A WordPress theme dictates the design of your website, often including its layout. Changing your theme changes how your site looks on the front-end, i.e. what a visitor sees when they browse to your site on the web.

  1. One of the first things you do when you first make your Hawksite is choosing a webpage theme. It will assign you a default theme when you first open up your website.
    Home page for website, Alison's Sandbox, set to SUNY New Paltz default theme
  2. You can change your theme by hovering over your website’s name in the Admin Bar and clicking on Themes.
    WordPress, Website name highlighted on the top left with the sub tab option Themes, circled
  3. A Theme page will open with 60 themes that you can scroll through. You can also click on categories to search for themes with that specific option. Your current theme is the first one listed on the theme’s page.
    WordPress Themes page with filter lists located on the top, circled. All themes listed 3 in each row
  4. To learn details on each theme hover over the thumbnail and then select Theme Details.
    Theme Aldehyde with cursor hovering over it, button theme details appearing on top
  5. Each theme has specific attributes and what kind of website they’re used for, such as Mobile Friendly, Portfolio, Magazine, Popular, Slider, etc. They also list all the components that the website has, for example, custom-background, two-columns, custom-menu, sticky-post, theme-options, threaded-comments, translation-ready, etc.
    Themes details include a summary, Category details, and tags
  6. Once you find the theme that will fit your website, click on the Activate button. You can change your theme anytime, you can even live preview it to see how your current content will look.
    Theme details window, Activate and Live Preview are buttons located on the bottom center, circled
  7. Once you press Activate you can see that it is now listed as your current theme. To view your website select Visit site.
    Under Theme title, on the theme page, New theme activated. View Site, circled. Chosen theme first theme on the left labeled active, circled
  8. You’ll be greeted by your new theme on your website.
    Website, Alison's Sandbox, in new theme, Unite.

For more on themes for different categories go to the Following posts:
Theme Class
Theme Magazine
Theme Portfolio