Your theme controls how the site looks. WordPress ships with a default theme, and thousands of free themes are available from inside the dashboard.
Installing a free theme from the directory
- Go to Appearance → Themes and click Add New.
- Browse Popular or Latest, or use the search box and the Feature Filter to narrow by subject and layout.
- Hover over a theme and click Preview to see it with your content, then Install.
- Click Activate once installation finishes.
Installing a purchased or downloaded theme
- Download the theme as a .zip file. If the marketplace gives you a bundle, unzip it first and find the actual installable theme zip inside — installing the whole bundle is the most common cause of "The package could not be installed. The theme is missing the style.css stylesheet."
- Go to Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme.
- Choose the zip, click Install Now, then Activate.
If the upload fails
Large theme zips can exceed the default upload limit. See our article on increasing the maximum upload size, or upload the extracted theme folder directly into public_html/wp-content/themes/ using cPanel File Manager — it will then appear in Appearance → Themes ready to activate.
Before you switch themes on a live site
Changing themes can move or hide widgets, menus and page builder content. Take a backup first, and note down your menu locations and widget arrangement so you can rebuild them quickly.
Use a child theme if you plan to edit theme files, otherwise your changes will be erased the next time the theme updates.
