OwlDraft → Import demo. A grid of demo publications; pick one, press import, and wait.
On a brand new site this is the fastest way to see what a finished publication looks like — and, more usefully, to see how one is put together before you build your own.
What it installs
A demo is a whole publication, not a page of filler:
- media, categories and tags
- posts and pages, with the real layouts on them
- menus, assigned to the theme’s menu locations
- theme settings — the Customizer options that go with the design
- the tier catalogue, and which posts are members-only or paid
- the four member pages, assigned on the Signup portal screen
Half of what makes a demo look like a publication is the paywall and the tiers, which is why the importer lives in the plugin rather than in the theme.
Before you press it
| Requirement | |
|---|---|
| Theme | Demos are built for Stoat. On another theme the screen says so — there is nowhere to put a demo’s Customizer settings on a theme that has never heard of them. |
| Licence | Must be activated. The grid is still shown without one — the demos are rather the point — but the import links come off it. |
What it does to what you already have
It adds; it does not wipe. Nothing you wrote is deleted.
Every object it creates is stamped, so importing the same demo twice does not produce two of everything — a retried or resumed run finds what it already made and reuses it. That also means a failed import is safe to start again.
Theme settings and the tier catalogue are overwritten, because they are single values rather than a pile of posts. If you have already priced your tiers, write them down first.
The honest advice: import on a site you have not started writing on yet. It is a teaching tool, not a template you drop onto a live publication.
While it runs
The import is a chain of small steps — images, terms, posts, settings, menus, access, relinking — each with its own line on the progress panel. That is deliberate: sideloading forty images in one request outlives the time limit on most shared hosting.
Leave the tab open. If you close it part-way, reopen the screen and start the same demo again; it picks up what it already did.
A line about images that could not be downloaded is not a failed import. Add those few in Media yourself.
Afterwards
Everything is ordinary WordPress: delete the posts you do not want, rewrite the pages, keep the menus. The four member pages are worth keeping — they already have the right blocks on them.
Then work through tiers and access with your own prices.
Next: constants and hooks.