During the early stages of creating a website on WordPress, you’ll encounter themes. In this guide, we’ll explain what a theme is, what it does for your site, and the differences between the types of themes you’ll encounter.
In this video, you’ll learn about themes on WordPress.com. It explains what a theme is and how it shapes your site’s design, how to choose one that fits your vision, and how to browse the available theme collection.
A theme is your site’s visual design and overall layout. It controls how your website’s content is presented to a visitor. Themes include design components like color schemes, typography, page layouts, and other elements that create a consistent and cohesive appearance throughout the website.
Themes provide a starting point for your website’s look and functionality. Instead of building your website’s design from scratch, a theme provides the design framework you need to launch your website quickly. With a theme, you can start creating your content immediately without spending too much time deciding on how the content looks. A well-designed theme does the hard work for you!
You can also change from one theme to another without losing your website’s content, applying the new changes automatically.
With so many options, it can be helpful to think about what you’re looking for in a theme. The main thing to remember is that you are in complete control over your site’s layout. After activating a WordPress.com theme, you can use the Site Editor to change the text, images, colors, fonts, layout, and position of all the elements on your site.
Some factors to consider when deciding on a theme include:
- Do you like the look of the header area? You’ll typically see the site title, menu, and logo here.
- Do you like how the content is organized and presented? While you can change how this looks, choosing a layout you like can mean less work moving things around later.
- Do you like how the theme appears on mobile and tablet screens? To see this, open the live demo and use the selector at the top to switch between desktop, tablet, and mobile. All WordPress.com themes are responsive to all screen sizes, including mobile phones.
When looking at themes, focus on the overall layout rather than the subject matter shown in the demo. A theme’s demo site may showcase an example of a furniture store, a music portfolio, a fashion site, or a food blog. However, your site can be customized for any topic imaginable once you swap out the demo text and images for your own.
To browse the collection of themes available on WordPress.com, visit Appearance → Themes (or Appearance → Theme Showcase if using WP Admin) in your WordPress.com dashboard.
A range of themes is available to suit all types of websites and budgets, with new themes added all the time. These themes don’t need to be uploaded or installed on your site — they can be activated with the click of a button (or you can upload a theme if you wish).
You can use external AI agents like Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, OpenClaw, and more to read and edit your website securely. Enable MCP tool access for external AI agents.
AI agents can search the WordPress.com theme collection, tell you which theme your site is using, and activate a different one. Here are some things you can ask an agent to do:
- “What theme is my site using?”
- “Show me some portfolio themes I could use.”
- “Switch my site to the Twenty Twenty-Five theme.”
Our dedicated theme guides will help you activate, set up, and customize themes on your site:
Activate a theme
Choosing a theme is an important step at the beginning of creating your website. This guide will show you how to find themes and choose one that fits the vision you have for your site.
Set up your theme
After choosing a theme, your next step will be to set up your theme to look exactly how you want. If you’re not sure how to get started, follow the steps on this page.
Change your theme
You can change the theme of your site to give your existing content a fresh look. This guide explains how to switch to a new theme.
Upload a theme
This guide will show you how to upload any theme to your WordPress.com site.
Create a child theme
If you have knowledge of HTML and PHP, you can modify your theme’s underlying code by creating a child theme.
Delete a theme
This guide will show you how to remove themes from your site.
Different types of themes
In this guide, you will learn about the different types of themes you can use for your site.
Retired themes
This guide explains what it means when a theme has been retired and what to do about it.
Partner themes
Partner themes are developed by third-party creators who have made their themes available to purchase and install on WordPress.com.
Edit theme files directly
In this guide, learn how to edit your theme’s files.
