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You are here: Home / WordPress Tutorial For Beginners / How do I change the look or design of my WordPress website?

How do I change the look or design of my WordPress website?

How do I do this?

In the WordPress dashboard go to…

  • Appearance > Themes.
  • At the top of the page look for a button that says Add New.
  • When you click the Add New button you see a grid of themes that WordPress have tested and recommend.
  • Use the buttons in the top navigation bar to filter the themes. You can view the most recent themes to become available or the most popular themes etc.
  • When you find a theme you like, press the theme’s preview button to see a large preview of that theme.
  • Click the install button to install a new theme.
  • You can also upload a theme that you have bought from a design shop like StudioPress.

Appearance > Themes > Add New

Appearance Themes Add New

 

Now you can FILTER to find the theme you want

Appearance Themes Feature Filter

 

Click the PREVIEW button to see a preview of the theme

Appearance Themes Install and Preview Buttons

 

If you have bought a theme from a design shop like StudioPress you can upload your theme using the UPLOAD button

Appearance Themes Upload Button

 

Then upload the theme from your desktop

Appearance Themes Upload

WordPress calls your web design a theme

I want to explain this in really simple terms, so I’ll compare WordPress to a smartphone.

A smartphone is made from two parts.

  • The complicated electronic stuff inside.
  • The plastic cover that you can swap if you want to change the look of your phone.

WordPress is made from two parts.

A Content Management System.
This CMS helps you build and organise all of your pages and posts into a website. Your site visitors don’t see all of this complicated stuff.

A theme or web design.
The design controls how your content is displayed. Such as your website’s background colours and how big the text is etc.

You can easily change the look of your smartphone

You can unclip the plain white cover of your smartphone and replace it with a cover that has a fancy pattern or is brightly coloured.

All of the stuff inside your phone remains untouched. It’s just the cover or shell that changes appearance.

You can do something similar with WordPress

The look of your site depends upon the design or theme you choose to install. To change the look or design of your WordPress website you just install a different theme or web design.

All of your content remains the same. But the background colours, font sizes, and page layout design can be radically different.

Important things to consider before changing themes

If your current site has content in the WordPress sidebars or footer widget areas you will have to reconfigure these widgets in your new theme.

If your old theme uses just two or three widgets in the sidebar or footer you can easily re add these to your new theme.

But some themes can have 10, 20 or even 30 widget areas. These fancy themes can take quite a long time to set up.

Category: WordPress Tutorial For Beginners

About Philip Gledhill

Philip helps small and medium service businesses build and maintain clean, minimalist, professional looking websites. He loves clear, concise, customer focused content, and websites that are easy to navigate. His motto is focus on your customer and keep it simple.

Previous Post: « How do I make Google friendly web page links?
Next Post: How do I change the Site Title and Tagline? »

Sidebar

How do I..? A list of WordPress Tutorials for Beginners

  • Gutenberg Post Editor | The Basics
  • How do I Login and Logout of WordPress?
  • How do I change the Site Title and Tagline?
  • How do I change the look or design of my WordPress website?
  • How do I make Google friendly web page links?
  • The images I used in the tutorials
  • How do I make WordPress web pages and blog posts?
  • How do I write a post without publishing it yet?
  • How do I add a header image to my site?
  • How do I add fancy featured images to my WordPress website?
  • How do I make a navigation bar?
  • How do I enable or disable comments on my website?
  • How do I put content in the sidebar or footer of my website?
  • How do I change the look of my blog listing pages?
  • How do I add image galleries, sliders and forms to my site?
  • How do I use the different post Format types?
  • How do I organize my content using categories and tags?
  • How do I edit my profile picture, add some biographical information and reset my password?
  • How do I hide dialogue boxes I don’t need?
  • Optimizing images for the web using Pixlr

These tutorials use the free Twenty Sixteen theme by WordPress…

Download the free Twenty Sixteen theme.

The Twenty Sixteen theme

Please note, this site is paid for with money I earn through affiliate links.

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