How to install WordPress Themes & Plugins

Introduction to WordPress: 

WordPress is a free blogging platform available at wordpress.com and wordpress.org there is a little difference between these two but basically both are the same.

Difference between WordPres.org & WordPress.com:

There is a little difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.com is a online blog maker with blog name.wordpress.com and wordpress.org provide blog source code in php which need to be host in a hosting.

Check out some of the free web hosting for https://wordpress.org

Free PHP hosting with MYSQL for WordPress

Check out method for installation of  wordpress.org in free hosting:

How to install WordPress in 000webhost.com 

Coming back to our topic this was some of useful information for WordPress beginners.

Installing theme and plugin in WordPress.com: 

There is no option to add your custom theme and plugins to wordpress.com so you have to use existing one in that. To change theme you will need to go to admin panel and change theme there.

Installing theme in WordPress.org:

You can download Themes directly to your blog by using the Add New Themes option in the Appearance sub-menu.

Log in to the WordPress Administration Panels.

Select the Appearance panel, then Themes.

Select Add New.

Either use the Search or Filter options to locate a Theme you would like to use.

Click on the Preview link to preview the Theme or the Install Now link to upload the Theme to your blog,

Or use the Upload link in the top links row to upload a zipped copy of a Theme that you have previously downloaded to your machine.

Adding New Themes by using cPanel

If your host offers the cPanel control panel, and the Theme files are in a .zip or .gz archive follow these instructions. Note: This assumes the Theme you download is a compressed (.zip) file containing a folder under which all the Theme files reside.

Download the Theme .zip file to your local machine.

In cPanel File Manager, navigate to your Themes folder. If your WordPress is installed in the document root folder of your web server you would navigate to "public_html/wp-content/themes" and if you have WordPress installed in a sub-folder called wordpress, you would navigate to "public_html/wordpress/wp-content/themes".

Once you've navigated to the Themes folder in cPanel File Manager, click on Upload file(s) and upload that .zip file you saved in Step 1.

Once the .zip file is uploaded, click on the name of that file in cPanel, then in the panel to the right, click on "Extract File Contents", and that .zip file will be uncompressed.

Follow the instructions below for selecting the new Theme.

Adding New Themes Manually (FTP)

To add a new Theme to your WordPress installation, follow these basic steps:

Download the Theme archive and extract the files it contains. You may need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Follow the guidelines provided by your Theme author.

Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to save your Theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a Theme named Test should be in wp-content/themes/test. Your Theme may provide this directory as part of the archive.

Upload the Theme files to the new directory on your host server.

Follow the instructions below for selecting the new Theme.

Selecting the Active Theme

To select a Theme for your site:

Log in to the WordPress Administration Panels.

Select the Appearance panel, then Themes.

From the Themes panel, roll over the Theme thumbnail image for the Theme you are interested in to see options for that theme.

You can view more information about any theme by clicking Theme Details.

A live preview of any Theme (using your blog's content) can be seen by clicking Live Preview.

To activate the Theme click the Activate button.

Your selection will immediately become active.

Note: If the Theme preview is blank, do not activate the new Theme without investigating further. Your site may not be displayed correctly, otherwise.

Installing plugins in WordPress:

In WordPress 2.7 and above you can install plugins directly from the admin area. Download the plugin to your computer, then log in to your WP admin area and go to Plugins > Add New. Browse to the plugin archive and select it. Then click Install Now and the plugin will be installed shortly.