How to use your new Kadence Child Theme

Most of the content below will be using an example theme. The content may look slightly different, but the instructions will be the same for all our Kadence themes.

Before installing any new theme,

  • Make sure your site is up to date and running the latest WordPress and PHP
  • Create a backup of your site.
  • Pause any RSS-to-Email feeds you may have.

From your account area, you want to download your theme. Make sure you remember where this gets saved on your computer. *For a video walkthrough click here

  1. Ensure you have the FREE Kadence Parent Theme installed on your WordPress website, if you don’t already have Kadence installed on your page you can download it HERE Download and Install –>Do Not Activate it
  2. Go to your WordPress dashboard and select the “Plugins” tab on the left-hand side –> Click the “Add New” Button.
  3. Select the search section from this page and enter “Kadence Starter Template Plugin.” Select this plugin and install it.
  4. On the left-hand side, find the tab called “Appearance” then “Themes” –> Click the “Add New” button, then click “Upload.” Find the new file you downloaded and click “Activate Theme.”
  5. Next, if you want to add all of the demo content to your website, you will need to go to “Starter Templates” on the left-hand side, and then choose which builder you want to use. Choosing the readymade builder should show you the theme you installed on the next screen. Select your theme, and you will see an import screen. You will select either subscribe to Kadence themes or you may select skip and start importing. This may take a few minutes, depending on your internet connection speed, this takes a bit only because all the content, customizer settings, pages, etc. are being loaded.
    • Do NOT exit this screen, close it or refresh it; allow it to run entirely.
  6. When this process is finished, you will see a button on the top right-hand side that says “Finished! View your site” Selecting this should take you to your home page, where you will see all of your content, and it displays just as the demo looks. Here you can customize any aspects of your site to match your business needs and branding.
INSTALLATION TROUBLESHOOTING

Refresh your browser window if you get an error code when you first activate the theme. Then click Appearance > Kadence > Kadence Starter Templates in the sidebar, then click on the theme image again to install it.

If you continue to receive an error code during installation, contact your host and ask them to increase the Memory Limit and Post Max Size to 512KB. Once this is done, click on Appearance > Kadence > Kadence Starter Templates in the sidebar, then click on the theme image again to install it.

Your new theme is a Static Page as the homepage. You can set any of your pages as your homepage. Your theme comes with a homepage and a coming soon page which you can choose to display while you populate your website with your own content.

  1. From your WP dashboard, go to Settings, then select Reading.
  2. At the top, next to “Your Homepage Displays” choose the “A Static Page” option.
  3. Once you’ve done this, in your homepage option dropdown, you want to select the page you would like to set as your homepage.
  4. Next, in the “Posts Page” dropdown section, select your “Blog” page.
  1. To update the colors used for your website, you can go to the live editor and change the “Global” settings (steps below), or you can also select each section on your page if you want to change that instance or button. Each section is also editable individually.
  2. To change the Global Palette for your custom colors, you will start by going to the “Customize” tab at the top of your screen, then to “General” → then “Colors”
  3. You will see the “Global Palette” options; each of the small colored circles affects a specific place on your site. To change these, you select colors and click on the circle. You will get the option to use the color scale, or if you have your brand’s Hex color codes, you can enter the number in this section for the perfect match with your brand.

To change your fonts for your theme, you will go to “Customize” at the top of your screen, then select the “General” tab → Select “Typography” This will then show you all of the fonts you can adjust throughout your website pages. These will load Google Fonts, an extensive resource for custom font options.

  1. After you are satisfied with how your font looks on your pages, select “Publish” at the top to save your customization changes.

Customize the Custom Script Accent Font

  1. Go to the top of the page you want to edit, find the pencil icon next to “Edit this Page” and select that.
  2. Then scroll down on the page and select the accent/script font you need to edit.
  3. On the right-hand side of the screen, you want to scroll down to “Advanced Typography” Here is where you will find the options for these font sections. *Note that these are not listed as any of your H1, H2, etc.; they are in the “Advanced Typography” section.
  4. Review your pages to ensure all your fonts look how you want them to.

Your new Kadence theme will come with a Block Library; these libraries can create and separate each section and create full-page layouts, which may be used on any post or page. To access these, click “+ New” at the top of your screen. Then click “Page”

  1. On your new page, give it a title at the top. It can be any title, generally what the page will be for, as in “About Me,” “Info” or anything you choose. At the top of your page, you will see a button named “Design Library” Click here.
  2. You will then see a library of all the different pre-styled sections available to you; if it’s hard to see, hover your mouse over them and see the section’s title show up, which will help you find the section you need.
  3. Choose the tab with your new theme’s name to access your theme’s pre-styled sections.
  4. You can narrow down your search by going to the left-hand side and selecting from those options.
  5. When you find the section you want, select it to add the entire block to your page section. This means it will add this block’s styling, content, and settings.
    • To select another block to add to this page, you can select “Design Library” again and follow the same steps as step 2 above.
  6. You want to select the block to change the order in which your blocks are arranged on your page. Select the entire section, not just an element in the block. When you do this, you will see arrows that point up and down. Click where you want to move your block, save, and publish your changes.
    • If you find that you no longer want any of the existing blocks or blocks that you’ve added to your pages, you can just as easily select the block, then go to the three vertical lines that show up when you select the block, scroll down, and click “Remove block.”

When you create a page by adding blocks from your block library, sometimes you might see some extra space at the top of your page; this is where you can edit or remove this.

  1. From the page itself, after you publish it and see the extra space at the top, click “Edit page” next to the pencil icon at the top of your screen.
  1. Below is the section labeled “Page Title.” Confirm that it is set to disable. A bit further, you will see the section “Content Vertical Padding.” Make sure this is also set to disable.
  1. Once you’ve set this, ensure you either save your changes or click “Publish” at the top → view the page to ensure your changes have taken care of the extra space and the title at the top.