How to Install a WordPress Theme

Have you finished installing WordPress and ready to install that WordPress theme you finally found? Hopefully, these quick and easy steps will help you on how to install a WordPress theme. You’ve got this! If you haven’t already picked out a template, you can find one here. And download your theme zip file to your desktop.

Unzip your theme package

First things first, you’ll need to unzip your theme package to find, yes, another zip file. This second zip file is the file you’ll need to upload and install in WordPress.
To unzip your theme package use 7-Zip, it is a free software you can download on your computer. This software will give you the ability to unzip or unpackage the theme you purchased.

To unzip your theme package, right-click the zip file (i.e. themepackage.zip) and then click “7-Zip > Extract files…” Your extracted files will then be found in a folder or directory in the location you chose. Open the extracted directory and find the second zip file within that folder, this is your WordPress theme (i.e. wordpresstheme.zip).

Head on over to your WordPress dashboard. And go to appearance > themes, then click on the add new theme button. You will then be redirected to a directory of free wordpress templates, click on the upload theme button located in the upper, left-hand corner. You should see the following text “If you have a theme in a .zip format, you may install it by uploading it here.” Click on the browse button and select the WordPress theme zip file from your desktop computer (i.e. wordpresstheme.zip). Click install now and then activate your theme.

Upon activating your theme, visit the homepage of your website. You should now see that theme as your active WordPress theme. 🙂