how do you get the theme installed or activated?

OK, to clarify…I am not attempting to add a blog feature to an existing website. I want to *create* a website using a WordPress theme which is allegedly possible and people apparently do it every day.

The documentation section found at www.ads-software.com has info on changing a theme but that is not affecting the new domain I have installed WordPress to, only an empty blog page which I have no intentions of ever using.

So…how do I get the theme I want to use into the domain directory I want to set up using that theme?

So much for the “famous 5 minute install”…

Leave the theme in zip format.
Go into your admin panel, Appearance > Themes
Click on Add New at the top and then upload.
That will allow you to choose the zip file & install the theme.

Thank you. I’ve now got the domain completely FUBAR’ed and WordPress is now neither installed nor uninstalled and apparently I need to do something with creating or editing a database which I didn’t have to do yesterday, when it was *almost* running properly.

Once I’ve got that figured out, I’ll try the steps you describe, but that seemed to only affect that default empty blog page.

And the fun continues. Apparently my domain host has now done something with the database to “correct” the WordPress installataion issue, after resetting password severel time I as finally allowed to log in to my domain account, and saw the buttons that say “Customize your site” or “change your theme completely”.

But when I click on either of them, I get the following helpful message:

“Warning: require(/hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/inc/custom-header.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in //hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/functions.php on line 508 Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required ‘/hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/inc/custom-header.php’ (include_path=’.:/hsphere/shared/php53/share/pear:/hsphere/shared/apache/libexec/php53ext/php/’) in //hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/twentyfourteen/functions.php on line 508 “

Yep, 5 minutes going on 13 hours now.

It sounds like you will need to in through FTP or your hosts admin panel (usually C-Panel).
Download the 2014 theme from here.
Unzip it to your desktop. You should end up with a folder named “twentyfourteen”.
Navigate to ??/wp-content/themes/ on your host.
You should see a twentyfourteen folder there, delete it.
Upload the twentyfourteen folder from your desktop to the host.
Go to YOURSITEADDRESS.COM/wp-admin/
You should see the login screen to get into the admin panel.

Thank you. My webhost had to go in and manually change some of the settings on their end in order to get WordPress to install properly. At least for a few minutes. Now that I closed the page and tried to visit the URL again I get a new long meaningless string of error syntax.

Back to Square One apparently, with another 15 hours to be spent on the “5 minute setup”.

Just for general amusement and because I have nothing else to do with the rest of my life, here is the latest “helpful information” (error message) I get when attempting to access the 14 hours in the making WordPress installataion on my domain:

Warning: require_once(/hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/customizr/parts/class-header-header_main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/customizr/functions.php on line 207 Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘/hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/themes/customizr/parts/class-header-header_main.php’ (include_path=’.:/hsphere/shared/php53/share/pear:/hsphere/shared/apache/libexec/php53ext/php/’) in /hsphere/local/home/domain.com/wp-content/wp-content/themes/customizr/functions.php on line 207

FYI, I did finally get Customizr installed w/the help of my webhost, but now get the error message after leaving the page for a few minutes and attempting to load it again.

Just for the fun of it can you install a theme using the admin panel?
Using Appearance > Themes > Add New
Select any theme and let it go through the install process, activate it, log out, then try to visit your site.

I did, and was able to get Customizr to work for a few minutes (after a lengthy tech support chat with my webhost who had to manually change some settings in order to resolved the WordPress errors I was getting).

Made some changes, saved and published. Closed the window, now when I try to go to the site again I get the error message.

I can’t actually log out because the URL gives me nothing but the error message. Tried in a different browser and get same error message. Back to my webhost tech support…

OK, another chat w/webhost tech support who says the theme is unusable and I will have to contact the developer pf the theme and have them explain why it’s causing the issue. Apparently I will now have to uninstall WordPress (for the 2nd time over the last 24 hours) and start back at the very beginning again. With some other theme which will hopefully not break my site.

OK, finally some improvement. Via my hosting account I was able to copletely uninstall and then reinstall WordPress.

However, now when I go to what should be the login URL for the admin settings panel, (https://mydomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin) to try *again* to customize it, there is no way to log in. It’s just the default “Hello world” blog page w/no login or admin access area. WTF now?

After yet another chat w/webhost, got that resolved, and page now shows the default blog index, saying it’s set to “2013” theme. Now back to the drawing board to see if I will be able to customize it this time.