How to Install and Customize a Thesis Site in a Weekend (Part 3)

Welcome to Part 3. This post will cover installing and activating free and premium WordPress themes, including Thesis Theme.

How to Install and Customize a Thesis Site in a Weekend (Part 2) covered:

• pros and cons of free and premium themes
• considerations to help you decide what kind of WordPress theme to use
• options for new starters or bloggers in need of a recharge
• recommended sites that offer free and premium WordPress themes

Installing and activating a WordPress theme

Once you have selected which WordPress theme to use – or a short list of 3-5, you’ll need to install it in your WordPress themes folder. There are a few different ways to do this depending on what type of theme you are using.

Below is a screenshot of inside the file manager area of cpanel with useful areas (discussed below) circled in red, including: new folder, upload, extract, public_html, wp-content, themes and the check box beside a theme folder.

Installing a FREE WordPress Theme that you download to your computer

If you are using a FREE WordPress theme that is from the official free WordPress themes directory you need to download it to your computer and upload it to your server.

• Go to your cpanel, ‘File Manager’, public html folder, wp-content, themes.
• Click on the upload icon. Click on a browse button and find the zip folder on your computer. Double-click on it to upload it to your server.
• When it is done it will display 100%. Return to the themes folder by clicking on the link on the upload page… Back to /home/username/public_html/wp-content/themes… or close the tab and the theme folder tab should be open still.
• Check the box beside the zip folder and click on the extract icon in cpanel. You want to extract it to your themes folder. Once this is done it will appear in your Available Themes in your Appearance tab like the below screenshot.

You can now click ‘Activate’, ‘Visit site’ and see what you site looks like.

• Be aware, that when you first activate a theme you may need to go into its options - check out what new links appear under your ‘Appearance’ tab in your dashboard. You may even end up with a brand new options tab at the bottom of all of your tabs in your dashboard. This is where you make changes to your theme such as choosing which options to use, perhaps what colours to use and anything else the theme offers.
• Refer to your theme’s instructions to find out how to set it up. Then look at what your site looks like again. If there are bugs you may need to go to the support area of your theme’s developers website or refer back to your instructions.
• If you don’t like what it does to your site, return to the default theme or an alternative theme.

Important Tip

If you are using a FREE WordPress theme that you have downloaded from another website, do not unzip the folder. You need to upload the folder to your server either via FTP (file transfer protocal) or using the upload functions in your cpanel. Extract (unzip) the files on your server.

Troubleshooting: When your theme doesn’t appear in the dashboard area

• If your theme doesn’t appear, try refreshing your dashboard’s appearance page.
• If your files are not extracted into a folder you will have to delete the individual files scattered in your themes folder in your cpanel, create a folder for the theme and extract the files again into the folder. Some theme developers, especially free themes, sometimes forget this when they zip the files.
• Alternatively, you might have more than one folder and the files are lost in layers. You need to then move the second level folder into the themes folder and then delete the empty folder that used to contain another folder with all of your theme files.
  • You just need to double click down into the second folder layer, click the check box beside the folder containing the theme files and drag it to your theme folder on the left hand side.
  • You might need to drill down by clicking on the + beside themes (see the above screenshot), so you can drag and drop the new theme’s folder into the themes folder.
  • Then refresh your dashboard, Appearance, Themes and it should appear.

Installing a FREE WordPress Theme Using the Theme Installer in the Dashboard

If you use a free theme from the link in your dashboard: Appearance/Themes/… click the ‘Add New’ button up the top and then search for a theme clicking the ‘Find Themes’ button. Don’t select anything as you will limit your search results. Have a look for a theme that you like and click the ‘Preview’ link. If you like it click ‘Install’.

• You will then have the options of ‘Preview‘, ‘Activate‘ and ‘Return to Theme Installer‘. If you want to add additional free themes and try out a few, select ‘Return to Theme Installer’ and repeat until you have the free themes you want. You are not obligated to use them and you can easily delete them.
• When you are ready to activate a new theme for your site, go to ‘Appearance’, ‘Themes’ and click ‘Activate’ under the theme you want to use.
• Be aware, that when you first activate a theme you may need to go into its options - check out what new links appear under your ‘Appearance’ tab in your dashboard. You may even end up with a brand new options tab at the bottom of all of your tabs in your dashboard. This is where you make changes to your theme such as choosing which options to use, perhaps what colours to use and anything else the theme offers.
• Refer to your theme’s instructions to find out how to set it up. Then look at what your site looks like again. If there are bugs you may need to go to the support area of your theme’s developers website or refer back to your instructions.
• If you don’t like what it does to your site, return to the default theme or an alternative theme.

Installing a PREMIUM WordPress Theme

If you are using a PREMIUM WordPress theme, download the files from the website and once again, upload to your server using FTP or the upload functions in cpanel. Do not unzip the files. Follow the instructions under ‘Installing a FREE WordPress Theme that you download to your computer‘ above.

If you are using Thesis Theme there are particular instructions on the download page, depending on which version of the theme you are using so I won’t go into them in much detail here.

What I will say is that when you are asked to change the permission of a folder to 775 or 666 for example, you just need to find that folder or file, right-click on it and choose ‘change permissions’ and then check or uncheck the boxes to get the right combinations. See the screenshot below. When you are done, click ‘change permissions’.

If you are using any other theme look for the instructions on the site where you download the files from and follow them.

• Sometimes the instructions are hidden in the zip folder under ‘read me’, ‘terms of use’, ‘licence’, etc in a text file or html file that opens up in your browser.

Part 4 of How to Install and Customize a Thesis Site in a Weekend will include:

• customizing Thesis Theme to get from the default Kubrick to something bold, bright or beautiful… like we have done at Middle Path Marketing.

• code snippets and explain how I transformed Middle Path Marketing from the default Kubrick, to the default Thesis Theme to a uniquely customized Thesis site as seen in the above screenshot.

• I will also explain how to make a unique background, header, feature box, multimedia rotator boxes with ads or images or links to pages on your site, fonts, colours, sidebars, gravatars, favicons and many other elements that make your site unique.