Installing themes on your blog or website doesn’t have to be hard. We’ve created these short tutorials to help you speed up the process if you’ve been having any difficulty. Please ask us any questions about themes directly on their theme page. Remember that we are simply providing links to themes and that you should probably try contacting the theme designer with specific issues first.

Request any additional platforms or systems should yours not be provided on this page. Note: We make no warranties that your theme installation will be successful due to the wide range of errors and problems the themes on the market may cause. You are advised at all times to backup your template and any specific files that may be overwritten.

WordPress

In my opinion, the upload process is much easier with WordPress than others, especially for plugins and core updates. To take advantage of this functionality with themes, use this plugin. It’ll cut out several steps and you won’t have to worry about unzipping and extracting files. Be sure that you select “Theme” and “Extract archived files” and possibly the “Remove archive after successful extraction.” It has saved a lot of time for me and could do the same for you.

These instructions WordPress.org (self-hosted) NOT WordPress.com (developer-hosted).

In brief:

1. Find the theme you want to use. Download it, making sure that it is already in ZIP format (the most convenient format).
2. Extract the file it contains. It must be in the same structure as that provided by the author (unless they did something wrong).
3. Upload it to your server using FTP to your wp-content/themes/ directory or where you have specified the themes to be placed. This file is not ZIPPED (it is the folder within the compressed file).
4. Login to your WordPress Administration Panel.
5. Select the Appearance panel, then Themes (if not selected by default).
6. Select the theme from your choices, then select “Activate.”

Important Note: WordPress does not remove any files when you activate new themes, so it is much easier to update than other systems. You still have to remember to save files that will change with the upgrade process.

Blogger

If you use Blogger (also known as Blogspot), you want to use this guide. We have made it as simple as possible to get started with a new template found on this site or elsewhere. Files are presented to you (generally) in a zipped folder, with an XML file inside. Unzip and extract the file from the folder, then you are free to follow the steps included below.

In brief:

1. Log in to your account and click the Layout link.
2. Click the Edit HTML link in the navigation bar.
3. Back up your template by saving a file to your desktop.
4. Save any widgets that you may have placed in your template (as long as there is code you can back them up) into a text document.
5. Upload your new template or choose one of the default templates if you are reverting back.
6. Confirm any changes.
7. Replace any widgets that may have been removed with your backup files. You can use the full backup file if you encounter major changes that you don’t like or impair your blog’s functionality.

Other

We’re keeping our eyes on other developing platforms and will be expanding this list as time goes on.

– Joomla!

– Droopal

– Habari

– Others (no themes listed yet)