How to Restore the Default Theme in WordPress

This article is for customers who subscribe to a WordPress hosting plan. A WordPress theme represents your website design. It can control the entire layout of your website. Essentially, the theme shapes what you see when viewing the front end of your website. If you are having issues with your website’s theme, you can restore your default theme in WordPress.

Fix Website Appearance Issues By Restoring the Default Theme

An out-of-date or faulty theme can cause issues with your WordPress website. The only way to determine if your theme is the issue is to reset your website to the default WordPress theme.

If WordPress theme problems prevent you from using the WordPress Administrator panel, you must complete this process using FTP or phpMyAdmin.

How to Restore the Default Theme in WordPress Using FTP

To complete these steps, you must connect to your website with FTP. Below are steps to revert to the default theme in WordPress using FTP. We will be using FileZilla as our example:

1. Open FileZilla on your device. You need the information below to connect to FileZilla. If you have not created an FTP account for your website, please see How Do I Create an SFTP Account for My WordPress Website? for instructions.
   • Host - Your IP address or server hostname
   • Username - Your FTP username
   • Password - Your FTP password
   • Port - 22
     
      
2. Open the website folder that contains your WordPress website. This folder is usually named wordpress1.
3. Open the /wp-content folder.
   
    
4. Find the theme folder, then rename it to theme.deactivate.
   
    
5. Once renamed, log in to the WordPress Administrator panel.
6. When you log in to the WordPress Administrator panel, the website will reset to the default WordPress theme.

You have restored the default theme in WordPress via FTP.

How to Restore the Default Theme in WordPress via phpMyAdmin

Follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your Network Solutions account via https://www.networksolutions.com/my-account/login.
2. Once logged into your account, click WordPress on the left menu.
   • If you have more than one WordPress package, click Manage to open your package details.
3. Click the ADMIN button for your WordPress database. This will open phpMyAdmin in another tab.
4. In your WordPress database, locate the wp_options table.
   
    
5. Select the following options under the option_value column, then change to your default theme:
   • template
   • stylesheet
   • current_theme
     
     For example, if the default theme in your FTP directory is twentytwentytwo, then edit the option_value column for your template, stylesheet, and current_theme to twentytwentytwo. Click Go to save your changes.
     

You have restored the default theme in WordPress via phpMyAdmin.

Review

Resolve appearance issues on a WordPress website by restoring the default theme. You can restore your default theme in WordPress through FTP (using FileZilla as an example) and phpMyAdmin. To update via FTP, learn how to navigate to the WordPress website folder and rename the theme folder to deactivate it. To update via phpMyAdmin, learn how to log into your account, access the WordPress database, and modify the template, stylesheet, and current_theme options to the default theme.

When you recover your WordPress default theme after customization due to an error, the problem was most likely caused by an issue with the code in your previous theme. WordPress theme coding usually contains a file named functions.php. Fixing the problematic theme could be as simple as removing any extra or trailing spaces from the file that follows the code. Other times, there is a more complicated coding issue. If this is the case, we recommend using a different theme until that code can be corrected.