If you are about to set up an online store, we shall share with you easy steps on how to install a Magento theme. Once you have installed it, you would find hundreds of options to customize your online store.

1. Steps to Install a Magento Theme

2. Introduction
While you may have worked with WordPress or other CMS in the past but you need to
understand that Magento is a bit different from such single template themes. To put things
into perspective the layout of a Magento powered online store depends on four elements
i.e.
● Layout – Present is (app/design/frontend/your_interface/new_theme/layout/)
● Templates – Present in (app/design/frontend/your_interface/new_theme/template/)
● Skins – Present in (skin/frontend/your_interface/new_theme/)
● Locale – Present in (app/design/frontend/your_interface/new_theme/locale/)
If you are about to set up an online store, we shall share with you easy steps on how to
install a Magento theme. Once you have installed it, you would find hundreds of options to
customize your online store.

3. Choose a Theme
● Before you get started with installing the theme, you would need to choose one. You
have two options, choose a Magento theme for free or buy a premium theme.
● While free themes are good enough to launch your online store, premium themes
have better designs, customization options and most importantly come with the
promise of technical support.

4. Unzip The Theme
● Themes when downloaded come in zipped format and hence you would need to
unzip it using WinRAR, WinZip or any other tool in Linux which you may be
comfortable with.

5. Copying App Folder
● In the next stage you have to copy app folder of your new theme under
○ Your_Magento_Installation/app/design/frontend/default/
(This will turn it into something like )
○ Your_Magento_Installation/app/design/frontend/default/new_theme

6. Copying Skin Folder
● The next step is also quite similar and here you would need to copy the entire skin
folder for your new theme
○ Your_Magento_Installation /skin/frontend/default/
(This will turn it into something like )
○ Your_Magento_Installation/ skin/frontend/default/new_theme

7. Login To Magento Store
● With the above steps you would have added the newly downloaded theme to your
Magento store.
● In this step you will have to login to your Magento store admin, using your Magento
account and choose the theme that would be used as the layout.

8. Test Magento Theme
● There are some occasions when Magento Cache doesn’t offer you a preview of the
changes and in such cases you need to do it manually.
● In order to test the new theme disables cache for the time being.
● You can do this by going to System>Cache Management and select ‘Disable’ then
click ‘Save Cache’. Follow this up by choosing the ‘Enable’ option.

9. Design Option
● In the next step go to System>Configuration and select the Design Tab. Here you
will have to type a new name for your new theme that has been copied to your
Magento installation in front of skin (Images/CSS) input box.
● Once done you need to click on ‘Save Config’.
● The next three stages in your Magento Installation process are optional and you can
try these out if you want to

10. Install Widgets
● If your Magento theme has come with widgets, you would have to install them. To
install Magento theme widgets you need to go to CMS>Static Blocks and here click
on ‘Add New Block’.
● Different widgets have different installation process and you need to follow your
widget installation instructions carefully to add the new widget block and activate it.
● Select ‘Enabled’ and click ‘Save Block’ after which select ‘Custom Design’ Tab and
in the layout select ‘Homepage’ or else the widget won’t show up on your
homepage.

11. Display Items On Home Page
● By default your home page is a CMS block and won’t display any items by itself. To
display items on the homepage you would have to provide custom code in there.
● To do so you need to go to CMS> Manage Pages and select the ‘Home page’ and
in the content box type the home page content code that has come with your new
theme.
● You would have the option of changing this content anytime you want.

12. Customise Store
● You are done with installing the Magento theme and you can now test it by opening
the store in the browser and the new theme would be shown.
● Now you have unlimited ways of customizing your store to meet the niche needs of
your business.

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