How to Upload a Wordpress Template

This article covers the basics of uploading a new theme to Wordpress.

The popularity of Wordpress is due to its ease of installation, simple content management, and a large inventory of easy to install templates. Wordpress makes it easy for anyone to instantly setup their own website and start adding content which is immediately accessible to the public.

Templates form the basic framework of a Wordpress site. Once you upload a new theme for Wordpress, all information retrieved from the Wordpress database is pushed through the template to generate a page that is then sent back to the browser for display. The new Wordpress template contains markup tags which designate where data will be inserted. Since the look and feel of a Wordpress site is controlled by the Wordpress template, the entire look and feel of a Wordpress site can be easily changed simply by uploading and installing a new theme.

In order to install a new theme you will need an FTP application. This FTP application is needed to upload files into the "themes" folder of your Wordpress installation. Here are some FTP instructions (if you need them) to download, install, and get started with FTP.

Note: most themes that you get will be in ZIP format. To unzip these files you will need an Unzip program. If you are using Windows Vista, it has a built-in Unzip program and Vista will ask you if you want to unzip the contents when you click on a link with a ".zip" extension. If you are using some other operating system, you will need to download and install an Unzip program if you don't already have one and then run it on the downloaded ZIP file to unpack it.

When Wordpress is installed, either from a hosting account or manually, a setup script is run which creates the folders required for Wordpress to run, installs all necessary scripts, and creates the MySQL database. The folder structure that the current version of Wordpress uses looks like the following:

->wordpress (main folder and where the main .PHP files are stored)
      ->wp-admin
      ->wp-content
          ->plugins
          ->themes (all themes are stored here)
              ->classic
              ->default
          ->upgrade
          ->uploads
      ->wp-includes 

The folder structure above is typical, although the main folder might be named differently under different hosting accounts.

The "themes" folder is where all Wordpress themes are stored. If you look into the "themes" folder, you will see another set of folders which contain all the necessary .PHP files to implement a Wordpress theme. For instance, with a basic install of Wordpress, you will find the "classic" theme and the "default" theme, which are part of the basic Wordpress install.

There are many free Wordpress themes and excellent Commercial Wordpress themes that you can purchase. If you purchase a theme or download a free theme, they are installed using the same basic steps as outlined below.

Step 1: Download the new theme to a folder on your local PC somewhere you will be able to find and unzip it. Pay attention to the folder structure of the unzipped file because you will often find unnecessary levels of folders in the unzipped files. You only need to upload the files from the lowest level folder.

Step 2: Use your FTP program to login to your website. On the remote site of the FTP application, locate the Wordpress main folder and navigate to the "themes" sub-folder. You can create a new folder for the new theme if you want to name it differently from the folder name in your unzipped file (only the lower level files of a theme are important, not the folder name they live in). If you create a new folder, double click on the remote site to navigate into the new folder (the new folder should be empty at this point).

Step 3: On the local side of your FTP application, navigate down into the unzipped folders to find the theme files (these are the files at the lowest level directory) and upload them to your new theme folder on the remote server. When you are finished, the final Wordpress folder structure on the remote site of your FTP application will look something like the following:

->wordpress (main folder and where the main .PHP files are stored)
      ->wp-admin
      ->wp-content
          ->plugins
          ->themes (all themes are stored here)
              ->classic
              ->default
              ->mynewtheme (your new theme files will be here)
          ->upgrade
          ->uploads
      ->wp-includes 

Now you can sign into your Wordpress administrator. From the dashboard, locate the "Appearance" menu in the left sidebar and select "Themes". You should see a list of themes displayed with a preview of the theme. Notice that the themes shown are directly related to the "themes" folder where you installed your new Wordpress theme. The top or current theme is the Wordpress theme that is currently active. The available themes are themes from which you can select to make it the active Wordpress theme.

Step 4: Locate your new theme and click the title link. This will take you to a preview. If you want to make the theme active, click the "Activate Wordpress Theme" in the upper right hand corner of the preview. If you don't want to activate the theme, click the "Close" button in the left hand corner of the preview.

Once a theme is activated, if you visit your Wordpress site, you should see that the site's look and feel is now controlled by the Wordpress theme you uploaded.

So, there you have it: the basics of uploading a new theme for Wordpress.