2.2 Install the Theme

So now, we've got a theme selected and we're ready to install it on our own website. Let's go ahead and download it from Elements as you're seeing me do here. When you download assets and files from Elements, it's important to log the use for where you'll use the files right here. Now, even if you stop subscribing the elements later on, you can continue to use the theme on your site. As long as you add the license for how you'll use it in the future, you're good to go. Once we have the theme downloaded, we need to jump over to the WordPress Admin panel. For most sites, you can find this at the end of the URL with /wp-admin. In the side bar, we need to hover over appearance and then click on Themes. This page is where you can switch between WordPress themes. You can see thumbnails for each of the installed themes here. To switch between themes, you can simply click Activate below it, then you could jump back to the website to see a different theme for our site that's been applied. This is an important idea to remember with WordPress. The content on your site is kind of separate from the theme we use. Set up content in the form of pages and post, and you'll be able to see it even as you switch between themes. Some themes have custom options that'll only apply to the theme at hand, but a lot of content will carry through regardless of the theme that you're using. We need to install the bonfire theme that we're going to use before we go any further. Let's jump back to the themes page. Let's also open up the zip file on our computer that we downloaded for Bonfire. I'll unzip it by simply double-clicking on it, and then let's find the bonfire.zip file in the theme files folder. This is what we need to upload to WordPress in order to use it on our site. Jumping back over to WordPress, let's click on Add new. I'll browse to where that modifier, that zip file, is stored on my computer and then choose Install now. In a couple of minutes, the theme will be uploaded for use on the site. Bonfire is a responsive theme, like we've been talking about, and we really don't have to do anything in order to keep this site responsive and flexible to the changes we make. In the next lesson, we'll activate it and then take a look at setting up some of the settings that'll get our site looking great.