If you have set up a WordPress site, you may find yourself asking, “What’s next?”. In order to start building the visuals for your website, you are going to want to upload a theme on WordPress to use for your website. In case the few default themes are not up to your standards, you can upload your own theme. Uploading a new theme may seem daunting if you are not sure where to start, but not to worry. This tutorial will help you with this simple process.

In this article, we will be uploading OceanWP. The steps used in this article can be applied to any theme, OceanWP is just an example.

The first thing you will need to do is download the OceanWP theme to your computer. To do this visit www.wordpress.org and access the themes tab. From here search for the theme ‘OceanWP’ and select download. If you are not using OceanWP, download the theme you wish to use.

Next you will need to access your site. You can do this by simply typing your domain into a search engine. Remember to include ‘wp-admin’ after your domain name. Once on your site, you can access and edit your themes. To add a new theme select the appearance tab on your tool bar. The tool bar will be located on your left. Next, select the option ‘add new’ on your top left corner, this should be next to the word ‘theme’.

From there you will be redirected to a screen full of theme options. We can disregard these options by uploading our theme. To upload your theme, select the option ‘upload theme’ located on your top left corner. This will be next to the ‘add themes’ title. Upload your theme file and select install. Now your theme is installed into your site and will be added next to your other themes.

Now we can add a child theme to our theme. Select plugins from your tool bar, located on the bottom. Next, choose the installed plugins option. We’re going to want to add a new plugin, so go ahead and select the ‘add new’ option. As with the other options, this is located on the top left of your screen. Access your search bar on the right side of your screen and search for ‘child theme configurator’. Once you have found the plugin, activate it.

We are now going to edit our theme. From your tool bar click on ‘tools’ and select ‘child themes’. Next you will be shown your newly added theme and its properties. The first option requires you to choose an action for your theme. If you have already had the child theme installed, select the option that says ‘CONFIGURE an existing Child Theme’. If this is your first time installing the child theme, select ‘CREATE a new child theme’.

The next option will ask you to name the theme. Go ahead and type in whatever you wish to call your theme.

The many options may seem a bit overwhelming, but you won’t have to worry about all of the options listed. In fact there are only two left that you need to worry about. For the style sheet option, select ‘separate style sheet’. This will create a separate .css file for your unique theme. Finally the last options to change are theme description and theme tags. Both can be left blank, therefore you can get rid of anything already in the boxes.

Now that all options have been edited to your needs, select create new and you are done. You can now view and edit your new theme.