And as we have discussed earlier, the new theme must be activated in order to actually change the appearance of your site on the front-end. You can do it now or you can do it later once you have already customized your newly installed theme from the back-end area. I prefer the second solution, because any new theme – even a free one – comes with a bunch of additional options and features, so it’s always a good idea to check them out first.

In my case – after changing “Twenty Seventeen to “Gaukingo” in the customizer – I will see the following list of options and features:

Needless to say, each menu item will reveal other sub-menus with further options, details and features that should be carefully evaluated and tested before activating the new theme.

And that’s it. Now you know how to install a new theme from the WordPress theme directory.

Before we move forward, I want to show you how can you uninstall (delete) a theme from your WordPress site.

As I mentioned, changing the theme of a live site usually isn’t a very good idea. Still, we are talking about your site, so you are the boss and you can make any changes you want. After installing a new theme you have two options:

• to simply deactivate the old theme keeping the files on your site

• to remove the theme files from your site once the theme has been deactivated

In order to delete a theme go to “Appearance -> Themes”, hover your mouse over the given theme and click the “Theme Details” button. A theme window will appear with a “Delete” button in the bottom-right corner:

Keep in mind that we are talking about already deactivated themes. If you will try to delete your current activated theme you won’t have a “Delete” button in the bottom-right corner …

Now let's see the second option ...

Installing a theme from a downloaded archive file

If you can’t find a suitable theme in the WordPress theme directory, you’ll have to find a different source for a free or a paid third-party theme. Once you have found your preferred source you’ll have to download the given theme to your computer. These downloadable archives – usually ZIP files – can be easily installed from the admin menu. The process is extremely simple. The only difference: you'll have to use the "Upload" button (as you do when you are installing a plugin). Just be sure to select the correct ZIP archive of the actual theme, because the downloaded third-party archives usually will contain other additional resources too!

In my opinion is almost impossible to create a truly professional, income-generator website using a regular idiot-proof free WordPress theme. I think that if you want to make money with your site you need to create something literally outstanding, and to achieve that, you need an extremely powerful application with lots of features and integrations. Don’t forget, we are talking about an essential component that will define the overall look of your entire website! This is not a plugin with a few common features – features that can be found in dozens of other similar plugins –, this is the backbone of your WordPress website!

And according to Research Gate, first impressions are 94% (!) design-related!

Hence my advice: if you want results, choose a professional theme and don’t be miserly, because being skinflint can – and will – cost you a tremendous amount of money.