What can be a better way to share your passion than blogging? And where do blogging get better than on WordPress? Well, nowhere. So WordPress is generally the first choice of any blogger, and for good reasons.

There just are numerous factors that make WordPress the best and most reliable platform for blogging. One important factor- in fact, one of the most attractive and strongest elements in WordPress is its themes. WordPress has probably got the greatest and widest of the theme collections that any blog publishing platform on internet today can offer.

What is a WP theme?

If you are a newbie around blogging and WordPress, you might first want to know exactly what WordPress themes are. A WordPress theme refers the front end design or the interface created by a set of files functioning together. In simpler terms, a WordPress theme determines how your blog will appear to the viewer. This front end appearance could include the overall site design or style of your site, colours and fonts, blog post styles, layout of the page (also called templates), location of widgets etc. So, more clearly, these themes do not only determine the appearance of your site, but also considerably determines how the front end interacts with the viewer.

How does a WordPress theme work?

There would be a default theme that comes with your WP installation; you need to install the themes as you prefer, so as to change the existing appearance of your blog. You can in fact change the entire outlook of your site by changing the theme, without it impacting either the backend structure or the content of your site. There are customizable themes as well, in which you yourself get to design and determine the look of your site, as per your preferences.

How to change WordPress themes?

There are two ways for you to install a new theme- you can either:

• Upload a .Zip file of the theme that you have on your system, that you got from some external source or other website and activate the same.
• Or you can browse through the WordPress theme collection and choose any from the countless themes available there.

Here are the steps you need to follow for changing your theme:

• Click on the Appearance menu from the left-hand side navigation panel on the WordPress dash-board.
• Select Themes option from the list. You will be directed to the themes page. The first theme shown on the page would be your currently activated/ default theme.
• Click Add New button.
• Now, if you want to upload a new theme that you have previously downloaded from any other site on to your system, click the Upload theme button, and then choose file to upload the theme saved in .zip format.
• Otherwise, you can browse through the numerous themes available on WP and choose any of them. You can click on Popular, or Latest or Favourites to see themes accordingly. For a range of other filters, you can click on Feature Filters button, that will given you options to filter the theme search on the basis of colours, features, subject or layout.
• While you hover over any of those themes, you will see ‘Install’ button and ‘Preview’ button. You first should preview the themes that catch your eye to see how would it appear.
• Click ‘Install’ if you like a particular theme preview.
• This theme would now appear with the installed themes on your Theme page. You can click on the activate button (appears when you hover over a theme) when you are ready to change.

Paid WP theme or free theme?

WordPress offers free themes as well as premium or paid themes. Neither of the two are ‘few’ or limited. There are like thousands of free as well as premium themes available with WordPress for you to choose from. Certainly, premium themes do offer particular benefits over free themes, like that of premium plug-ins and a comparatively more secure code base. Moreover, premium themes have greater customization alternatives.