Welcome to Lesson 1: How to Set Up Your WordPress Theme With Thrive Theme Builder
This is the first step you'll need to take in creating and fully-customizing your very own high-converting business website.
In this lesson, you'll learn how to set up and customize your very own WordPress theme, assembling the crucial structures of your website using Thrive Theme Builder.
Here's what you'll need to prepare:
- A light and dark version of your logo
- One primary brand color (in hex code format)
Getting Ready...
The first thing you'll need to do is download and install the Thrive Product Manager. After successfully activating your Thrive Product Manager, select the Thrive Suite products you'd like to install - most importantly Thrive Theme Builder, which will serve as your actual WordPress theme (it's not a plugin).
Let's Start Building!
In your Thrive Theme Builder Dashboard, you'll need to select one of Thrive Theme Builder's available companion themes. The current companion themes available to choose include:
After selecting your companion theme, you'll be asked to work through Thrive Theme Builder's Site Wizard. In doing so, you'll perform the following steps:
- Upload a light & dark version of your logo (in either png or jpg format).
- Use the color picker to select your site's brand color
- Select a header design from the available template options
- Select a footer design from the available template options
- Pick a homepage template design from the available options
- Choose a layout for your single blog post design
- Choose a layout for your blog list page design (also know as your "blog reel" or "blog archive")
- Pick a default layout for your default WordPress pages
- Select what WordPress menus to use for your header and foorter, or click "Continue without Choosing a Menu" to create your own, fully-customizable menus later
Don't worry if these layouts aren't the exact design you're looking for, because everything is 100% customizable. You can delete sections, add sections, modify colors, fonts, layouts and a whole lot more.
In case you already have the WooCommerce plugin installed, you can also choose templates for your WooCommerce pages.
And that's it!
You're done selecting the theme page templates for your website.
Take a Quick Look at the Tabs
We recommend looking through the following Thrive Theme Builder Dashboard tabs prior to customizing any of your page templates. Under the Branding tab, you can:
- Choose additional global colors, which will show up in the Theme Color sub-tab
- View, change or add URL links to your website's logo in the Logo sub-tab
- Select the icon that appears in web browser tabs under the Favicon sub-tab
Under the Typography tab, you can customize all of your theme design's typography stylings (including all headings, paragraph text, etc.)
Smart Site
Before previewing your website for the first time, you'll need to configure your Smart Site settings from the Thrive Dashboard.
Think about Smart Site like the central hub for editing all of your important company information and social media profile details. As for your legal page links, you'll need to create these pages before populating them inside your Smart Site settings.
If you'd like to learn more about Smart Site settings, please refer to the Thrive Themes Knowledge Base.
Access Your Theme Page Templates
To see what the rest of your theme page templates look like (including your: Error 404 page template, text / audio / video blog post templates, page templates, etc.), click on Thrive Theme Builder Dashboard's Templates tab.
If you've already installed and are running the WooCommerce plugin on your website, you'll also be able to view your WooCommerce page templates too.
Coming Soon Mode
Is your website still under construction?
Consider using the Coming Soon Mode while you work to get your website up and running. You'll find and be able to activate it from your Thrive Dashboard.
Create from scratch or select and customize a pre-built Coming Soon page in just a few clicks with Thrive Architect.
Take advantage of the Coming Soon page templates' email opt-in forms to start growing your email list ahead of your website launch.
For more info on the Coming Soon Mode, watch our short tutorial below:
Easy Peasy, Right?
Congratulations!
If you completed this lesson, you should have a functioning website!
Now that you've chosen the basic layout of your site, you can move on to customizing it to add your own unique touches.
Have questions or need some support? Feel free to send us an email at: [email protected]
Alternatively, you can login to your Thrive Themes account and submit a support request here.
To move on to Lesson 2, click the "Next Lesson" button below.