Beginners Help with Changing WordPress Theme – Activate Theme not working

What theme do you see as “ACTIVE” when you go to the “APPEARANCE” screen in your dashboard?

It’s currently showing “Active – twenty twenty-four” theme however https://tiasgoods.x10.mx is showing the original PopularFX theme that was originally selected when I installed WordPress to x10hosting.

That theme also installed the PageLayer plugin. This is where the design that seem like the PopularFX theme is coming from.

If you don’t want any of this, disable and delete this plugin. And, of course, if you don’t want the PopularFX theme itself, there’s no reason to keep it around.

It seems we’re just going in circles here.

1) There’s no reference to the “original theme” (PopularFX) on your site at all.

2) The active theme on the site (as I write this) is Twenty Twenty-Four

3) The design you see is not from either of these two themes: it’s from the PageLayer plugin — which is still active (evenough I asked you to deactivate it if you don’t want its design).

In summary, the PopularFX theme is not active and has no effect on your site. The Twenty Twenty-Four theme is the active theme, but the design of your site is being controlled by the PageLayer page builder plugin.

It doesn’t matter what theme I make active, the original theme is always the one applied

No, it’s not the “original theme”. It’s the PageLayer plugin.

If you need further help, disable the PageLayer plugin than I can take a closer look.

It is what shows if you open https://tiasgoods.x10.mx even though I have since changed the theme to the Twenty Twenty-Four theme.

That’s not quite the case.

To add to what I said earlier, the “vegetables” text you see on the homepage is merely text from a PAGE that was created and served as the homepage when you imported the PopularFX theme “bundle”. The theme is now gone, but disabling a theme doesn’t delete your website content (else you’d have to start over anytime you change a theme).

So what you have on the homepage now is merely the dummy text that came with the theme you imported. The theme is now gone, that’s why the text has lost its beautiful styling.

How do I change the default “Vegetables” theme to another theme so that the https://tiasgoods.x10.mx site shows it in its entirety? (ie. from the home page all the way through?)

If you want to delete the “Vegetables” content (Pages and Posts) that was created by the PopularFX theme, go to PAGES and POSTS respectively in your dashboard and delete these.

If you want to re-configure your site’s HOMEPAGE as a BLOG (to auto-magically display the latest POSTS rather than the current STATIC PAGE), go to SETTINGS > READING and set “Your Homepage displays” to “Your Latest posts” (see screenshot below).

But perhaps most importantly, please understand that EVERY new theme you activate will require some theme configuration BEFORE you can realise the beautiful design you see in the theme’s screenshot or on its sales page.

I think this is where the problem is: it seems you’re activating new themes but you’re not seeing the beautiful design shown in the theme’s screenshot. Instead, you’re seeing the old CONTENT (not even styles) that was imported by the old theme, and you’re assuming the old theme is still working on your site when it’s not.

You may delete the old PAGEs and POSTs imported by the old theme (if you want), but the more important task is to configure whichever new theme you activate and WordPress itself to achieve the site structure, look and feel you desire — and that includes configuring things like the header, navigation menu, sidebar(s), footer, widegts, and even whether your homepage should serve a STATIC page or the latest BLOG POSTS.

Sorry for the delayed response: life got in the way 😀

The only thing was that

SETTINGS > READING and set “Your Homepage displays” to “Your Latest posts” (see screenshot below).

Does not show the option, mine is as screenshot below:

I’m guessing that the option is dynamic and does not show until I have a blog page?

That’s because you have no PAGEs (as you deleted all pages).

You need to create at least one page (any page, not specifically a “blog page”) for the option shown in my screenshot to be visible (as it makes no sense to give the option to designate a page as the homepage when there are no pages at all).

Also, the activated “Storefront Eshop” is prompting to install addins to enhance the experience.

I am guessing I should install them?

Only if you NEED the features provided by those addons (plugins), and not just because the theme recommends them.

Another thing, now that the “Storefront Eshop” theme is applied, if I go to Pages there are no pages.

Pages are your site’s content that you need to create yourself, from the PAGES menu in your dashboard. You can create an unlimited number of pages.

A default WordPress installation comes with one sample page, and it seems your previous theme created some dummy filler pages which you’ve now deleted.

I thought that the “Storefront Eshop” would have a nest of pages for all of its function (ie. Product Page, Categories, etc.)

A theme is just the design of your site, and it’s not a theme’s job to create any pages. And in spite of the name “Storefront Eshop”, the theme has no eshop or e-commerce functionality by itself. It’s merely designed to look as such.

If you want to build an e-commerce site, you’ll need an e-commerce plugin to give you such functionality — the most popular one being WooCommerce.

When you install the WooCommerce plugin the first time, it will automatically create any ancillary pages it needs (eg cart, checkout, account, etc) or allow you to use existing pages you created yourself. But product pages — that’s something you create yourself, one for each product (SKU) you’re selling.