There are so many themes available at no charge for your WordPress blog that it can be overwhelming to choose. In almost all theme indexes you can narrow down your choices by choosing: how many columns you want, your basic color scheme, fixed or fluid width, if plugins are required, if it's widget ready, if it has an options page, if it has rounded corners, and if the sidebar is on the left or right. You can check any of these options to narrow your search but if you don't know what you want you can leave the options unchecked and every theme in that category will be displayed. If you are starting your blog from scratch, just pick the theme you like the best.
If you already have a WordPress blog and are changing themes you need to look for a compatible theme unless you are willing to make it compatible. If you know some basic HTML or PHP it isn't difficult to make your new theme compatible with the old. If your new theme has the same features as your old theme you won't need to do much.
Let's talk about columns first. You can choose from 1-column, 2-column, 3-column, and 4-column themes. If you want people to be able to subscribe to your blog or see a list of your pages or almost anything other than a post, you need at least two columns. This will provide you with the main posting area and a sidebar as well as the header and footer. If you want to incorporate a lot of 'stuff' in your blog page you might want a 3 or 4 column theme. This is particularly good if you are going to put AdSense on your blog.
There is a wide array of colors to choose from and I don't usually specify a certain color unless I absolutely know the color scheme I want. You will get many ideas by seeing many color schemes.
When you have made your decision about your search criteria you will usually see a button marked 'Show' or 'Go'. Click that button and your themes will appear with a thumbnail of the theme. These are difficult to see but you will get an overall idea of what it will look like. Now you can go through the themes and if there is one that you want to see, just click on the 'Test Drive' button. This will make the theme a full page so you can see exactly what it looks like.
When you find your theme, or even several that you like, you can click on download to download them to your computer. There will generally be instructions on where to put the various components of your theme when you upload it to your site.
After your theme is uploaded go to your blog's admin area and click on 'Presentation'. Your current theme will be listed first and the other themes you have available will be listed after that. Simply click on the theme you want an it will become your current theme.
Choosing your WordPress theme is the most difficult part of the entire process because there are so many to see. Installing it and making it your current theme are as simple as can be.
Now - start looking at themes and pick the one you like!
Cathy Perkins is a WordPress expert who lives in the beautiful foothills of North Carolina. Sign up for the WordPress Newsletter at http://www.wordpressguru.com
