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One of the first things I wanted to do when I got my blog up and running was to pick a new theme. I had a few requirements that I wanted for my theme that really limited my choices. The first thing is that I wanted was a fluid layout that would resize the content to fit the viewer’s browser window. My monitor runs at a resolution of 1680×1050 and I get really annoyed at websites that run at a fixed width of around 800 pixels – it takes up less than half the width of my screen!  Another thing that I wanted was a horizontal menu just above the main content.  Finally, I wanted a theme that would display categories and tags for each post (surprisingly, not all themes do this).  Fortunately, I found one theme I liked that had all three.

WordPress makes it really easy to search for themes and install them.  From the Appearance menu, go to Themes.  There you will see the currently active theme along with a list of inactive installed themes.  You can activate, preview, or delete any of the inactive themes.  To install more themes, click on “Install Themes” at the upper right corner of the screen.  This will give you an interface where you can search for new themes.  I found the search functionality to be a bit clunky (you only get one page of “Recently Updated” themes) and the Feature Filter didn’t seem to work quite right.  I had better luck searching for themes on WordPress.org.  I would search there to find a theme that I liked and then enter the theme name into the search box on the “Install Themes” page of my website.  From there, it’s a single mouse click to install the theme.  Once it’s installed you can then activate it from the Appearance->Themes page.

Installing themes is easy – finding one you like is another matter