WordPress not recognizing theme in /themes/ folder

Question

Having a really baffling issue with permissions, WordPress and theme files.

I have a fresh install of WordPress and tried uploading the theme I made for my client. It uploaded fine but it doesn't show up in the Manage Themes menu. I checked everything was uploaded and it was. Checked permissions (even set them to 777 at one point) and they were fine. But the theme doesn't show up.

Here are the different scenarios I've tried:

• Using the Install Themes menu and uploading a .zip (failed)
• Duplicate twentyten folder and contents (worked)
• Duplicate twentyten folder and used my theme files (failed)
• Duplicate twentyten folder and used my theme files and their style.css (failed)
• Uploaded my theme WITHOUT style.css (gave missing style.css error)
• Uploaded my theme WITHOUT style.css and put in twentyten/created one from scratch (both failed)

I'm on my clients MediaTemple hosting and I've never encountered this error. Their support has yet to get back to us.

Does anyone have a similar problem? Solution? It's possible I can give you FTP access if needed.

CSS Head (changed values but format and everything is still the same):

/*
Theme Name: Example Theme
Theme URI: http://example.com/
Description: WordPress theme
Author: Company
Version: 1.0
*/

Edit: Trying to access the folder through my browser results in a 403 error (works fine on twentyten). style.css can be viewed from the browser.

Answer 1

If you are using a MULTI-SITE installation of Wordpress, you have to first go into Network Admin, select Themes from the left menu and enable the themes you like to use before they can appear on the "Manage Themes" page in the Site Admin section.

Answer 2

Perhaps you are missing a required template file?

At the very minimum, a WordPress Theme consists of two files:

style.css

index.php

http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development

Answer 3

On Ubuntu 14.04 you can install the wordpress package simply using sudo apt install wordpress but then you have to set a link to the themes directory.

E.g. for your "newTheme":

ln -s /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/themes/newTheme /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/themes

Answer 4

I bet you have some special characters in your templates. This once drove me nuts to find. Check your Template files and/or rename them until the theme shows up. I used a german "ö" in a templates name.