WordPress How To
I’ve received tons of emails from you all, asking questions about WordPress. In this article I’ll answer every single WordPress How To Question you’ve sent in. Here is the complete list of questions I’ll be covering. If I’ve missed something, leave a comment below and I’ll cover it next.
- How to Install WordPress Theme
- How to Upgrade WordPress
- How to Perform a WordPress Database Backup
- How to Install WordPress
- Where do I Get Free WP Themes
- What is the Best WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin
- What is the Best WordPress Premium Themes
How to Install WordPress Theme
If the theme you want to install is a featured WordPress theme, it is easy to install that WordPress Theme:
- Click Appearance in your left side bar
- Click Themes
- Click the Install Themes tab
- Search for your Theme
- Click Install and Activate
I’m guessing you already know that and you instead are looking for a way to install wordpress themes that aren’t featured WordPress Themes. In that case:
- Locate the theme with a Google search
- Download the theme and unzip it
If there is just one folder after you unzip it and that folder contains a file called comments-popup.php, it is easy to install this theme.
- Go back to where you saw the Install Theme Tab
- Click the Upload link after you click the tab
- Browse to the location of the zipped version of the theme
- Click the Install Now button
- Activate the theme
If the previous doesn’t apply. Then you have to install the theme with an ftp program. I prefer filezilla. Go download and install it.
- Open Filezilla
- Enter your domain name, userid and password
- Locate your WordPress Theme folder (wp-content -> themes)
- Upload the folder with the theme name to the themes folder
- You also probably have a folder called Plugins
- If the theme includes a plugin folder, upload the contents into the plugin folder on your domain (wp-content -> plugins)
You should now have the theme available under Appearance in your WordPress CMS.
If there is an upgrade available for WordPress, the will be a notification at the top of your WordPress Dashboard that will recommend that you upgrade it. If you don’t see that message, you are running the latest version of WordPress.
If you want to upgrade WordPress anyway, you should first make a backup of your WordPress site. Then go to this location in your browser http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php. Follow the directions on the screen.
Your hosting company should also give you a way to upgrade WordPress. For Go Daddy users:
- Login to Go Daddy
- Click on Hosting in your left sidebar under either My Products or My Account
- Click the Launch button next to the domain you want to upgrade
- Click the My Applications button
- Click the Manage My Applications button in the right sidebar
- Click Update Now link
- Click Install Now link
- Tell Go Daddy when to install and your done
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How to Perform a WordPress Database Backup
Here I’m going to recommend that you follow the backup suggestions of your hosting company. I’ve seen many people incorrectly try to back up their WordPress site. I’ll provide the steps to backup a Go Daddy site here. Every hosting company is going to require similar steps.
- Login to Go Daddy
- Click on Hosting in your left sidebar under either My Products or My Account
- Click the Launch button next to the domain you want to backup
- Click the Databases tab and then MySQL
- Click the Pencil icon that is under the words Action on the right
- Click the Backup icon
- Click OK
I have two videos here on How to Install WordPress. The first one is how to install WordPress on most any hosting site. The second is the easy way to install WordPress on a Go Daddy site.
There are a ton of Free WP Themes available under the Appearance link in your left sidebar. Also I have another article where I list the Best Free WP Themes.
What is the Best WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin
I personally cannot recommend any Shopping Cart Plugin except for what is offered by Pay Pal. I explain exatly how to securely use Pay Pal in WordPress in the article WordPress Shopping Cart Plugin with Pay Pal
What is the Best WordPress Premium Themes
Many people say that Thesis is the best premium theme. I personally think it’s over priced. I prefer the themes provided by Elegant Themes and also themes created with a program called Artisteer. I wrote an entire article on Artisteer here Create your Own WordPress Premium Themes
Other WordPress Questions
There is only one WordPress How To Question I couldn’t find the answer to. What is the best WordPress Picture Gallery Plugin. I tested a bunch of them and they all seem to have a major flaw. Maybe this will be fixed up soon. I used to like the NextGen Gallery, but it is to buggy at this point in time. The developer of it is normally very good at fixing bugs though and I hope to recommend it soon.
If you have any questions I didn’t cover leave them in the comment section below, or they may be answered in one of the following articles.
Till Next Time
Think Tank
Great article.
I can tell you that one of the most overwhelming parts of selling things online, is the creation of your online store.
An easy way to get one up and running quickly is by using the Market theme.
Market is a theme template for WordPress that gives you the ability to sell products. The Market theme contains a built-in shopping cart system, and product
administration tool for easily adding and editing products.
It then connects with your Paypal account for processing your customer payments.
Since the Market theme uses the WordPress content management system, adding or editing pages on your website and product information is a breeze. You
don’t need coding experience or a lot of technical knowledge.
You can play around with an online demo here:
http://www.markettheme.com/
That way you can try it out before you commit to anything.
Interesting. I’ll definitely take a look at your plugin. I have been hesitant to trust themes and plugins because so many have security flaws. Yours seems to completely separate itself from Pay Pal and may be a great solution. Thanks
Sure… Glad to contribute.
Great post. Really helpful for beginner like me. It helps me a lot if you can add more pictures to show the steps.
Glad you liked it. Actually many of the links link to WordPress video tutorials. Sorry I didn’t point that out. Also if you click on my sitemap or the index for the site there are tons of links to more WordPress video tutorials. Hope they help. Thanks
Hi Derek,
Your tutorials are the best I ever saw. Good pace and like you said, one of the few really going into a subject.
Thank you very much, you’ve been a big help!
I want to implement a webshop. What at this moment still is not clear to me is how some powerful WordPress features as Tags, categories, etc can help me combine these in a shopping cart. The WP structure seams to be organized around blogging. Because still I don’t really understand how I can hook into WP when building a cart in stead of a blog, is my idea at this moment that I need to implement the shoppingcart and DB structure next to the existing WP blogging system making it hard to use these powerful WP features.
While I was looking for a solution I found your reply in which you announce to publish a tutorial on how to make a shopping cart in WP.
I’m really looking forward to this one. Do you have any idea when you want this one to be ready?
That was it for now. Since I’m a very happy viewer I’ll send you some cups of coffee in combination with real physical cookies!
Kins Regards, Marc (From Holland but stationed in Thailand)
Hi Marc,
I’m finishing the shopping cart integration right now. It will be available over the next week. I was originally going to create it completely from scratch, but I found an amazing free tool. I’ll have a shopping cart theme for you very soon. I hope you like it