Install a Joomla Template Manually with Discover

It is very common that large Joomla templates with many features are over 2 MB in size. This can make these templates hard to install in the standard way.

Luckily, Joomla provides an alternative for those cases - the "Discover" feature.

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to install a large template by uploading it through cPanel and installing with Joomla Discover.

Step #1. Find the template's name

• To know the template's name, open templateDetails.xml with a code editor. The file is inside the template installer.
• Look for the value in the "name" tag.

In this example, the template's name is fx_ganbate.

<name>fx_ganbate</name>

Step #2. Upload the template installer

• Through cPanel, open File manager:

• Navigate to /templates/ and create a new folder:

• Type the name of the template from step 1. In my example the name is "fx_ganbate".
• Click "Create new folder".

• This is my current progress, the new folder is at the same level as "protostar".

• Double click over the new folder.
• Click "Upload".

Browse the template installer (zip file), and wait until the upload process ends. In the right-bottom corner, you can see the status.

Step #3. Decompress the template installer

• In the File manager, go to templates/your-new-template/ folder.
• Right-click over the installer.
• Click Extract.

• Click "Extract file(s)" button.
• Close when it's done.
• Then, click "Reload" button to see the extracted files.

Now you can delete the zip file, since it is s no longer required. Right-click and choose "delete".

Step #4. Discover template and install

Login to your Joomla backend and...

1. Go to Extensions
2. Manage
3. Discover

1. Click in "Discover" button.
2. Check the template from results.
3. Install.

If everything is correct, a success message will appear.

Step #5. Set the new template as default

• Go to Extensions > Templates.
• Set the new template as default by clicking the star icon.