Installing a theme is one of those things, that technically is very simple to do, however can commonly throw up difficulties, on the other hand sometimes you can be done and dusted in ten minutes.

When you are at the stage of installing your theme, you can consider the following options:

1. Wing it and install yourself.
2. When you are purchasing the theme sometimes there is the option for the developer to install it for you, at an extra cost.

Uploading your theme

1. Log in to the WordPress Administration Panels.
2. Select the Appearance panel, then Themes.
3. Select Add New
4. Either use the Search or Filter options to locate a Theme you would like to use.
5. Click on the Preview link to preview the Theme or the Install Now link to upload the Theme to your blog.
6. Or use the Upload link in the top links row to upload a zipped copy of a Theme that you have previously downloaded to your machine.
7. Once the .zip file is uploaded, click on the name of that file in cPanel, then in the panel to the right, click on "Extract File Contents", and that .zip file will be uncompressed.
8. Follow the instructions below for selecting the new Theme.

Selecting and activating your theme

To select a Theme for your site:

1. Log in to the WordPress Administration Panels.
2. Select the Appearance panel, then Themes.
3. From the Themes panel, roll over the Theme thumbnail image for the Theme you are interested in to see options for that theme.
4. You can view more information about any theme by clicking Theme Details.
5. A live preview of any Theme (using your blog's content) can be seen by clicking Live Preview.
6. To activate the Theme click the Activate button.

Your selection will immediately become active.

Note: If the Theme preview is blank, do not activate the new Theme without investigating further. Your site may not be displayed correctly, otherwise.

Installing Sample Data

If your theme does not have one click sample import you’ll need to import your sample data manually. The reason why we do this is so we can see your website completely setup with all dummy images and content. We can then go in and replace. It’s easier than setting the theme up from scratch. Sometimes there can be issues importing your data, not all of it will import. If you have issues with data importing you can contact the developer to assist.

1. Log in to your WordPress installation. Move the mouse pointer to the "Tools" heading on the left side and select "Import" on the menu.
2. Click the "WordPress" link. A prompt appears to ask if you would like to download the WordPress Importer tool.
3. Click "Install Now."
4. Click the "Activate Plugin & Run Importer" link. This activates the WordPress Importer tool and brings you to a screen titled "Import WordPress."
5. Click the "Choose File" button and double-click the WordPress sample data file on the desktop.
6. Click the "Upload File and Import" button.
7. Click the "Download and import file attachments" check box to download the images attached to the sample posts.
8. Click the "Submit" button to import the sample data into your website.

Sometimes, when I have done this I get error messages saying all of the files have not uploaded it. If you receive an error similar then do the following:

1. Check the homepage of your website and see what has uploaded and what hasn’t. You can do this by navigating to the pages tab and selecting a page that indicates it is a home page.
2. Contact the developer and ask for their advice.
3. Search on the comments section of the website where you purchased the theme from to see if anyone else has had the same issue address.

It may be that just a few images haven’t uploaded and you have enough to work with so it doesn’t matter. The import should give you a sufficient shell to work with so you can see how the website looks and functions. You then replace the sample images and data with your own and customise as you like.