Preparing your site – before you use the Widget Importer & Exporter plugin

Things you must do before you can import the widgets and content.

You will need a brand new WordPress installation with…

• No Pages
• No Posts
• All of the widget areas MUST be empty
• The WordPress Importer plugin must be installed and activated
• The Widget Importer & Exporter plugin must be installed and activated
• The Genesis Framework and your chosen theme must be uploaded to your site. The theme you are setting up must be activated.
• Change your permalinks settings to Post Name (optional)

Your chosen THEME MUST BE ACTIVATED!

For most themes, the Genesis eNews Extended plugin and the Simple Social Icons plugin must be installed and activated.

See my list of plugins used in StudioPress demo sites to discover if your theme needs any other plugins.

Download the .wie files you need to import in order to setup your specific theme

I have made .wie Widget Importer & Exporter files for all of the themes designed by studioPress and listed on the StudioPress themes page. I have bundled all these set up files into one zip file download. THEMES LISTED AS THIRD PARTY ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THIS GUIDE. However, most third party themes provide .wie files already.

The download zip file includes the widget area settings for the home page

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Click Here to download the .wie files used in these tutorials

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Importing the front page widget settings
To import the widget settings into your site you need to use the Widget Importer & Exporter plugin and the file you downloaded with a .wie extension from my site.

Importing the ready made web pages and navigation bar
To import the web pages into your site you need to use the WordPress Importer plugin. You also need the file with an .xml extension that is provided by StudioPress. You can find this file inside your theme’s zip file. Make a copy of your theme’s zip file. Open the zip file and look inside the xml folder. This folder only contains one document, it’s an xml import document that sets up your demo site with the same demo content that the StudioPress demo site uses. Usually, photos are not included in this demo content. However, grey placeholder images are included.

You must be careful to use the correct files for YOUR theme

These .wie and .xml files are specific to each individual theme. For instance, the Atmosphere Pro set up files won’t work properly on any other theme. So read the file name carfuly to make sure you’ve got the right files for your theme. The .wie and .xml file names should contain the name of the theme you use the files with. An example would be: digital-pro-widgets.wie

Always scan files you download!

Whenever you download any files from the internet, always scan them for viruses before opening them!

Put the two files you’re going to use on your desktop

After downloading the correct set up files for your particular theme, unzip the files onto your desktop so you can easily find them when you’re ready to use them. You will need a .wie file and a .xml file.

What you should have so far

If you’ve been following along with the tutorials so far you should have…

• A brand new WordPress installation
• With no pages or posts
• And there should be no widgets in the widget areas
• The WordPress Importer plugin AND the Widget Importer & Exporter plugin MUST be installed and activated. These plugins have similar names but are two completely different plugins
• Any other plugins used by the your theme on the StudioPress demo site, such as eNews Extended or Simple Social Icons, must be installed and activated
• Your chosen theme MUST be activated
• You should have already downloaded my .wie zip files. And got the StudioPress .xml file from inside your theme. Make sure both of these files are for your SPECIFIC theme. Make sure you have saved these two files to your desktop where you can easily find them.

If you’ve got all this set up, you can move on to import the content and widgets into your website.