How Do I Install a Wordpress Theme?

[By shames at intogeek.com as per the recommendation of BlueHost Support via chat at 2am this morning.]

This process can seem daunting at first, but after you learn how to do it you’ll find installing a theme to your wordpress site is quite easy. All you need to start this is a wordpress site, and a theme .zip file already downloaded to your computer. If you don’t have a theme file to install yet, you can find many just by searching google.com for ‘wordpress themes’. Here are the steps to install a theme:

1. Login to your wordpress site dashboard from http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin (replacing yourdomain.com with your own site URL of course)
2. After you have logged in click ‘Appearance’ from the left sidebar of your dashboard.
3. Click the ‘install themes’ tab from the top of the screen here.
4. click the ‘upload’ link (this is listed directly above the search box you see on the install themes page)
5. Click “choose file” then find the .zip file on your computer for your theme and click ‘open’ to upload the theme to the server
6. Click “install Now”  and follow the rest of the steps to install.

After you have the theme installed you can activate it by going to the ‘appearance’ area of your wordpress dashboard once more. From there you will see your theme listed in the list of themes, and you should see the link to ‘activate’ your theme there. This will make the theme show on your site.