Overview
A theme will provide you with the overall outlook and feel of your site. Menus and widgets’ positions will be defined by a theme, and also the color scheme and the default layout of pages and posts.
View Themes
A theme showcase will include 290 designs, color schemes, and layouts to fit the requirement you want for your site.
- Choose My Site(s)
- Go to Personalize section by scrolling down the menu
- Choose Themes button
Search for a Theme
It will be hard for you to choose your desired theme out of 290 available themes, then you can narrow down the theme list by insert specific features or keywords.
So where can you insert the specific keyword? The search box. Type the necessary keyword, only themes that match will be shown.
The theme list can be narrowed down even more by entering feature, columns, style, layout, and subject.
• Feature – theme features like a Fixed Menu, Custom Headers, and Store
• Layout – fixed, fluid, grid, or responsive layouts
• Columns – the number of columns in the theme, or if there is a right or left sidebar
• Subject – examples include Art, Business, Announcement, Photography
• Style – filter to clean, playful, simple, modern, sophisticated, or other styles
Theme Menu
Each of the theme thumbnail will have a menu with additional options.
• Live demo – A specially designed site showcasing all of the features of a particular theme
• Activate – immediately apply the theme to your live site
• Try & Customize – see how your site with your content will look like with the new theme
• Info – learn more about the features of the theme and the way replicate the demo. Instructions on setting up the theme can be found in Info → Overview, or Setup.
• Support – keep in touch with us so that you can have timing helps with the theme
Previewing a Theme
Performing this action will bring you a pleasant chance to see how you contents will be displayed in a theme.
- Go to My Site menu, choose Themes button.
- A menu that belongs to each theme will be shown next to its theme, just below the theme thumbnail.
- Select the three dots to extend the menu.
- Select Try & Customize
- Performing this action will lead you to Customizer
Note: Customizer shows you a list of the preview of different themes with your existing contents. This is wonderful way to test a theme in case you created your content already. You can have the idea of how the new theme will work with your content by scrolling up and down.
Note: In case you want to apply another theme, select the X sign in the top left corner of Customizer window to come for more options You can keep on trying the theme for a more suitable one.
Activating a Theme
When you decide to active a theme, it will be applied to your site. Your content will not be change even a bit, only the layout that is changed.
- Go to My Site menu, choose Themes button.
- A menu that belongs to each theme will be shown next to its theme, just below the theme thumbnail.
- Select the three dots to extend the menu.
- Select Active Note: Sometimes, the result will not look exactly like the theme’s demo. You can select Info option in Themes Showcase to see the specific directions to recreate the demo theme’s layout.
Premium Themes
Beside the offered free theme, there are amazing Premium Themes which includes many interesting customization options and support from the authors of the theme. Each of the theme is exclusively created to help to express yourself to the world.
Sites on WordPress.com (personal plan) can purchase a specific Premium theme to use. Users who purchased Premium or higher plan will have no limit of access to all of the Premium themes.
How to Switch Themes
You can follow the video below for more specific instructions how to switch themes:
My Content and Switching Themes
Even if you change to a new theme, everything includes posts, pages, blogroll, media, and all of your content will not be lost.
After you changed your theme, here are the things you need to check:
Custom Menus
You might want to reassign your Custom Menus to your desired location in the new theme. Depending on the chosen theme, each one will support different locations.
Widgets
In order to have your Widgets in the proper locations, you may want to replace them. For example, each theme will support Custom Menus in different locations. That is depended on the theme.
Custom CSS
Because of theme-specific, Custom CSS will be the only feature that will not come with you. To find your previous CSS, choose CSS revisions link at My Sites Customize CSS
Note: Only Wordpress.com Premium Plan or higher have Custom CSS feature.
Retired Premium Themes
Whenever you choose to have a premium theme, it normally will available for the period of your site’s lifetime.
Sometimes, a theme is retired when the updates of web technology make the old themes become outdated in both visual and function. Do not worry, you can still use the theme for as long as you desire. But remember that if you switch to another theme, the retired theme will never come back anymore.
There are always plenty of newer and better themes for you to choose.
Note: in case you have a retired theme and you want to upgrade to your site to WordPress.com Business or higher plan with plugins and custom themes, the design of your retired theme may change to a newer theme so that it will not bring any problems to your plugins.
Theme Features
Each of the theme will come with different features. Some themes will let you can set up your content areas of the home page. But others will have sidebars on sides of the page (left or right). You can review the theme’s features by viewing a theme’s demo.
Sidebars and Footers
You are able to edit Sidebars and Footers by choosing Customize Widgets. Each of the theme will give you many ways to display the sidebar footer widgets.
This action will help you to insert widgets to your site. For instance, in case you would like to insert contact information, a list of categories, or social media icons, you need to insert widgets to the sidebar or footer.
You also can look for how to use widgets more effectively here.
Page Templates
Different templates may come along with some of the different themes. The layout of a specific page will be the thing that page templates would change. For instance, the specific “Front Page” template will be the feature of a theme called Maisha.
When your selected theme has Page Templates, below are the steps for you to apply them:
- Edit the page or post you want to apply the template to.
- Select Settings icon on the right to load the Document menu.
- Choose Page or Post Attributes.
- Click Template from the drop down.
- Select Update to apply the new Page Template.
My Theme Does Not Look Like The Demo
Many of the themes will be in need of additional customization to look like the content layout in the demo displays. Each theme will have its Infor section which includes the instruction on setting up the theme’s features in Customizer.
- Select My Site → Themes
- Select Info in the current theme, or you can select Info on a thumbnail of a theme, or you can also try Info/Setup from the thumbnail menu of your theme.
- You can see under either Overview, or Setup, there will be sections with instructions on how to set up each of the Theme’s features. For Instance: The theme called Affinity uses a number of Front Page panels and Featured Images. The Overview or Setup section you guide you how to properly configure them.
Uploading a Custom or Third-Party Theme
Sites with the WordPress.com Business plan can upload third-party or custom themes to their website. If you want to upload a third-party theme with the Business plan:
- Choose My Site.
- Select Themes button.
- Choose Upload Theme button which is located below the theme filters.
Note: You can visit here for specific instructions on how to upload a third party theme.
Browser Support
The themes of WordPress will support the lasted 2 versions of browsers at Browse Happy:
- Firefox
- Opera
- Safari
- Chrome
- Internet Explorer (11 only)
- Edge
