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How to change the theme in wordpress

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Themes » Change Your Theme

You can change the theme of your site as often as you like. Changing a theme lets you redesign your existing website content with a fresh look, without having to recreate your entire site. This guide explains how to switch themes and make sure your site looks just the way you like.

Table of Contents

  1. How to Switch Themes
  2. Preview a Theme Before Switching
    1. Previewing Block-based Themes
    2. Previewing Classic Themes
  3. Homepage Content
  4. After Switching Themes
    1. Homepage
    2. Menus
    3. Widgets
    4. Custom CSS
  5. What Happened to My Home Page?
  6. Return to a Previous Theme

How to Switch Themes

To change the theme of your site, follow these steps:

  1. Starting in your dashboard, go to Appearance → Themes. You will see your site’s current theme at the top.
  2. Browse through the available themes and choose one that you like.
  3. Click the three dots icon and select Activate.
  4. Decide if you would like to add demo content or not.
  5. Set up your theme according to its instructions.

When you switch themes, all your existing content carries over. Nothing is deleted, so it’s perfectly safe to switch (and you can always switch back to your old theme if you change your mind.)

A theme called Barnsbury is shown, with the three dots button clicked and the option to Activate is highlighted.

Preview a Theme Before Switching

Previewing Block-based Themes

When browsing our modern block-based themes, click the … (three dots) and choose the Live demo option to view an example of a site with the theme applied:

To Preview a theme, click Live Demo from the options next to the theme name.

If you’re happy to move forward with the theme, click Activate button at the top right. If not, click the Close button at the top left to exit without activating the theme and move on to try another theme.

Activate and Close button on the theme demo panel.
Click to enlarge the image.
Previewing Classic Themes

On the Live demo panel of classic themes that rely on the Customizer, you will see the Try & Customize at the top of the window to open the theme in the Customizer with your site’s content loaded.

In the Live Demo of the theme, you can Activate it on the top right, close it on the top left, or Preview it in different modes from the dropdown.
Click to enlarge the image.

In the Customizer, you will see how your site looks in the selected theme without changing how your site looks to your visitors. You can change the settings to test drive how the new theme will look with your content.

If you’re happy to move forward with the theme, click Activate & Save. If not, click the X to exit without activating the theme on your site. (Please note that Try & Customize doesn’t save a draft or staging version of the site, and any changes you make won’t affect your live site until you click on the Activate & Save button.)

When using the Try & Customize feature, you can activate the theme from the Customizer's Activate & Save button at the top.

Homepage Content

When activating a theme, many themes will offer you the option to add homepage demo content to your site.

  1. Switch to this theme, preserving my homepage content: This option does not add the theme’s demo content to your site. Your existing content will be presented in the new theme.
  2. Replace my homepage content with the theme’s homepage: This option will add the theme’s demo content to your site so that your homepage will immediately change to match what you see on the demo site. If you have an existing homepage that you worked on, it will not be deleted! The old homepage will be saved as a draft under Pages → Drafts.
The options when switching to a new theme to keep your own home page content or use the theme's home page.
When you activate a new theme, you will see this option to add the theme’s homepage.

If you choose a theme that does not offer demo content, you can follow the setup guide included with the theme.

After Switching Themes

When you change to a new theme, there are a few things you should check afterward:

Homepage

Is the correct homepage assigned? In your dashboard, go to Settings → Reading to make sure the correct page is set as the homepage. You can then go to Pages and click your homepage to edit the content.

You’ll want to check your menus to make sure they’re showing up in the correct locations and that they look how you want.

Widgets

You’ll want to place your widgets in the proper widget locations. Like menus, each theme supports different locations.

Custom CSS

The only thing that would not transfer over with your theme is Custom CSS because that is theme-specific. However, you can recover your past CSS in the CSS history link located at Appearance→ Customize → Additional CSS.

What Happened to My Home Page?

If you select one of the Recommended themes and chose to replace your homepage content with the theme’s homepage, your existing home page will be moved to your Drafts. Here is how you can make that your homepage again

  1. From your dashboard, click on Pages.
  2. Click on the Drafts tab.
In the Pages section of your Dashboard there is a "Drafts" link to view pages that have been saved as a draft.
  1. Once in Drafts, click on the ellipses (three dots) next to your old home page.
  2. Select Publish from the drop-down menu.
The three-dot menu to the right of a page in the Pages list will provide you with the option to "Publish"
  1. Once your original home page is published, go back the Published tab.
  2. Click the ellipses (three dots) menu next to the most recently published page (this is the home page you just re-published from drafts.)
  3. Select Set as Homepage from the drop-down menu.
The three-dot menu to the right of a page in the Pages list will provide you with the option to "Set as Homepage"
  1. Lastly, click on the ellipses (three dots) next to the homepage created by the theme.
  2. Click on Trash to move that page to the Trashed section of Pages.
The three dot menu to the right of a page name in Pages will display an option to "Trash" the page.

Return to a Previous Theme

It’s ok to change your mind. If you activate a theme and later decide you want to restore how your site looked before, all you need to do is reactivate the previous theme you had on your site. If you’re not sure which theme you used to have, go to Jetpack → Activity Log to see a record of recent actions taken on your site:

Appearance Themes » Change Your Theme You can change the theme of your site as often as you like. Changing a theme lets you redesign your existing website content with a fresh look, without having to recreate your entire site. This guide explains how to switch themes and make sure your…

Appearance Themes » Change Your Theme You can change the theme of your site as often as you like. Changing a theme lets you redesign your existing website content with a fresh look, without having to recreate your entire site. This guide explains how to switch themes and make sure your…

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