Task 12: Begin to test Themes

The look and feel of your WordPress site is determined by a set of templates, which are collectively called a Theme. Each site will have one Theme active at a time, and all of the content on the site will be deployed according to the rules for that Theme.

There are thousands of Themes available for WordPress, so chances are that whatever you are trying to do with your site has been done before by someone else, and made available as a prebuilt Theme. Many Themes are free, made available as a public service by the developers. Commercial themes are also provided by many companies, requiring payment of usage fee. At this stage of your learning process, don’t shell out any money for paid themes. You probably are not aware of the issues to consider when evaluating themes, so buying a theme at this time would be premature.

In upcoming learning tasks we will be looking closely at the features that make Themes shine or sputter. To understand the differences between Themes you will want to test a large number of different Themes in coming weeks. Fortunately, changing Themes is so simple you can do it in just a couple of minutes.

To complete this task…

Test at least ten different Themes on your site. Don’t worry too much about which ones you test, because you will not need to select your “real” theme until later.

Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Themes and check which Theme your site is currently using. Several other Themes were probably pre-installed for you at the time you opened your WordPress hosting account. If so, those other Themes will be shown below the Theme that is in use.

Look over the available themes and select one of them for testing. Apply the Theme to your site, which will replace the current Theme. Then look over your site to see how things have changed.

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