Installing a New wordpress theme is quite simple. With very little effort, you can transform the look and feel of your blog. I started this blog less than a week ago and I’m definitely getting tired of looking at the default theme. Eventually I’ll create my own theme for this blog, but for now I’m focusing primarily on content, so I’ll just install a freely available theme. So as I download and install the new theme, I’m going to walk you through the steps I take. Here we go…

1. Download a theme

There are lots of places to find free WordPress themes. There are lots of free themes in the wordpress.org free themes directory. Smashing Apps has a list of 13 Premium-Like WordPress Themes That Are Free. Finally, Instant Shift has a huge list of 140+ Brilliant Free WordPress Themes. For this blog, I’m going to download the Thematic WordPress Theme from themeshaper.com. It is plain and simple, which is just what I’m looking for at the moment. Once you’ve found a theme that you like, download it to your computer and unzip it.

2. Upload the theme

Using your FTP client of choice, upload the theme folder to the /wp-content/themes directory on your server.

3. Activate the theme

Sign into WordPress and click Appearance link. You should see the theme that you just uploaded in the list of themes. Click the new theme and you will be presented with a preview. Click Activate in the top right corner and your blog should look brand new!

If you have any questions about installing themes, please post them in the comments below.