Change Your Theme (original) (raw)

You can change the theme of your site to give your existing content a fresh look. This guide explains how to switch to a new theme.

Switch a Theme

To change the theme of your site, follow these steps:

Visit your site’s dashboard.
Navigate to Appearance → Themes (or Appearance → Theme Showcase if using the WP Admin).
Note your site’s current theme, which will be first in the list with the “Active” label.
Browse through the available themes and choose one that you like (or upload your own theme).
On the theme’s info page, click the “Activate this design” button:

An arrow points to the "activate this design" button.

A window may appear explaining that your site’s current homepage will be replaced by the new theme’s homepage layout. If you wish to proceed, click the “Activate” button:

After a few seconds, the new theme will be applied to your site. You can then navigate to Appearance → Editor to start customizing the design.

What Happens to Your Old Content

Changing themes is a safe, non-destructive action. Your existing pages, media, and other data remains backed up on the site.

Your site’s homepage will update to the homepage of the new theme. If you wish to recover any content from your previous theme’s homepage, reactivate the previous theme to view and copy any of that content.

If you have forgotten the name of your previous theme, check your site’s Activity Log. You will find the name of the theme you switched from and to:

Activity Log showing that the theme switched from Exmoor to Creatio 2.

Preview a Theme

You can see how your site will look with a theme without activating that theme. The “Preview & Customize” option will load the selected theme into the Site Editor with your site’s content. In this preview, you can see how your site’s content will look with the theme before committing to changing the theme on your live site.

To see how a theme will look on your website:

Visit your site’s dashboard.
Navigate to Appearance → Themes (or Appearance → Theme Showcase if using WP Admin).
Browse through the available themes and choose one that you like.
On the theme’s info page, click the “Preview & Customize” button:

An arrow points to the Preview & Customize button.

Browse through the layout and make any changes you would like to Styles, Templates, and other areas of the Site Editor. Your changes will not apply to your live site until you activate the theme.
If you’re satisfied with the look of the new theme, you can apply it to your live site by clicking the “Activate” button (if you made no changes) or the “Activate & Save” button (if you made changes that require saving.)

Exit Preview Without Activating

To exit the Editor preview without saving your changes:

Click the < (arrow) next to the “Previewing [Theme Name]: Design” text.
Confirm that you want to exit the editor and go back to the theme search page.

If you have clicked through to templates or the editing tools, you can click the site icon in the top left to return to the Design screen:

The arrow and the site icon are highlighted.

Test Your Theme on a Staging Site

Using staging sites on higher level plans, you can change your theme on a testing version of your site without affecting what the public sees on your live website. The staging site is a clone of your website that you can work on privately.

Once you’re happy with the new design on the staging site, you can then sync the changes to your live website. The public will see the new design without ever encountering any downtime or maintenance mode.

After Switching Themes

When you change to a new theme, there are a few things you may wish to check:

Homepage

A new theme can mean a new home page. Take note of what may change:

If you’ve selected a block theme, you will not see your home page listed in Pages. Instead, edit the home page through Appearance → Editor. Learn more about editing the default homepage for block themes.
Some themes replace your home page with the new theme’s home page when you activate it. The content is not lost, instead the old page is moved to drafts.
- If you want to restore your previous homepage, you can find it under “drafts” in your Pages list, where you can publish it again and set it as your homepage.

Review your menus to ensure they’re showing the correct items and linking to the correct pages.

Custom CSS

The only thing that would not transfer over with your theme is any Custom CSS, because that is theme-specific. However, you can recover your past CSS in the CSS revisions option in Styles or the Customizer (depending on the type of theme that had the CSS).