Are you looking to install a new
WordPress theme? Well keep watching
because in this video you'll learn how
to choose, how to install, and how to
configure your WordPress theme. Now keep
in mind when you change themes it will
change how your site looks and functions
so make sure to read through our
checklist of things you should do before
changing your WordPress theme. Are you
ready? Let's get started.
I'm gonna open a new browser and type in
my web address to see it. Here it's a
little bare and I'm not excited about
the look but that's okay we'll work on
the look next by finding a theme. In
WordPress a theme is a premade design
that a designer or developer created so
you don't have to know the code to get
that look on your site instead you just
use the theme and then you can further
customize it and make it completely your
own. To do that we need to go to our
website dashboard. To go to the backend
of your website just type in your web
address in the browser and then add
wp-admin at the end. This will take you
to the login screen and this is where
you'll put in your username and password
you can also click remember me so you
don't have to do this every time. Now
that we're logged in this is the back
end and here's the dashboard area, you
can get a quick glance of how your site
is doing, you can see here things like
your posts your comments and pages.
You'll also see some latest WordPress
news here and this area will look
different depending on what plugins or
themes that you have installed. Over here
on the left these are all the areas that
you use to customize your site. We'll
cover most of these later but for now I
want to go over the appearance section,
specifically our themes section. So I'm
gonna click on the appearance and go to
themes and right now these are all of
our themes that we currently have on
this site. If you go to your site yours
will look a little bit different and you
can tell this one is the active theme or
the one that is being used on my site
right now. Now the number and types of
themes that are on your site they'll
look a little different depending on
when you installed WordPress. If I want I
can switch to any of these themes by
clicking activate and I'll change my
site's theme immediately. For instance
I'll activate this one and now my site
looks like this. But if you don't want to
use any of these themes that are already
installed we can click on the add new
button and we
can search for a new theme. Now we see
thousands of themes to choose from, all
of these themes are created by a
designer or developer from all over the
world and they're reviewed and approved
by WordPress. They're stored in what's
called the WordPress theme repository
and since they're reviewed you know that
they're safe for your site. You can
search by featured by, theme popularity,
you can find the latest ones that have
been uploaded, you can save your
favorites here, or we can also do a
feature filter and that's what I'm going
to show you right now. So you can click
on the feature filter area and check off
some of the features that you know you
want for your site. You can also filter
by the type of site that you'll want to
have such as a blog or maybe an
e-commerce site. I'm going to click apply
filter to see the results, as you scroll
through and look at them you can hover
over in a theme image and you can see
the details and preview to see what it
might look on your site. When you do that
it's not actually activating it it's
just giving you a preview of what it
will look like. So go ahead and take a
few minutes look through all of these
themes and pick one that you might want
for your site. For this video I know
which one I want to use so I'm gonna
type it in here and search for it and once
it pops up I'm gonna click install and
then activate it and now looking at the
site it's already a huge difference from
what it was now we just need to
customize it. Alright to customize it we
just need to go back into our dashboard
area and I'm gonna go to the customize
area. Couple of things about this area is
number one if you selected a different
theme than what I have then this area
will likely look a little bit different.
This area is just dependent on which
theme you get and what options are
available for you. The next thing to
understand is any changes that I make
here you'll see them real time over here
however they won't actually go live on
your website until we click Save and
publish so there's a little bit of
testing the waters before you make any
changes. So we'll just start from the top
and start making the changes to the site.
For site identity
that is the site title we have it as
WPBeginner and you can do a tagline for
your site as well and you want to decide
if you want to display that. That's what
it looks like for me so I'll keep that.
The site icon that is this little guy
right here and you'll want to make sure
that you have a logo or an image that
you want to use that it's 512 pixels
tall
by wide and we'll cover that shortly
when we're dealing with logos. So I'm
happy with that I'll click back and now
we're gonna go to colors we can pick a
color scheme for me I think that the
darker text on that image is better. As
you can see you can just play with any
of the colors until you hit one that you
like. If you've gone too far with your
colors and you just want to start from
scratch you can click on the default
color anytime it'll just take you back
to what it was and you can start again.
For this site I'm gonna choose this
color for my header text color and we're
good to go. Next we'll take a look at
background color I'll show you what the
background color looks like. For me for
this theme the background color is down
here and again you can choose something
a little lighter. As a side note if you
need some inspiration on what kind of
color combinations to use then
search for cooler Adobe it's been
changed to color.Adobe.com and go and
look through the Explorer area and just
scroll through here and see which colors,
which color combinations you like and
then you can use them for your site.
The way you do that is you find one that you
like and you can click on the Edit copy
to adjust it or if you like them
directly then this is the code that you
want to copy. For instance I'll copy that
code and then you can go back into your
area and paste that code there and now
that's the color that you can use. So
feel free to play with that a little bit
to get your site colors exactly how you
want them and finally let's take a look
at the header background color. You can
see that this is the default one since I
have an image up there you're not seeing
that come through
when I change the color then you see
that replaces that background. I'm going
to click back on default and here in a
minute we'll, we'll choose the picture so
we can get our picture back. Under header
image these are the ones that come with
the theme you can either keep them or
you can add your own image if you add
your own image you want to make sure
that the header size is 1600 by 400
pixels. You can choose between any of
those.
For this I'll keep the nature picture I
like that. Okay and moving down if you
want to add a background image again
that will be down here in place of where
all the color is and you can upload an
image. In just a bit I'll show you how to
deal with images as well. For me I'm not
going to add a background image. For the
next two I'm going to skip those because
we're going to deal with those
separately because we need to create
some pages before we can set up the menu.
Static front page you can either set up
a page as your front page or you can
continue to use your latest posts for
the home page and that's just depending
on what your preferences are. Some people
choose to create a static front page and
I'll show you what that will look like.
So if I hit static page my front page I
only have this page right now but then
that would be kind of like your home
page maybe you can say welcome you know
whatever you're wanting to convey on the
front page you can use that as your
front page. Since we don't have a front
page set up and I really want to keep
this as a blog I'm gonna go ahead and
just keep it as my latest posts and go
back. For the accent color for this theme
that's everything that you see here the
icons, the underlining comment, or you can
pick from these standard ones or you can
also if you have a particular color that
you want to use then you can use the
color picker like we did before. For me
I'll use the orange I have one more
called the post option, that is when you
get more posts do you want to show the
full post and have people
just keep on scrolling all the way down
until they read it all or do you want
just a post excerpt or meaning a, a small
snippet of the post and then they'll
have to click on read more. For me I'll
keep it as post excerpt and now that
we're done with that I'm going to click
Save and publish
so all those changes that I just did
will now become live and you can see
that by going back to our site, clicking
refresh, and now all those changes are
made. Did you learn something from
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helpful tips to help you manage your
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