Starter Website Content

Import starter content to make your site look similar to the demo. This saves you time versus starting from scratch.

Starter content is a simplified version of the theme’s demo, with less content for easier management. Photos from the demo are not included due to licensing restrictions. You will see gray placeholder images that you can replace with your own. The photos used in the demos are listed for each theme if you want to obtain licenses for your own site.

Important: Make sure you have installed both the theme and Church Content plugin before attempting to import starter content. Instructions can be found in the Getting Started guide.

Download Starter Content

You can download starter content files from the Downloads area in your Account. There is an XML file for page, post and menu content and a WIE file for widgets.

Import Starter Content

The starter content file is named {theme}-content.xml where {theme} is the name of the theme. This file contains a sample menu plus sample posts, pages, sermons, locations, events and people.

Important: No maps will show until you set your Google Maps API Key. It is a good idea to do this before importing starter content.

Permalinks: Importing starter content will set your permalink structure to “Post name”. This is what the starter content uses and what we recommend. You can have control over this in Settings > Permalinks.

1. Go to Tools > Import and click Install Now below “WordPress”.
2. After installation, click the Run Importer link that appears.
3. Upload the {theme}-content.xml file.
4. Follow the instructions to assign a user the the imported posts.
5. Check the box for Import Attachments to import images (gray placeholders).
   • Note that images will be gray placeholders (photos from the demo are not included)
6. Continue and the starter content with images will be imported. It can take several minutes and the screen may be blank while content is being imported.

Be sure to also import starter widgets by following the steps in the next section.

Import Starter Widgets

The starter widget file is named {theme}-widgets.wie. This file contains homepage, sidebar and/or footer widgets.

1. Go to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for Widget Importer & Exporter
3. Click Install Now then Activate.
4. Go to Tools > Widget Importer & Exporter.
5. Click Choose File, then choose {theme}-widgets.wie.
6. Click Import Widgets.

Note: WordPress may add a few widgets (Meta, Posts, etc.) to the first widget area by default. You can remove these.

For more on widgets, see the Widgets guide.

Troubleshooting

• Make sure both the theme and Church Content plugin are installed and activated. Otherwise, post types, widget areas, etc. will be not available to receive the content. Refer to the Getting Started guide.
• If content imports but not images, ask your host if they support the fetching of remote files. Most do but some disable this for security purposes.