What is WordPress theme ? WordPress theme details!
A WordPress theme is a tool to change the layout and design of your website. Themes customize the appearance of your site, including the layout, typography, color, and other design elements.
When you first create a WordPress site, it will come with a default theme installed. You can change the theme in WordPress to match your needs and industry.
A theme is a zipped folder with a group of files, including a set of page templates written in the PHP programming language combined with some CSS stylesheets.
Choosing the right theme can make your website more attractive, easier to use, and improve visitor engagement.
What Is a WordPress Theme and How Does It Work?
A WordPress theme is a folder of files that work together to create the design of your site. A theme includes template files, stylesheets, images, and possibly JavaScript files. All those files change how your blog posts and pages are displayed.
Changing your WordPress theme won’t necessarily change your blog content, pages, users, or other information stored in your database. Your theme only changes how all that information is displayed to your website visitors.
There are thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available for you to use.
Free themes can be downloaded from the official WordPress theme directory, or you can purchase premium themes with more advanced features from third-party developers. You can even create your own custom themes for a unique web design.
Related: See our expert pick of the best multi-purpose WordPress themes.
WordPress Theme vs. Template: What’s the Difference?
Often the terms WordPress theme and WordPress template can confuse beginners.
Template files are part of a WordPress theme, along with other types of files like style sheets, scripts, and images. You can’t install template files individually. They work together with the rest of the files in a WordPress theme to change your website design.
A template file only controls one page or part of a page. For example, in most themes there are separate template files for your site’s header, footer, sidebar, comments, and other sections. The template files help to control what information is displayed along with the layout of each page.
WordPress uses a template hierarchy that determines which template is used for which section or page. See our detailed visual breakdown of WordPress template hierarchy.