get you started. Although you’re not limited to the default theme, it’s a very functional theme for a basic blog. Feel free to use it to get you started on your way.
Free WordPress themes, such as those I discuss in Chapter 15, are popular because of their appealing designs and their ease of installation and use. They’re great tools to use when you launch your new blog, and if you dabble a bit in graphic design and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), you can customize one of the free WordPress themes to fit your own needs. (See Chapter 13 for some resources and tools for templates and template tags, as well as a few great CSS references.) Also see the previous “Are all WordPress themes free?” sidebar for information about free versus premium themes.
By using free themes, you can have your blog up and running with a new design — without the help of a professional — pretty fast. And with thousands of themes available, you can change your theme as often as you want.
Finding the theme that fits you best may take some time, but with thousands available, you’ll eventually find one that suits you. Trying out several free themes is like trying on different “outfits” for your blog. You can change outfits as needed until you find just the right theme.
In July 2008, WordPress launched the official WordPress Themes Directory at http://wordpress.org/themes (see Figure 11-1).
The WordPress.org website lists the basic requirements that theme designers have to meet before their theme is accepted into the themes directory; you can find that listing of requirements at http://wordpress.org/themes/about.
The results of these unsafe theme elements can range from simply annoying to downright dangerous, affecting the integrity and security of your computer, hosting account, or both. For this reason, the official WordPress Themes Directory is intended and set up to be a safe place from which to download free themes. WordPress designers develop these themes and upload them to the theme directory, and each theme gets vetted by the folks behind the WordPress platform. In the official directory, themes that contain unsafe elements are simply not allowed to play.
While you’re visiting the WordPress Themes Directory, you can easily browse the various themes by using the following features:
When you find a theme in the directory that you want to take a closer look at, click its name to open a page that describes that theme (see Figure 11-2):
To download the theme you want, follow these steps:
The theme files show up on your computer as a compressed .zip
file.
You find the /wp-content/themes/
folder in the WordPress installation directory on your web server.
When you have uploaded the theme to your web server, you can activate it by logging on to your WordPress Dashboard and following these simple steps:
The Themes page opens, listing all the themes currently installed in your /themes
directory. The active theme is shown as the first theme listed at the top of the page. All available themes you may have uploaded to your web server are shown after the first, active theme (see Figure 11-3).
Available themes appear on the Themes page in alphabetical order. If you have a lot of themes in your /themes
directory, you’ll see ten to a page, with Next and Previous links to help you navigate all the themes available for your blog.
A Theme Details button appears — click that button and the window pops up and displays information about the theme, such as a small thumbnail and text description about its features.
A preview window opens, showing you what your blog will look like with this new theme applied (see Figure 11-4). The preview window also has basic theme configuration settings so you can customize your theme before you activate it. You can customize items such as site title and tagline, theme colors, header and background images, and the static front page so that your theme is ready to go when you activate it. If you skip the customization step, you can return to the Manage Themes page and click the Customize link in the theme description to revisit the customization page.
Click the Cancel button in the top-left corner of the preview window to close the theme without customizing or activating it.
This button resides in the top-left corner of the preview window.
WordPress applies the theme you chose to your blog.
Earlier in this chapter, I cover how to find and install a new theme on your WordPress blog by downloading it from the WordPress Themes Directory, uploading it to your web server via FTP, and activating the theme within your WordPress Dashboard.
The WordPress platform does give you a much easier way to browse the Themes Directory to find, preview, and install themes on your site without ever leaving the comfort of the WordPress Dashboard. The following steps show you how to do it:
The Themes page opens.
This opens the Install Themes page.
On the Install Themes page, you can search for a new theme by keyword, author, or tag. You can also further filter the results by using the Feature Filter check boxes, which allow you to filter theme results by color, columns, width, features, and subjects. The Install Themes page is shown in Figure 11-5.
After you search for a new theme, the search results page displays a list of themes for you to choose from. Click the Preview link underneath the theme of your choice to view a sample of how the theme looks. Figure 11-6 shows a preview window of a theme called Customizr, which I found by searching for the keyword Minimalistic on the Install Themes page.
After you find a theme you like, click the Install button located at the top left of the theme preview window to install the theme on your blog. This installs the theme and loads the Installing Theme page on your Dashboard with a message telling you that the theme installation was successful.
Click the Activate link shown on the Installing Theme page to activate, display, and use the new theme on your site.
As WordPress becomes more and more popular, I keep seeing many different business models crop up around the web that focus on providing WordPress users with commercial services and support, such as custom design, consulting, and development.
Commercial WordPress themes have become a very popular way for talented designers to provide a service they are very passionate about (designing themes) while making a little money for their efforts. Commercial themes are also known as premium themes. There are many schools of thought as to what makes a theme premium as opposed to free. Actually, the topic of what is considered premium and what is not, with regard to WordPress themes, is guaranteed to spark passionate debate among designers and theme users alike. However, almost everyone agrees there are indicators of premium themes, for example:
Although premium themes are cropping up all over the web, a handful really stand out with quality products and services. The following two commercial theme providers are tried and true, with a very stable and successful following of clients who use them.
18.119.106.237