Magento 2 – install theme

In this post I show you how to install a theme for Magento 2. This is done with example theme Ultimo, a very flexible, modern and expendable Magento theme. A different theme may have other files, the install procedure is everytime the same.

Magento 2 – install theme

If you download a commercial theme, you get a bunch of files. A setup guide, change logs, and zip compressed theme files for different Magento versions (for example Mageno 1, Mageno 2.0x, Magento 2.1x). The first step is to choose the right zip file and copy it to your Magento 2 root directory on your web server.

Install theme

Next step is to unzip your packed file. Normally you do this in your console, so SSH into your server and type:

If your file is compressed with another compression tool like bzip or gzip you need to use appropriate unzip programs. Unzipping only lasts some seconds. You will notice, that for Magento 2 theme files got extracted to:

• app/code
  all module code goes here. Themes often add additional functionality like menus, color schemes, custom filters or a custom search.
• app/design
  here you will find all layout xml files and css files
• pub/media
  all media files like images are stored in pub media

If you use a git deployment system, please consider that static files in pub/media should not be included in your git repository.

Activate theme module

In Magento 2 you need to activate modules in your SSH terminal. You also need to activate your theme modules the same way. For Ultimo, you need to run this command from Magento root directory:

As you can see, it is possible to activate all modules with one single command. After enabling modules, you need to update your installation:

and of course, you need to recreate Magento’s static files:

Set theme as active theme

Last step is to make your theme Magento’s active theme. Login to your backend and go to Content -> Design -> Configuration. You will see a gird of configuration scopes and active themes.

You can click on edit and change theme used by this scope:

Conclusion

Install theme in Magento 2 is not that easy as in Magento 1. It is a task for a developer, but if it is installed, your design team can adapt it to your needs by changing *.xml layout files and styling things like *.css, *.js or all kind of images.