Importing a theme’s demo content without wrecking your site

The short answer: many themes come with an “Import demo” button that copies the example’s pages, images and menus into your site. It is the quickest way to get a site that looks like the showcase, but it mixes with what is already there. Do it on a new, empty site, with a backup taken.

What the import does

Effect What it means
Creates pages, posts and menus They appear next to yours. On a site with content, everything gets mixed.
Downloads sample images They fill the media library and take up space.
May install plugins The ones the theme asks for. Check which before you accept.
Changes settings Home page, widgets, colours. What you had may change.
Can be slow and fail halfway Because of memory or time limits. A failure leaves the site half imported.

Step by step

1 Take a backup of the site before you start: What to back up before you update.
2 Prefer a new, empty site. If the site already has content, rehearse first on a copy (a test subdomain).
3 Check the limits: more memory and a roomy upload limit avoid most failures: Giving WordPress more memory.
4 Choose the demo in the theme’s panel, read which plugins it will install and import. Do not close the window until it finishes.
5 Clear out what you do not want: delete the sample pages and images, put in your own text and swap the photos. Images that are not yours do not stay on the site.
6 If it went wrong, go back to the backup and try again with a lighter demo.
Demo images are samples. They may carry licences that do not allow commercial use; swap them for your own photos or ones from a library that allows it before publishing. And delete the plugins the demo installed that you do not use.
A site without the demo is less to clean up. First see how a theme is installed and customised: Installing a WordPress theme and Customising your theme without writing code.

The import stopped halfway and the site looks odd? Open a ticket with the address and tell us which backup you have.

Open a support ticket

SEE ALSO

Installing a WordPress theme

Customising your theme without writing code

Giving WordPress more memory

Raising the WordPress upload limit

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