How To Find and Install A New Theme in Drupal 8

Hosting Expert 2 min read

June 3, 2024 4:10 AM

A good theme is one of the most important decisions you should make if you own a website. In fact, your theme takes care of the entire look and style of your page. So, it is important to be more careful when choosing a Drupal theme.

In this tutorial, we shall take you step-by-step on how to download and install a new theme in Drupal 8. For this tutorial, we are going to use a theme called Bootstrap.

Letâ€™s begin!

Step 1: Finding and Selecting an Appropriate Theme

Start by choosing an appropriate theme for your website. This assumes that youâ€™ve already selected a layout for your site.
Login to Drupal 8 administrative dashboard.
Now, enter your username and password in the fields provided. If you donâ€™t remember your password, you can request a new one by clicking the Request new password link.

Enter the Management Sub-Menu
If a submenu doesnâ€™t appear on your main menu, click the Manage tab on the top menu bar and select Appearance from the secondary menu.
On this page, you can simply open the themes link or go to the Drupalâ€™s official Themes section or directly upload your theme, by clicking the Install new theme button.In this case, our theme will be Bootstrap as mentioned before. Now, navigate to the Downloads area on Drupalâ€™s theme page and select zip file to be downloaded.Drupal 8 stores all the key themes in a directory named /core/themes while contributed and custom themes can be found in the directory called /themes. Ensure you have selected the appropriate version of the theme you want.
When you download your theme, it will be in a compressed file format such as â€˜zipâ€™ or â€˜tar.gz.â€™ You should extract this file to a separate folder.

Now, go ahead and Install your theme once the necessary files are extracted.

Step 2: Installing Theme

To install the theme on your website, click the Install new theme button under Appearance, then press Install button on your theme file.
After a few seconds, the installation will be complete. Now, activate the installed theme. To do so, click the Install newly added themes link.
You will be directed to a new page with a list of all the available themes. Locate the installed Bootstrap theme. Press the Install and set as default button to make your default theme.

You can view the newly installed theme on your websiteâ€™s front-end.

Conclusion

Congratulations! Your new theme is successfully installed and working on your Drupal website. Now, you can start adding more content to make your site lively.