How to Install Wordpress Themes and Plugins
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Choosing a Theme and Installing
One of the things that appealed to me about Wordpress is it’s customising abilities, with the Wordpress installation you get a default theme, but there are 1,000’s of free themes for Wordpress that you can download and customise to make your own. Or if you have the money, you could have your own designed for you, I would have to be earning a fair bit more before I did that so it’s good that there are so many free themes.
So I had installed Wordpress onto my host (Bluehost) which was really easy because it was a one click installation process using Fantastico, it had really simple instructions and automatically installed the latest version of Wordpress, and I had it done in five minutes. The next step was the theme, I decided I wanted a different theme to the default Kubrick theme and I found mine on the Wordpress theme viewer site. There are loads of sites that do free themes as well, just put a Google search in. But I went to Wordpress itself and used the theme viewer to choose one. It did take a while just because of all the choice, I was like a kid in a sweet shop. Finally I had my theme and after my experience with installing the application itself I was feeling confident that it would be just as easy…
Was I wrong! If you do have a lot of trouble with your theme you can always go to the designer and ask for advice, it generally tells you in the footer who designed it. When you download a theme from a site you will get a folder and sometimes an installation instruction file with it, which is very basic. It will say something like this:
Upload the theme folder into the theme folder. URL/wp-content/themes/
Activate theme
Finding wp-content/themes/?
It looks simply enough but I had one problem with it, where is the wp-content/themes/ folder?
Could I find it, I had no idea where it could be, sure I realised it had something to do with either my hosting account or my Wordpress admin site, but where, because they are both quite extensive in their options. I had had no previous experience of either of them or how they worked or related to one another, so I was really stuck. And obviously it’s such a simple thing to do in blogging that it was hard to find information on where it could be or how to do it. It was as if the step of knowing where wp-content/themes/ is, is too simple. I asked for help in forums and got the same reply, you upload it to your wp-content/themes/ folder. I felt really stupid one day when I went back and replied that I didn’t know what a wp-content/themes/ folder was. Then the penny seemed to drop and I got really helpful step by step instructions on how to do it. Thank goodness!
- The wp-content/themes/ is found in your hosting account control panel, or you can use 3rd party FTP software to help you do it. I used the Bluehost control panel.
- I went to Unlimited FTP under files, and that forms a connection between your computer and the host, on the left of the screen is the files on your computer and on the right is the files on your hosting account.
- On the left I clicked through to the theme folder (and highlighted it) in my computer files that I had downloaded from the theme viewer site, and on the right I clicked through public html, wp-content and then highlighted the themes folder. Once the right folders were highlighted I clicked upload and that was it.
All I had to do then was go into my Wordpress admin site and choose the new theme under the presentation tab. Once I had learned how to do it I was made up, it was a huge weight of my shoulders because it had been so frustrating trying to figure it out. At the end of the day when I knew how it was done, it seemed really obvious and easy to do, such a simple step as well to have had so much trouble with. But beforehand it had been a huge wall stopping me from moving on.
Plugins - kill two birds with one stone!
Plugins give more functionality to your blog and there are a lot to choose from, which is what makes a Wordpress blog so individual. You just have to decide which plugins you want to use. The good thing is when you know how to upload themes then you know how to upload plugins because it’s practically the same process. Download the plugin to your computer then go into your unlimited FTP on your host, or use your 3rd party software and then just use the same process as before. But highlight the plugins folder instead of the themes folder in your hosting account, click through public html, wp- content then highlight the plugins folder and upload. The final step is to go into your Wordpress admin site and activate the plugin through your plugin tab. The site you download the plugin from will also have instructions on how to install it, read them because some plugins can be tricky, but the basics of installation are still the same.
If I have just waffled and made no sense whatsoever, or you like to learn visually then you may like to take a look at Wordpress quickstart which explains the basics of Wordpress with videos. This post will probably seem trivial and incredibly obvious to a lot of you, but I hope it helps someone out there who is in the same place as where I was! We all have to learn these easy steps at some point, but with experience they can easily be forgotten and over looked. So that’s why I wrote it to help the true beginners in there very first steps, and long may it continue…
Mandy
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17 Responses to “How to Install Wordpress Themes and Plugins”
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Thank you so much for this post! I am in exactly the same place that you were. Getting a theme is assumed to be so easy that nobody lays out exactly how to do it.
I haven’t done it yet, but thanks to you I’m pretty sure that now I can.
Thanks Jack,
Hearing that makes all the blood sweat and tears I went through worthwhile. If I can help and stop just one person going through the hassle I did then it was worth it!
If you do have any problems give me a shout and I’ll try to help or at least find somebody who can!
I do have another question that I was wondering if you had any insight on.
I am going to use Fantastico to install WP. On the Fantastico interface the default is to install the blog in the root directory. Since, down the road, I might want the blog to only be a part of the site I don’t think I should put it in the root. However, inside Fantastico, I’m not sure how to put the blog in a sub-directroy but still have my domain name point to it.
I asked this question on the WP forum here.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory
They basically said forget about Fantatico. But I’m pretty sure there’s a way to do what I want with Fantastico and it seems a whole lot easier to me.
Any insight would be appreceated.
Sorry Jack,
Rather than answer your question straight away, I am going to ask another question, so I can get you the right help!
Do you want your blog to be part of a website in the future or are you wanting to start more blogs?
For instance I used Fantastico and installed Wordpress on my root directory. When I start my photography blog I will install it on a sub-directory with a completely different domain. If I wanted build a blog to be part of a website I would have called it builda-blog.com/blog
Do you see what I mean? Let me know which one you are thinking of and I’ll find out about Fantastico!
The answer is that in the future I might want the blog to be just a part of a website.
Right now, though, I want my URL to take visitors directly to my blog.
Thanks for getting back to me…
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Thank you so much for this post! I have been looking everywhere for how to install plugins–all I get is upload it to wp-content, but this is the first time I have seen that actually explained! Now, I have to get busy uploading!
Thanks again.
I’m glad you liked the post. It took me a week to figure it out because there was no help out there, so that’s why I wrote the post.
Glad to see it’s helping others!
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I want to weep — your post has helped me sooooo much. xoxoxo!!!!
I’m glad it helped, is there anything else that you are stuck on?
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