How to Use Demo Guides
Most EmPress themes are highly customizable, meaning what you see on a demo site only shows a few of the ways you can mix and match theme elements to create something unique to you!
However, we know many of our customers wish to set up their new theme to mirror one of the demos they saw on our shop website. The guides in this Help Desk category will help you to do just that, and show you the settings we used in the Customizer to achieve each demo look!
A few important notes before you begin:
- Don't forget—your demo still might not look exactly like ours pending your imagery, the widgets you create, and of course, your color and font customizations. Our demo guides provide an overall framework for the features we used to achieve a particular layout, but you'll need to spend time adding your own imagery to finalize your theme.
- We have not included Color and Font choices in any of our Demo Guides. All themes will automatically inherit the colors and fonts seen in our demos, so if you like the way these styles look as a default, no need to edit these tabs!
SETUP MINIMIMUM REQUIREMENTS
In order for your site to look similar to a demo, please ensure that you have these items:
- You have published enough posts. Ideally, you will have published enough posts to fill out all your Home Page Blog Feeds, with some living on /page2 of your Archives (so that page navigation can be viewed and tested). If you don't have any blog posts yet, that's ok! Find more guidance on quickly creating sample content here.
- You have featured images assigned to posts. Without featured images, your Blog Feeds will not look like a demo.
- You have interstitial and widget content ready. Think through what widgets you will be adding to any sidebars and interstitials. For these items, you'll want to gather imagery, copy, and calls to action/links, so you can populate the features.
- Establish a few blog post categories. Categories are essential to building site menus properly. You will also need categories if you are assigning featured content to any blog feeds.
To customize your theme so that it matches a demo site:
1. Navigate to the product page that corresponds with your theme on our shop website. For example, if you purchased the Pearl theme, click on "Pearl."
2. On the product page, take a look at each demo link—we've noted them with numerals (e.g. Demo 1, Demo 2, Demo 3, etc.). Make a note of the demo number you're trying to replicate.
3. Click here and find the theme name and demo number that corresponds with your desired look. Then, simply implement the settings as we've shown them!
How we've formatted our Demo Guides
Each of our Demo Guides follows the general order of the Customizer tabs and sub-tabs. The visual below shows what you can expect within each guide—follow the headings we've used to match the tabs in the Customizer!
