WordPress® For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 11. Finding and Installing WordPress Themes

In This Chapter

• Distinguishing between safe and unsafe WordPress themes

• Finding free WordPress themes

• Downloading, installing, and activating themes

• Browsing and installing themes from your Dashboard

In previous chapters, I cover how to use the WordPress platform to publish your posts and pages. In those chapters, you discover how to categorize your posts, build your link lists, and set the publishing and profile options in the WordPress Dashboard. In this chapter, I focus on the visual look and format of your blog — in other words, how other people see your blog after you start publishing your content.

In Chapter 10, I introduce WordPress plugins and discuss some of the thousands of free plugins you can use to add functionality to your blog. Similarly, thousands of free themes are available for you to download and use. This chapter shows you where to find them and takes you through the processes of downloading, installing, and using them.

Getting Started with Free Themes

WordPress comes packaged with one very useful default theme called Twenty Ten (named after the year it was first released in version 3.0 of WordPress). Most bloggers who use WordPress usually don't waste any time at all in finding a theme that they like better than the default WordPress theme. The Twenty Ten theme is meant to get you started. While you're not limited to the default theme, it's a very functional theme for a basic blog. Feel free to use it to get you started ...