Installing and Activating Thesis for the First Time

After purchasing Thesis, you’ll find yourself in one of two positions. If you paid by credit card or with an existing PayPal balance, then you should have received an e-mail containing your DIYthemes username and password. If you paid by an e-Check (via PayPal), then you won’t receive the notification e-mail until your payment clears, which typically takes 3–4 business days.

Your account becomes active once you receive the notification email. At this point, you can log into DIYthemes and visit the Thesis download page to download the theme. The Thesis download file is in zipped format, so you’ll need to extract the thesis/ folder before uploading the theme to your server.

The following information offers a “bird’s eye” view of the installation and activation process; we’ve included more detailed instructions on the download page, so be sure to check those out!

Uploading Thesis

Once you have extracted the thesis/ folder, the next step is to upload it to the appropriate directory on your server. The most common way to do this is by using an FTP program, such as the free FireFTP for Firefox, to connect to your server using the credentials provided to you by your host.

After connecting to your Web server, you’ll need to browse to where you have WordPress installed; in the majority of instances, this will be the directory containing the wp-config.php file. Once you find that folder, open the wp-content/ directory and then the themes/ directory. You’ll see a folder within for every other theme you have installed, and this is to where you’ll want to upload the entire thesis/ folder.

Activating Thesis

Having Thesis on your server isn’t enough; you’ll also need to activate Thesis within your WordPress admin panel. Choose the Design panel from the main menu, and you’ll be presented with a list of all available themes on your server. Assuming the upload of Thesis went okay, it will appear within this list.

Click the name of the theme, and WordPress will present you with a preview of what your site will look like if you activate the theme. Like what you see? Click the “Activate” link in the upper-right of the preview!