On WordPress, it’s easy to change themes for a website. Simply go to Appearance > Themes, and you can preview how your site might look in another theme.
Before you decide to switch to a different theme, there are some things you should keep in mind.
The Good News
Switching themes does not destroy any pages or content that you’ve created for your site. Moreover, switching themes is reversible; if you change it and don’t like it, you can switch back.
The Tricky Parts
Top Navigation
When you switch themes, it’s possible for your top navigation menu to break. This can be fixed by going to Appearance > Menus, finding your Top Nav menu, and checking the ‘Primary Menu‘ checkbox.
Bootstrap Layouts & Special Elements
The older Hale and Prudence themes were built on the Bootstrap 2 framework. The newer Sherman, Hale 2015, Prudence 2018 themes are built with the Bootstrap 3 framework. If your site makes use of Bootstrap columns, buttons, or accordion menus, they may not work if you switch from a Bootstrap 2 theme to a Bootstrap 3 theme. They will fall back to being simple single column layouts, links, or text sections until you change the code to comply with the version of Bootstrap that your new theme uses.
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