The WordPress template is considered one of the basic pillars in building any WordPress site. It is responsible for controlling all the elements of the site that appear to the user, so site owners take care to obtain the best for them from time to time.
Whether you have a WordPress template installed and activated on your existing site, or you have launched a new site and want to get the most appropriate template for it, changing a WordPress template requires you to know some basic information about the template you intend to rely on, as well as the steps for changing the template so that it is done smoothly and appears. Your location in Abha is in shape.
In this article, we will tell you the beginning of the most important tips when you want to replace the current template or get a new template, as well as the steps for making this change smoothly without causing problems in the design of your site elements.
Change the WordPress template instead of the current template
If you already have an existing WordPress site with an installed and activated template and you want to change your WordPress template to a new template with better features than the current template, there are considerations that you should take into account before the change process.
You may think that the new template is the best ever, but after activating it and showing it to users, you discover that it is not suitable for your site. User feedback may find that the template does not match their expectations.
You may find some messages : Why did you change the old template to this new template? We want to restore the new template. Or you yourself discover that the template is not compatible with all the content elements on your current site.
Therefore, you first need to take into account some technical as well as usage considerations before taking action to change the template.
Technical considerations
Do not think that your site will appear with the same default design (Demo) that you saw from the template developer, but there are many technical considerations to take into account first.
These considerations include the compatibility of the new template with the content of the current site, so that you ensure the compatibility of the new template designed by Header , Footer , and Sidebar , the theme, the top buttons, the bottom buttons, images, the design of author pages, the comment box, sliders, featured images, the design of categories, tags, articles, images, and color settings. fonts, and other design elements.
These elements will vary depending on the type of your site , as each site has its own components and design elements available in the template. For example , online store templates differ from magazine templates , as well as from other well-known templates .
Read also: The best WordPress templates that can be chosen and used on your site (complete guide)
First, try by knowing the design elements of your site to choose the template that best suits you and ensure that the template design is compatible with your content pages, such as article pages, product pages, static pages, etc.
Read the description of the template, the features available in it, and the capabilities that the author of the template mentions about it, and also look at the default designs (Demos) in the template and find out how close the components of this template are to your site, and how the appearance of your site will look similar to those default designs published by the developer.
Mostly, the default designs launched by the developer have gone through many stages of user experience testing by professional designers, hence these are the best skins to use on your site.
The templates are open source and you can make any modification you want, but this is not the goal of using templates. Rather, the goal is to save the time used in designing the site. Therefore, if you want serious procedures in the template, it is best for you to search for another template or design a WordPress template from scratch .
Then, after taking into account the technical considerations, do not be satisfied with them, as there are other considerations that you must take into account when changing the WordPress template for your site, as well as the steps for change, which we will talk about in the remaining paragraphs.
Usage considerations
The other thing that must be taken into account when changing the template is user considerations. You are not the only user of your site, and the opinion of your site team is not always the most correct opinion in changing the template to the new template.
There is another opinion of users whose opinion may agree with your opinion or may be contrary to it, and this is what you need to verify without expectations or assumptions.
Suppose, for example, that you are the owner of an online store and customers are accustomed to a certain shape, then they are surprised by a new design that does not suit their expectations. They will not feel comfortable in the shopping process and this may lead to the phenomenon of emptying the shopping cart .
Also, if you are the owner of a blog in which you publish your articles periodically, and users are accustomed to the current template for reading the valuable articles that you write for them , and then they are surprised by an inappropriate template, this may lead to a reduction in the number of articles read or the time spent reading the articles, and this may lead to a higher rate of Bounce rate .
Therefore, carefully consider users’ opinions about the template, by using tools that help you understand visitors’ behavior, such as:
Also by relying on the human element to understand user behavior, such as:
- Conducting user interviews
- Request user experiences from the site
- Create a survey and publish it to users
- User reactions
You can use some of the previous methods, but not all of them, with the aim of obtaining an initial perception of the users’ impression of your site, the problems they face, and the perceptions they have about the design, and thus obtaining a prediction of the users’ impressions of the new template, so that this new template is closer to their expectations.
Changing a WordPress template on a new website
If you have created a new WordPress site, and therefore want to change the site template instead of the default template, there are considerations similar to the previous considerations that we mentioned when changing the template, except that you do not have an existing site yet, and therefore there is a different outlook on things that will help you decision taking.
The technical considerations you will take care of are the same as those mentioned previously, but by getting to know:
- The purpose of the site
- Site business plan
- Website business model
- Marketing plan for the site
- Required content on the site
Information like this that you collected when you first started building the site will help you explore the technical considerations in choosing a new template.
As for user considerations, since you do not have current users of the site with whom to conduct interviews and tests, we will replace the current users with (potential users), and you will find that the principle is similar in both cases.
You will be able to discover the behavior of potential users by:
- Competitor analysis
- market study
- Study similar sites
- Target segment analysis
- Study potential users
By obtaining this information, you will have a better understanding of potential users, and how to build a website with an attractive design that suits their needs. So you explore technical and usability considerations and have a broader sense of which template will best suit your site and meet the purpose of your business.
Try to explore 5-10 templates in the previous way, then settle on one template that meets the previous criteria. If you want more educational articles and tips for choosing the most appropriate template, we advise you to read: Classification of WordPress templates on the WordPress .
Have you currently settled on the appropriate template?
Congratulations! 🙂
Let us now move to the third step, in which you change the template, install it, and activate it on your site.
Third: Steps to change a WordPress template
After you have settled on the template, the next step is the easiest and will not take you much time, which is installing and activating the template for users so that it comes alive with its new look and wonderful design.
You may have consumed more time in the previous steps, but the current step will not take much, as it is the implementation stage, which will also be easier. Like the car owner who manufactured all its parts and is now installing them.
If you have an existing site that receives many visitors, we do not advise you to install the template on your site that visitors are currently browsing, but rather on a test site (Stagging site) that is completely similar to your original site. If the template appears well on this test site as you expect, you will do the same procedure. On the real website (Live).
The reason for this test is that you may activate the template and then find that it is not what you expected, or there are some errors that you did not take into account. Is it appropriate for these errors to appear to users? Answer: No. Therefore, we advise you to use a trial version of your site for the purpose of experimentation.
As we explained in a previous guide, you will create a clone of your WordPress site , so that it is an exact copy of your site, and you will test the template on it to find out how it will appear to users.
We always advise you to try any new tool or addition to the trial version that you have done.
You will find that the steps are similar in installing and activating the template on your real WordPress site or on the trial version, through the WordPress control panel by going to: Appearance << Templates << Add New
You will be directed to the page for installing and activating the template on the site. If you have chosen a free template that is available, you can install and activate it directly by searching for it and then installing it.
If you have chosen a paid template that you downloaded from an external source, you will click on (Upload Template) to upload its compressed file.
as follows:
We have prepared a previous explanation on how to install a WordPress template and activate it on your site in more than one way. We advise you to read it to learn how to install the template with illustrated steps.
After successfully installing and activating the template on the demo site through the previous steps and ensuring that it is compatible with your expectations and that there are no defects, you will install and activate the template with the same steps also on the live site so that visitors can enjoy the new look.
Then, read the template’s definition files (Documentation) that the developer provides on his template page. Regardless of the template you will rely on, you will find a profile from the developer explaining all the steps for customizing the template, from customizing the site header, site footer, language settings, colors, fonts, and other basic template settings.
By reading these profiles, you will find that you have the ability to customize the template components better, and if you need to make a specific customization in the template, you will be able to do so easily. This step may be a pre-emptive step before installing the theme in the first place, but it is an important step to fully explore the theme settings.
Thus, we have learned how to change the WordPress template smoothly and without unexpected failures in the appearance of your site, ensuring the preservation of the visual element and the interaction of visitors with the content of your site, and achieving the next step in success.
