Today, I will show you how to install a theme on wordpress. Let’s go !
Install a wordpress theme
Discover in this video, what are the steps to install a theme on wordpress:
Why install a theme on WordPress ?
In this section, I will present you the reasons to install a theme on Worpdress.
First of all, it seems legitimate to ask, why is it necessary or important to install a theme on your Wordpess site? Indeed, it is not mandatory, and it is quite possible to create a site that gets a lot of traffic, keeping a basic theme.
So finally what is the purpose of a WordPress theme?
In two words, a WordPress theme will allow you to “customize” or “arrange” the design and navigation aspects of your website. Indeed, if I take the example of my SEO agency – Twaino that I am building, I currently have no design. It is the default version proposed by WordPress. So, it is something functional but not very nice.
Thus, the objective of the theme will be to bring a design, and a graphic arrangement to your website, so that it is aligned with your brand. Above all, your theme should contribute to a good user experience.
That’s why a theme is a powerful tool that will allow you to quickly change the way you communicate on your website if you wish.
However, even if the change of theme is quite simple to set up, I strongly advise you not to make constant changes of theme on your website. Indeed, it can impact the presentation of information, and sometimes cause a lot of upheaval on your website.
How to choose a wordpress theme ?
Paying or free ?
When you decide to choose a theme, you will be faced with choices:
- Free
- Paid
Obviously, there are pros and cons to both categories. Basically, you should know that there are free themes that are extremely good, and paid themes that are extremely bad. To support the difficulty of this choice, I would also like to tell you that there are a lot of choices on the market.
In order to make your decision, I advise you to go to shopping platforms like themeForest / envatomarket in order to look at the reviews and prices. You will also be able to find the best selling and most popular themes, which can be an element to make your choice.
The design
When choosing a theme, the design criterion is undoubtedly one of the most looked at by future buyers. Indeed, with a nice theme, you will be able to communicate around a brand identity, with designs and colors that suit you.
The loading speed
Much less looked at than the design, the loading speed criterion is an important element to take into consideration. Indeed, some themes with “original” design approaches can be extremely heavy, and therefore, not at all optimized for speed. So, sometimes, we can see themes that from a design point of view are beautiful, but will load in five or more… I advise you to give up this kind of theme too slow, because it will penalize you in the long run. Users on the internet are not at all patient, so a theme that is too heavy can clearly hurt the success of your website.
Custom theme ?
I sometimes talk with companies that have had their website theme custom made. The budget spent is often large, even very large (10k – 25k). And, I’m always amazed to see custom made themes, very much worse than a theme available at 50 euros on shopping platforms. Does this mean you should never invest in a custom theme? The answer is no. Just be careful to invest in a custom theme when the time is right, that is, never at the beginning. Indeed, at the beginning, there is little chance that you will have traffic. So, focus on the important elements, namely the creation of content.
Is the theme responsive?
Important element, but which can sometimes be forgotten, it is absolutely necessary that your theme is “responsive”, in other words, it will simply mean that your website will work properly both on the phone, but also on tablet and computer. I prefer to specify the importance, even if it may seem obvious.
If you buy a popular theme, the “responsive” will mostly be integrated by default. The problem is more for custom themes, with sometimes unique creations that cost a lot of money, without even guaranteeing the responsive.
Thus, it is essential to check if your theme is “responsive”. Especially since there are more and more people who connect to the internet from their cell phones. Therefore, it is essential to check that everything works perfectly on all platforms.
Is the code clean?
Another element that I think is very relevant to follow is the “cleanliness” of code. Indeed, it sometimes happens that very design themes contain unorthodox and unoptimized codes. Absolutely avoid this kind of theme, because you risk being negatively impacted in the long run.
Take a popular theme?
Finally, my last advice concerning the choice of your wordpress theme is about the popularity of the chosen theme. Indeed, I will always tend to advise you to choose popular themes, especially if you are beginners. Why should you do that?
One of the reasons is based on the level of support. Indeed, popular themes usually have a well structured and organized support service, able to answer your questions and needs. Therefore, you will be able to be “relatively” autonomous, and you won’t have to constantly call on professionals to make the slightest change on your website.
So, if you have a limited budget, and you are not comfortable with the code, I advise you against “marginal” themes that will make your modifications difficult, or even impossible without going through a professional.
Finally, with a popular theme, you will have access to a lot of content available, like tutorial videos, step by step articles, etc…
My choice of theme for Twaino
When I launched my website Twaino.com, I also wondered about the choice of theme. Finally, I decided to use a very interesting theme called Avada. But before that, let me introduce you how to find a theme for wordpress.
Find a theme on themeforest
In order to find a theme that you like and that meets your expectations, you can go on a platform like ThemeForest. You will find a very large amount of paid themes, and you can also access filters to choose your theme more easily. In my case, I turned to the best-sellers for wordpress themes. Indeed, if you don’t know how to choose your theme, turning to a popular theme is a way to avoid making a big mistake. For my website, I’m going to choose a theme that is a bit old but still number 1 in sales – Avada.
Most popular paid theme : Avada
The choice of a theme is always subject to discussion. As part of the launch of my SEO agency, I wanted to work on a theme very popular with wordpress users Avada. Indeed, I had the opportunity to buy this theme, more than three years ago now, and it was already at the time number 1 in sales. With regular updates, this is a theme that works extremely well, and with which I had the opportunity to create several websites in the past.
Moreover, due to its popularity, I found it interesting to take this theme, as my content will be able to help the largest number of people.
When choosing my theme, I hesitated a long time between taking a more recent theme, and more expensive (200 euros), or staying with a timeless theme like Avada at 50 euros. On your side, it all depends on your budget. If you have a bigger budget, I could advise you other types of themes but let’s say that for 60 dollars, you can have a theme that is extremely solid and that will allow you to really create a professional website.
To get a better idea of what kind of website you can get, you can go directly to the Avada website. You will be able to consult different types of websites that you can import by clicking on “preview”. Indeed, the advantage of a theme like Avada is that you can easily set up very different websites by simply importing the designs and demos that you like.
Choose and import a demo : Avada SEO
To create my Twaino SEO agency, I will use the Avada demo called: Avada SEO. Indeed, as its name suggests, it is a demo for an SEO site, so it’s perfect for me. The objective for me will be to be inspired by this demo to create my own content. Indeed, at the moment, I have on my site the default demo theme proposed when installing Avada. It is therefore very far from being an optimal solution.
I really advise you to start with a demo, to avoid starting from a “blank page”. Even if, in my case, I will change a lot of things in order to create my own website, with my colors, my brand image, my services and my communications. It is always interesting to be able to see how the content was presented. Indeed, keep in mind that these demos were made by professional web designers. Therefore, it is interesting to capitalize on their knowledge and expertise in order to propose a professional site.
How to install a theme on wordpress ?
Now that you know how to choose your theme, I will show you how to install this theme step by step on wordpress.
1) Go to the dashboard of your site
First thing to do, you need to go to your website. In my case, it’s my SEO agency Twaino. You will then connect to the dashboard by entering “/wp-admin” after the url of your site. You will have to enter your login and password.
2) Click on theme
Once you are connected to your dashboard, you must go to :
- Appearances => Themes
As you can see from the image below, there are already three themes that are installed by default on your website when you install wordpress.
By default, the theme installed for my site is called “Twenty Nineteen”, but as you can see two other themes are also installed. If you want, you can press the “preview” button of each theme to have a preview of what your website could look like.
This way, you will be able to notice how the change of theme is able to literally metamorphose the appearance of your website.
The twenty nineteen, twenty seventeen, and twenty sixteen themes are not the only ones offered by wordpress. In order to find the selection of other themes available, you can press “add theme”.
With the “functionality filter”, you will be able to search for a theme that suits you according to the theme and the type of your site (Blog / E-commerce). Be aware that the themes proposed in this selection may be difficult to modify for beginners
With more than 4,000 themes available, it is likely that you will find what you are looking for.
For Twaino, I chose to use Avada, a very popular theme that I bought about 3 years ago. This theme is therefore a reference in quotes. Moreover, considering the price, it is a very correct theme, which works well and which I also master well.
3) Press on add a theme
In my case, I have already purchased the theme I want to install which is Avada. If it’s not your case, you can go on a platform like themeforest to find this theme. Once you have purchased a theme, you will have the option to download the full package to your computer. Once you have the files on your computer, you can press “add theme” in wordpress.
4) Upload the theme
You will then arrive on this page, where you just have to click on “upload a theme”.
You will then just have to select the zip file of your theme. You can also drag and drop the zip file directly.
Once the file is dropped, you just have to press “install”.
The installation of the theme on wordpress can take a few seconds. Once finished, you will be redirected to the page below indicating that “the theme has been installed”.
5) Activate the theme
When the installation is finished and you go back to the “themes” page, you can see the installed theme displayed. In my case, Avada is the second theme displayed on this page.
So the theme has been installed, but it is not yet activated. This is exactly what we will do now, by going to the Avada theme image, and pressing “Activate”.
Activating the theme is a quick process that should only take a few seconds.
6) Update the theme (if needed)
During the installation and activation of the theme, it happens that mandatory updates are requested. Indeed, in my case, I bought my theme, several years ago, and the file I uploaded in wordpress is a bit old. Therefore, some updates are required to avoid any compatibility problems.
7) Integrate the activation code (for paid themes)
When installing a paid theme, it is usually required to enter an activation key to verify the proof of purchase. This is a mandatory step in order to be able to enjoy all the resources of your theme. You will usually receive your activation code by email or by logging into your customer account.
8) Install and/or update plugins
It happens regularly that some themes only work properly when associated plugins are activated. This is exactly the situation with Avada. So for this, I will go to “Go Manage Plugings” to see the plugins to install.
In my case, it is necessary for Avada to work properly that I install two plugins:
- Fusion Core
- Fusion Builder
If for some reason I don’t want to install these two plugins, I may have an impact on the visual aspects of my site.
Once the installation is complete, you will be redirected to a “extension has been installed” confirmation page.
9) Check your site
Finally, last step, I advise you to go on your website to see the result. So, as you can see on the attached image, your theme has been activated on your site and everything is working properly. To take the example of my site Twaino, the installation of the Avada theme has been done correctly. Of course, as my site is empty for the moment, we should not expect a spectacular result.
Conclusion
In this article I had the opportunity to present you how to choose a theme on wordpress, and the steps to install a theme. I hope that my video and my explanations have been clear enough because installing a theme is not a very difficult task.
Nevertheless, there are several things to take into consideration. First of all, when you are going to choose your theme, try to take one that is relatively famous in order to avoid problems. Indeed, you can for example call on the support team, which is useful if you don’t have any knowledge of code per se and still want to have a website. Moreover you can also consult a lot of content present in forums, on blogs or on Youtube.
Also try to take a theme with a clean code so that the loading time is fast. Indeed, a theme that is too heavy will negatively impact your whole website because the user experience will be particularly bad.
By choosing the Avada theme for my website Twaino, I decided to take a powerful theme that I know well. In the next articles / videos, I will have the opportunity to show you how to create a professional website with this theme.
See you soon…
