So the above picture is what my WordPress homepage looks like at present. It’s using a theme called “2017.” It’s not a bad look, but to be honest,it looks kinda bland.
I’m sure there are some much more beautiful and awesome themes out there which could really “show up” my hotel website. I have an idea in mind, and I to find the theme that matches or comes as close as possible to that idea. So let’s try out some new themes by searching among the thousands of themes that the WordPress theme repository has to offer. Shall we?
OK, so let’s log back in to our WordPress by typing to our browser: hotelamazonasgy.com/wp-admin, typing in our username and password and clicking “Log In.”
Once inside your WordPress Dashboard, look the “My Sites” button towards the left of the top menu bar.
Hover your mouse of the “My Sites” button and it will fly out a set of options. Hover over “Network Options.” This is fly out a new set of options. Click on “Themes.”
This opens a list of all the themes currently installed on this WordPress site. As you can see, three themes are installed:
- Twenty Fifteen – Not enabled
- Twenty Seventeen – Active
- Twenty Sixteen – Active
Bear in mind that you should only keep a few themes installed on your WordPress website, because, naturally, the take space and slow down processes. So you should keep your themes installed at a minimum, say, less than 10 themes on any WordPress installation. Delete what you don’t like, only keep what you are likely to use sometime.
I’ve decided that I won’t use the Twenty Fifteen or the Twenty Sixteen theme so I’ll just delete them.
As you can see, since these themes are not active, the “Delete” button is already there, looming over their heads like the Sword of Damocles, so to speak. So all I have to do is click the “delete” button and then click “OK” to confirm when it pops up and that theme will be gone from my WordPress Installation.
So great, I’ve already deleted these two themes which I decided that I won’t use. So now it’s time to explore new themes and add them to my WordPress Installation.
As you can see, there’s an “Add New” button towards the top of the page. I’ll click it.
So the WordPress themes directory loads, and it is sorted by the headings you see in the screenshot above. Right now, it is set to “Featured Themes” and currently there are only 15 featured themes showing on my screen.
It turns out that I don’t like any of the Featured Themes so I’ll just click on “Popular.”
As you can, there are 3334 “Popular” themes in the directory. I think is is enough for me to search among. However, let’s check “latest” themes to see how many comes up.
Wow! It turns out there are 6122 “latest” themes in the WordPress directory. I’m pretty sure that I can find the theme of my dreams between “Featured” and “Latest” themes.
Let’s click on “Favorites” and see what happens.
As you can see, the “Favorites,” is a whole new ballgame altogether. It has something to do with going over to WordPress.org, creating a username and marking themes as your favorite. So we will deal with that later.
If you look to the right of the “Favorites” button, you will see a “Feature Filter.” Let’s click that and see what comes up.
Wow! The Feature Filter is just awesome! It gives you the option of selecting the kind of features you’re looking for in a theme and it helps to narrow your search to what you’re really searching for.
I think I’m going to use the feature filter option to search for a great theme. So let’s do this.
Under “subject” I select Entertainment, Food and Drink and Holiday.
Under “Features,” I select all except three of them since I want to explore as many features as possible in order to see what works best.
Under Layout, I select all except three two of them because I’m a sucker for possibilities. I know that isn’t much of a filter, but the problem is that I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for right now.
So let’s go ahead and click the “Apply Filters” button, and see that comes up.
Oops! It says “no matches found!” It turns out that I was selecting too many options, so I’ll deselect and leave just one option checked under each heading, and click “Apply Filters” again. And..it worked! This is what turned up.
So that’s it! 17 themes that matched my filter options. But you know what? I don’t like any of these themes. So I’ll just resort to browsing between “Latest” and “Popular” themes to find what I’m looking for. That gives me about 9000 themes to browse!
Bear in mind that there is search bar to the right in case you want to search for a theme by keyword.
But you know what? I won’t use the search feature either. Like I said, I’ll just browse between “latest” and “popular” themes to find what I’m looking for. And that’s more fun!
You know what? This lesson is getting a bit two long for one page, so I’m going to have to split it into two parts. In the next lesson, “Browsing Themes: The Fun Begins,” we’ll pick up from where we left off right here and start the actual browsing and testing of some themes.
So see you in the next lesson: Browsing Themes: The Fun Begins.
