Once you've got your WordPress up and running and you've been using it for a while, you'll inevitably want to make some changes to the look and feel of the site. Well, how do you do that? If you set up the site yourself or if it's a simple site then this task is relatively easy to do on your own! Here we'll go over some precautions you should take before changing anything, and then walk you through how to change your site theme!

WordPress has tons of themes to choose from, which is part of the reason why it's such a universally used service. But before you start choosing a new theme for your site, follow these safety steps:

• If your site has any custom code that you or your web designer have added, then you'll want to make note of them for later. Check the functions.php file and other files of the theme and copy them down. Do this for any tracking code or sidebar content you added too!
• Check your current website speed with a tool like Pingdom so you can make sure your new theme is the same speed or faster. Remember, speed plays an important part in UX and SEO!
• Backup your website! This is the most important step because if anything goes wrong, you want to be able to recall all your work. You can do this through a WordPress or external plugin and it saves your images, blog posts, plugins, and your database.

The next step is to choose your theme, which is the fun part. There are thousands of free themes, or you can buy themes that are often a little more advanced (or aesthetic). Once you've chosen one or narrowed it down to a few options you can test it with the live preview function or with a plugin like Theme Switcha. Once you're ready to switch over for good, head over to the Appearances tab, hover over the theme you want, and click Activate. Remember, if anything goes wrong or you change your mind, then you can always recover your old website from the backup.