Blocksy is a very popular theme for WordPress sites. You can find more features of the Blocksy WordPress theme here. Today, we will show you how to install the free theme on your WordPress website, install its child theme, required plugins, page builders, and import the demo site or template.
The first thing you need to do when you want to install a new WordPress theme is to log in to WordPress Dashboard. Once you are there, navigate to Appearance > Themes from the left panel. Here, you will see all the themes you have currently installed in your application. To add another one, click on Add New. Then type in ‘blocksy‘ in the search box at the top right corner and search. You should find this Blocksy theme in the search result. Click the Install button to download this free theme on to your host server and install it on your website.
Once a theme is installed, it is not activated automatically. You have to manually click the Activate button to make it the current theme for your website.
Install Blocksy Companion plugin
After that, the Blocksy Companion plugin will be recommended. This way you will have access to custom extensions, demo templates and many other features. For example, its Starter Sites Library will help you to speed up the building process; you can get more header builder features and other advanced elements; performance controls that will make your website load faster and act smarter. We recommend you install this plugin to make better use of the Blocksy WordPress theme.
Then you will be asked whether you like to receive features updates notifications and diagnostic tracking. Here we click Skip.
Now it´s time to customize the Blocksy theme and make it our own.
Import website template
From WordPress Dashboard, go to Blocksy from the left navigation pane. As we mentioned above, its Starter Sites Library will help you to speed up the building process. Click Starter Sites, you will find various websites templates you can directly import and use. These websites templates were carefully crafted with a terrific attention to details based on modern trends. For instance, you can find ready-made templates for news, travel, shop, charity, apps, cuisines, product reviews, business, home decoration, furniture, wedding, web agency, portfolio resume, yoga & exercises, justice, lawyers, insurance, pets, fashion, plants & interior, etc.
Install Child theme
Preview the demo site. If it is what you are looking for, click Import to import the website template to your host server. When you are asking whether to install Child theme or not, we strongly recommend to install it, this way you will have freedom to make changes without breaking the parent or original theme. This is helpful when you need to customize the theme. Instead of editing the parent theme directly, you can simply customize the child them. By doing so, you can upgrade the theme in the future without overwriting your changes made to the child them.
Page builder plugins
Note that different templates may require different page builders. When you mouse over a template, it will tell you this template is available for Gutenberg, Elementor, and/or Brizy. As WordPress’s default editor, Gutenberg is completely free to use. Brizy and Elementor, on the other hand, have both free and paid versions. Gutenberg is the smallest, fastest and most simple page builder that takes advantage of WordPress blocks to style the page. The other two page builders are more advanced with more options and hypothetically create larger page sizes. If you choose to import a website template based on Gutenberg, you don’t have to install extra plugin as it is integrated with WordPress. Otherwise you have to install page builder plugin(s), Brizy or Elementor.
Install extra plugin for the site template
Sometimes the demo site may require extra plugins to be installed. Otherwise you will lose some features as demonstrated in the demo site or template.
Import content
You can choose clean install or import content from the demo site, such as options, settings, widgets, posts, pages, comments, navigation menus, custom fields, terms and custom posts. We recommend beginners to import these content from the website template or demo site so you don’t have to take long time to learn it. Begin with imitation and editing those sample menus, posts, pages, widgets other than starting from scratch.
Click Install button to import the starter site. After that, you can view your website from the front or start customizing it from the backend.
In the next post, we will talk about how to customize the Blocksy theme for your WordPress site.
