Theme activated, but the site still looks like the old one or shows a blank page.
Theme Not Showing After Activation
Key Points: You activate a new theme, but your site doesn’t reflect the change or appears empty.
You’ve clicked “Activate” on your beautiful new theme, but nothing changes — or worse, everything disappears. Welcome to theme confusion 101.
🔎 Likely Reasons
- Theme lacks a
front-page.phporhome.phptemplate - Homepage is set to a static page not styled by the theme
- Old cached version of the site is showing
- Theme files didn’t upload completely or are broken
🔧 What To Do
- Go to Settings → Reading and check homepage display settings
- Try assigning a different page as front page
- Clear your browser and site cache
- Re-upload the theme if necessary
💡 Developer Tip
If developing a theme, use get_template_part() wisely and always provide fallback templates like index.php.