Themes are the driving force with WordPress sites. That might seem a bit backward; isn’t the content what makes or breaks your site? Well, yes; but since themes determine how your visitors view that content, it’s not a stretch to say that without a well-designed theme, your WordPress site will struggle to stand out.
Using the right theme will draw more visitors and encourage them to stay on your site longer and engage with your content more deeply. The wrong theme will turn people away with bad visuals or poor layout.
It’s no wonder then that website owners who rely on WordPress are always looking for clever ways to improve their site design. More than one person has settled on the idea of trying to use more than one WordPress theme on the same site. Some WordPress themes have a better design for certain features. Using two themes together can seem like a good way to improve user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
That raises the simple question – can you use more than one WordPress theme on the same domain?
We’ll explore the answer to that question below.
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The simple answer
Let’s start with the easy answer – no. Only one WordPress theme can be active at any one time. Now, you can download and install any number of WordPress themes for your site; if you navigate to your WP control panel and select the “Themes” tab, you’ll probably see more than one option appear. These are all the themes that you’ve downloaded. If you’ve had your site up and running for a while, the chances are good there’s more than one theme accessible from your admin panel.
But when it comes to active themes, there can only be one.
If that’s the only answer, why write this article? Because, as with most things, there’s a workaround.
The workaround
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) for websites out there – something like 31% of the entire Internet. It’s an insanely high number, and WordPress is insanely successful at what it does.
Why? What gives WordPress so much clout where other CMS platforms falter?
One reason is that WordPress doesn’t do very much by itself. Put another way, most of the functionality in WordPress doesn’t come from built-in apps, but from the countless apps and themes you add to your WordPress site. By making things extremely simple, WordPress gives users the freedom to truly make their website their own, adding plugins for everything from marketing promotions to increased site security to SEO techniques.
So how do you get around the “one-theme per domain” limit? You guessed it – a plugin.
The plugin
Typically, users are spoiled for choice when it comes to plugins. To use an example we’ve already mentioned, there are dozens of security plugins out there. Choosing a new one requires a lot of reading, research, and careful planning. But plugins that allow you to use multiple themes on the same domain are a lot rarer; there’s only one, and it’s called “Multiple Themes.”
Despite being the only way to use more than one theme, Multiple Themes packs a lot of functionality into a small package. Yes, it allows you to use more than one theme on your site – but it’s how the plugin does that that really matters. By adding a bit of code to your website, the plugin lets you specify the theme to be used.
Multiple Themes works on a “per page” basis. In other words, you can select a particular theme for each page. While there’s no set limit on the total number of themes, most users opt for a maximum of 2-3 themes.
What can you do with multiple themes?
Using more than one theme on your site isn’t just about making your site stand out. From a design perspective, keeping things unified is critical; that’s why you’ll rarely find a site where half of it looks and feels different.
But Multiple Themes provides a bit of flexibility in certain situations. Let’s say you’re managing a fairly large site and are planning to upgrade or change themes entirely. Multiple Themes lets you change the site over gradually, updating themes a page at a time to get a better feel for how things will work.
You could also set a different theme for your homepage, setting it apart from the rest of the site. This comes in especially handy with different versions of the same theme, allowing you to preserve a unified look but still set the homepage apart.
How to install the “Multiple Themes” plugin
Installation is easy, but there are a couple of preliminary steps to keep in mind.
Back up your site
As with any major change, don’t do anything to your WordPress site until you’ve backed it up. That will be crucial to keeping your site up and running.
Turn off caching plugins
Even after you’ve installed the new plugin, you may notice several of your pages displaying incorrectly. More than likely, that’s due to plugins that regularly cache your website; those plugins are displaying old versions of your pages and preventing Multiple Themes from working. Disable those plugins first before using multiple themes.
A word of caution
There are a couple of drawbacks to Multiple Themes. Note that even this plugin has limited functionality – you won’t be able to use every theme imaginable, and you can only change themes by page. There’s no mixing and matching elements from different themes.
Most importantly, Multiple Themes is an older plugin, and you won’t find up-to-date support. This is definitely a red flag for us and typically a deal breaker. Yet most users find that the plugin continues to work well but be aware that this is an older plugin that is no longer officially supported.
Using more than one theme on the same domain isn’t a perfect solution even with a plugin. Despite the drawbacks, there are some situations (although they are rare) where multiple themes provides an extra layer of flexibility and design creativity that are worth the effort.