How To Browse & Install WordPress Themes?

New WordPress update of 3.9 provides you a stunning new theme browser that makes you search for a new theme more fast, fun and easy. Using the new theme browser you can browse new and old free themes as per your taste. You can easily filter beautiful themes with their free boundless supply coming from WordPress theme repository.

To start, first step is to login to your WordPress admin area then visit Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes page and click ‘Add New‘ button, the new WordPress themes browser page and you will be noticing four tabs: Featured tab, Popular tab, Latest tab, Feature Filter tab and a search box.

Where:

Featured tab shows the popular, elegant, tested and widely appreciated WordPress themes
Popular tab has all popular WordPress themes, they are recorded by counting number of downloads
Latest tab has all recently created and uploaded WordPress themes
Feature Filter tab allows you to use a wide range of filters based on color, layout, features and subject for browsing the right themes as per your like.
Search box allows you to use a keyword or may be if you know theme name or theme author name, you can search for it there.

How To Browse WordPress Themes?

First three tabs shows you a columned list of themes you can preview and install where as the fourth filter tab provides you the filters to search for other themes. Suppose you want to browse only photo blogging themes then click ‘Feature Filter‘ tab, tick ‘Photoblogging‘ filter and click ‘Apply Filters‘ button.

This will browse all themes related or designed for photoblogging in WordPress. You can tick and apply multiple filters. For example: Suppose you are searching for a photoblogging theme in blue color with two column layout then you should select all three filters and then click the ‘Apply Filters‘ button.

Click the theme to preview it and know its details whereas clicking ‘Install‘ button followed by ‘Activate‘ button installs and activates the theme in your WordPress site.

Already Have WordPress Theme ZIP File?

May be if you have purchased a premium theme or you already have the theme’s .zip file then you can easily upload, install and activate it to your website directly from WordPress theme browser area:

Visit your Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes page and click ‘Add New‘ button. Click ‘Upload‘ button.

Now click ‘Browse‘, select theme file and click ‘Install Now‘ button. When the theme is uploaded it will show you a success message and ‘Activate‘ link. All uploaded and installed themes can be managed from Dashboard -> Appearance -> Themes page.

Troubleshooting:

Your website becomes inaccessible after the theme is activated: This generally happens when theme is coded with wrong functions, in this case you should access your website via cPanel, FTP or File Manager, visit your website’s Root directory -> wp-content directory -> themes directory and then delete the errored theme.

Now login to your website admin area (yourdomain.com/wp-admin), visit themes section and activate some other theme.

Theme installation fails on your website: Theme installation generally fails when the theme is broken or lacks some required files, you should go for another theme.

Theme installation fails showing timeout or not enough memory error: Read our tutorials about increasing PHP memory:

Or you can simply download the theme from WordPress.org themes repository to your computer’s hard drive then access your website via cPanel, FTP or File Manager and upload it to theme’s directory present in wp-content’s folder of your site’s root. After the theme is uploaded, you can activate it from theme’s section of your WordPress admin area dashboard.

If you are still facing any problems or have any questions then feel free to discuss it here using the following comment form.