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How to Import A Complete Site With Starter Templates?

Starter Templates plugin allows you to import ready and beautifully built demos to your website. Most importantly, when you import a complete site, your whole website is ready in a few minutes. You get already made designs, dummy content, images, and style that you can customize and personalize as you wish.

Thus, this document will show you how to import a complete site with Starter Templates directly from your WordPress Dashboard. We will cover both the Free and Premium Templates. 

Starter Templates Walkthrough Docs:

Getting Started With Starter Templates Starter Templates ImportingHow to Import A Complete Site With Starter Templates? (currently reading)How to Import Single Page With Starter Templates?Importing Gutenberg Pages, Patterns, and WireframesStarter Templates – Elementor PopupHow to Fix Starter Template Importing IssuesBuilding Your Website With Starter TemplatesStarter Templates FAQs

Importing Free Templates

The first step to importing the free templates is to install the Starter Templates plugin. The plugin provides two sets of templates, free and Premium. You can learn how to install the free plugin here.

Visit the Getting Started with Starter Templates document for more details on FREE and PREMIUM Starter Templates.

Once you install and activate the plugin, you can start importing Starter Templates. You can also check out all the great options that came with Starter Templates 3.0 in the video below:

Previewing Templates

Step 1 – Navigate to Appearance > Starter Templates, and click the 「Build Your Website Now」 button. Next, you』ll need to select your preferred page builder: Elementor, Gutenberg, or Beaver Builder. This will open the Templates Library and styling options;

Note:

Brizy builder templates are not available by default. Accordingly, if you wish to import Brizy templates, you』ll need to enable this option. To do this, navigate to Dashboard > Settings > General and click on 「Enable Brizy Page Builder Templates in Starter Templates」 [screenshot].

Step 2 – You can browse the Library to see the templates available for your selected page builder.

Once you find the template you like, click on it to preview your template. You will go through several pages with styling settings like logo, colors, and typography. 

On each step, you can preview the entire template using the live preview on the right side. Just click on any page in the menu like you would on the live website.

Styling Options

Step 3 – Firstly, add your logo to see how it would look with the selected template:

Click on the 「Click to Upload」 button;Upload the logo file or add it from Media Library;Set the logo width.

Here, you can also try different variations of your logo to find which one fits the best. Click on 「Continue」 to save the changes.

You need not worry if you don』t have your logo ready. Just click on the 「Skip & Continue」 button below. This will add a default logo from the template, which you can change later;

Step 4 – Next, you can select one of the premade global color palettes. Selecting any premade color palette will change colors in the template preview accordingly. Also, you can leave the default color palette. Once you decide on the color palette to use, select it and click 「Continue」;

Step 5 – Finally, you can select one of the available typography presets and try different text styles. Text in the template preview will change its style accordingly. 

Click the 「Continue」 button to proceed to template import. Skipping this step will apply the default typography to your import;

Note:

You will be able to manually modify all settings after the template import. In other words, you can change the logo, colors, and typography any time you want.

Importing A Complete Site Template

Step 6 – After you go through the template preview and settings, you will come to importing page. Here, you will have several 「Advanced Options」:

Delete Previously Imported Site – This option will automatically delete designs, content, and settings of any starter template you previously imported;Install & Activate Astra Theme – Starter Templates are designed to work perfectly with the Astra theme. Starter Templates plugin will install/activate the Astra theme automaticaly with this option. Contrary, if you disable this option, the imported template will work with your currently active theme. Hence, the template might look differently on your website compared to the Library preview;Import Customizer Settings – Each site template comes with its own Astra customizer settings. Hence, if you disable this option, the template will inherit the current theme customizer settings;Import Widgets – This will import the widgets used in the site template (especially with header and footer);Install Required Plugins – This option can』t be disabled. On the other hand, hovering over the tooltip icon (question mark) you can see the list of the plugins that will be installed;Import Content – Enabling this option, will import content (text) and images for the template you selected. Yet, if you only want to import the website structure and design, you can uncheck this option;

Furthermore, we suggest enabling all these settings to ensure the imported template is the same as the preview.

Click on 「Submit & Build My Website」 to initiate the import process. Don』t close the window until the template import process is finished.

Note:

If you see the 「Get Access!」 button instead, it means that you are trying to import Premium templates using the free Starter Templates plugin. Also, this could mean that you didn』t activate your Premium Starter License.

Step 7 – Once the import process is completed, you can view your website by clicking the 「View Your Site」 button.

Importing Premium Templates

Premium Templates are available only with Essential or Growth Bundles. You can set them apart in the templates library by the Premium tag in the upper right corner.

To import Premium site templates, you need to install the Premium Starter Templates plugin. If you need help installing and activating the plugin or activating its license, you can find more details here.

Once the Premium Starter Templates license is activated, you can import the Premium templates. Please follow the same above-mentioned steps for importing free templates.

Recommendation:

Though not required, we recommend you import a site template on a clean WordPress installation. Also, you can reset your current WordPress installation to start fresh with the brand new site. Here』s a quick guide to help you do that.

The 「Unlock Access」 Page – Importing Premium Template

Did you try to import a premium template and get to the 「Unlock Access」 page following the styling options? This means that something is missing in your setup.

Firstly, as you know, these templates require a Premium Starter Templates plugin to be installed and activated.

Secondly, to import Premium templates, you also need to activate your Premium Starter Templates license. Thus, if you haven』t done this, you will see the 「Unlock Access」 page through your plugin is installed and activated.

Hence, this is what you can do to activate your Premium Starter Templates plugin license:

Step 1 – On the 「Unlock Access」 page you will see the 「License Key」 field;

Step 2 – Next, visit the Brainstorm Force Store to get your license key. Here, you can copy the license key from the Licenses page and paste it into the 「License Key」 field;

Step 3 – Click the 「arrow」 button, and continue with the template importing process from Step 6.

Note:

Although we try to use stock and non-copyrighted images on all of our Starter Sites/templates, we cannot take legal responsibility for any claims. We highly recommend replacing the images after importing.

Previous: Starter Templates Importing

Next: How to Import Single Page With Starter Templates?

Style Your Website With Global Settings

The settings you do here will reflect on your whole website. The available options are typography (your fonts), colors, container, and buttons. These settings will be automatically used (Default) for all of your website content, except those elements on which you make some individual changes. 

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global Settings (currently reading)Build Your HeaderFind the Way With BreadcrumbsSet Up Your BlogAdd Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the KeySee Other Customizer OptionsHow To Build Quick Sites With Astra?Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Typography

Maybe sometimes you wouldn』t even notice, but using great fonts on a website really makes a huge difference. You can decide here what fonts would you like to use for different elements, font sizes, weight, etc. If you wish to learn more about choosing the right font check this article.

Base Typography 

Let』s start here with choosing a font Family for your website. This should be the dominant family for your website (though you can use more than one on your website).

If you don』t already have a predetermined font, spend some time going through fonts and choosing the right one. You can do this by clicking on the Family dropdown menu and scrolling down the font list or typing the name in the search field.

Selection is wide, as next to the System fonts you can choose any of Google Fonts, the largest directory of free and open-source web fonts. The list can be expanded even further with our plugins:

Custom Adobe Fonts (Typekit) to embed Adobe fonts;Custom Fonts will allow you to use any custom fonts that you need – just upload the font file and it will be added to the font list.

Now, once you selected your font family, let us move to specifics. Selecting all the Variants will save you time and clicks – if you choose for example the 「700 Italic」 variant, any time you mark your text as italic, it will automatically get the 700 weight.

Next, set the default text Size (in px), Weight and if you need it Text transformation (e.g. capitalizing every word on your website).

The last two options will influence how much space will your text take. Line height will set the height of each row of text, while Paragraph Margin Bottom will determine the space added to the bottom of each paragraph. You can set these values by typing in the size value or by moving the slider left and right. 

Headings

Headings help your website visitors understand the importance of different page or post sections. WordPress uses headings from H1 to H6. 

The most important heading on each page or post is H1, and it should provide search engines with the information about that page or post content (what』s it all about). Thus, there should be only one of these on each post or page. 

Other headings can be used as needed. The higher the heading number, the less important it is (so the H6 if used, marks the least important content).

Here, you can set almost all of the options as in Base Typography for each header separately, giving them a specific and accented look.

Colors

Not that you have your typography set, it』s time to give it some color. Here you can set your color scheme to make it appealing and set the mood. Used the right way, the colors tell users a lot about the type of website they are viewing and about the brand itself. 

We will explain what each color type does:

Text Color – Color for the body text (all of your regular text) and descriptions on the website;

Theme Color – Color for all theme elements like buttons, selected text background color, etc.;

Link Color – Color for all text that has link added to it;

Link Hover Color – Color for all text that has link added to it when being hovered over with the pointer (hover color).

To change any color, click on the colored circle next to the color type name. You will be able to visually choose your color by clicking on the color picker and setting the opacity (transparency) if you need it. Alternatively, you can add the color value in HEX, HSL, or RGB formats. 

To remove the changes and revert the color to a default color, click on the 「Clear」 button or click on the 「back to default」 icon.

Here, you also have the option to set the background for the whole website:

Background – You have three options to choose from: Color, Gradient, or Image. Whichever option you choose, it will be applied as a background to the body on the entire site.You can also set both color and image at the same time – in this case, make sure to adjust the opacity (less than 100%) of the color to make the image visible, as the color will be used as an overlay.

You can find more details about color and background settings in this article.

Container

Now it』s time to make some settings for the content of your website. A container is the area where all of your content is being displayed on each page or post. 

The content area and the sidebar are parts of the container. The content area is technically called the primary container, whereas the sidebar is the secondary container.

Content Width 

This value will set the maximum width of your container. This will define how much space will your content and sidebars (if you set these) take on pages and posts.

Layout

By setting the container layout, you will be choosing how your content, sidebar and widgets, header, footer and website background come together on your website. You have 4 types of Container layouts:

Boxed – this layout will display individual containers and widgets appear in boxes. This leaves space on all sides around each box – thus, you will be able to see the website background.Content Boxed – with this, only your content appears in the boxed format, while sidebar and widgets are displayed on a plain background.Full Width / Contained – this will set your content and sidebar in a single container. This container will display in a container width, leaving the space on the left and right side.Full Width / Stretched – using this layout, your content and sidebar will be displayed in a single container, stretched from edge to edge of your screen.

Astra theme allows you to set a different layout throughout the website, depending on your needs:

Layout – the layout selected here will be a Default layout for the whole website.  Remaining layout option will have this layout selected automatically. You can change layout for following post types if needed:

Page Layout – for pages

Blog Post Layout – for blog archive and single blog post pages

Archives Layout – all archives

Further, depending on other plugins you might be using on your website, you will find the options to set the layout for their dedicated pages, for example, WooCommerce Layout or LearnDash Layout.

Buttons

The last global option is used for setting default look for website buttons. We will make a short overview of available options and what they are used for:

Text Color – set the normal & hover color of the button text;

Background Color – set the normal & hover color of the button (background) color;

Border Width – if you wish to add border to your buttons, just set the border width here;

Border Color – set the normal & hover color of the button border;

Border Radius – adding radius will make your buttons more rounded; as you increase the radius value your buttons will change shape from rectangle towards circle.

Button font – typography settings available here will be applied only on button text.

Padding – this will add an inner padding of your button; larger padding will make your button larger

Final remarks for Global settings:

Option with a 「responsive editing」 icon next to it can be separately edited for desktop, tablet, and mobile. Applying changes in each view will change the settings only for the currently active view. On the other side, changing settings for the options without a 「responsive editing」 icon will apply the same changes to all views.

Please have in mind that some global options will not be applied to your content as they might get replaced by settings you make in the Page builder. This will depend on your choice of Page Builder to use for your website.

Previous: This Is Your Customizer

Next: Build Your Header

Build Your Header

The header is the top section of your website, shown across all (or almost all) pages and posts. It』s something that every website visitor sees first… your chance for a great first impression.

This is a place for visitors to meet your brand, your offer or idea, and to be initially delighted and intrigued to explore your website further.

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global SettingsBuild Your Header (currently reading)Find the Way With BreadcrumbsSet Up Your BlogAdd Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the KeySee Other Customizer OptionsHow To Build Quick Sites With Astra?Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Astra theme comes with a drag & drop Header Builder – a perfect tool for you to create great headers quickly and effortlessly, without any coding. Here you will be able to add and customize your logo, site title, and tag, your header style, menus, buttons, social icons, and much more.

You have full freedom to position elements by just dragging them to any position in the header – as simple as that.

Header Builder – General Tab

General tab is your default view when opening the Header Builder. Here you have an overview of your header setup.

On a left-side menu, all of your active header elements will be listed. Further down, under 「Header Types」 you can find the transparent header settings.

Rest of the screen is showing a live preview of your header and the position of your elements across header sections.

Transparent Header

Enabling a transparent header will remove the header background color and shift your content to the top of the page underneath the header, creating the transparency effect.

When the transparent header is enabled, it』s advisable to add a hero image (e.g., full-width image or video, sliders, etc.) or use sections without content (e.g., headings or text) positioned on top – this way, you will avoid overlapping the content and the header.

General Tab

To enable transparency, activate the 「Enable on Complete Website」 option. This will also open additional options to disable transparent header for a specific page or post types.

Enable On – choose to enable transparent header on Desktop, Mobile or both (Desktop+Mobile)

Different Logo for Transparent Header – if your Logo looks good on the standard header, but maybe not so much with a transparent one, you can activate this option and set the different logo to be used for the transparent header.

You can also set the transparent header Logo Width. Depending on the logo you』re using, you might want to add a logo for Retina (higher pixel density) screens which should be at least 2x larger or more. Just click on 「Different Logo for Retina Devices」 and upload your retina Logo.

Design Tab

Under the Design tab, you』ll find options for styling your Transparent header. You will be able to set the site title, background, menu, submenu, and colors. Also, there are options for setting background overlay and bottom border. The bottom border is by default set to 0px and thus not visible – increasing the border value (1px or more) will make it show on the frontend, and you will also get the option to set the Bottom Border Color.

Keep in mind that these settings are applied only to your Transparent header. If you』re using your regular header on some pages, these settings will not be applied there.

Header Builder – Design

Design tab is used to set your header spacing:

Width sets to total amount of space your header widgets will use:

Full Width will spread your header widgets from edge to edge of the screen;

Content Width limits your header widgets to be displayed using your content width – your header background will still be stretching from edge to edge of the screen.

Margin adds space to one or more sides of your header. This will add space to both your header widgets area and background.

Visual Header Builder

The header consists of three separate sections which you can see in the visual header builder area. You can use all three sections to add any element to any position. 

These three sections are:

Primary Header – this header is the middle section. It is most commonly used for adding your most important elements like Logo, Primary Menu, or Search, Cart, and Account.

Above Header – this header is the upper section, and it is displayed above Primary Header on your website. It can be used for your secondary elements, like the secondary menu, or elements like social icons, call to action buttons, etc. You can also use HTML code to add for example current discount period, breaking news or some notification for the website visitors. 

Below Header – this header is the lower section, and it is displayed below Primary Header on your website. The use of this header is the same as the Above Header.

The main purpose of Above and Below Headers is to avoid cluttering the Primary Header. They extend the available area for adding all elements and information you need in your Header, as well as to provide a certain level of prioritization.

You can customize each section by clicking on the 「cog」 icon on the left side of the sections. 

Each section has two tabs:

General

Height – set height of each header separately.

Design

Bottom Border Size (& Color) – if you need to separate your header from another section or website content you can add bottom border by setting the size of your border. Once you set your border size, additional option will appear (Bottom Border Color) for choosing the color of the border;

Background – set the header background color;

Padding – add padding on one or more sides of the header. This will add space between the header section edges and content;

Margin – add margin on one or more sides of the header. This will add space between that header and another website areas (other headers, page/post content, screen edges, etc.);

Each header can be customized separately for desktop and mobile and can have different elements added for each view. The position of elements can also be changed.

Off Canvas section

The Off Canvas section is used to edit your tablet/mobile menu. This menu is activated by clicking on the Toggle Button in the mobile menu (also called 「hamburger」 menu). 

To edit this menu, switch to tablet or mobile viewport editing. You can add elements to this menu and set their order the same way you edit other header sections. Clicking on the 「cog」 icon will open the following tabs:

General

Header Type – set Off Canvas type to Flyout (menu flying in from right or left side of a screen), Full-Screen or Dropdown;

Dropdown Target – choose if you want your sub-menus to open by clicking on the down-arrow icon (Icon) or by clicking to a whole menu item (Link)

Content Alignment – align the Off Canvas section widgets to Left, Centar or Right;

Design

Inner Element Spacing – adding space between the elements;

Background – set the background color.

Header Element

Site Identity & Logo

This is your Site Identity & Logo element (previously named 「Logo「). In the General tab, you can add your Logo, set Logo width, and add a Different Logo for Retina devices.

Using this element, next to Logo, you can set your Site Title, Site Tagline, and your Site Icon (favicon). This information is also displayed on the top of your website tab in your browser.

The Design tab is used if you want to add some Margin to this element.

Primary Menu

Here, you will find menu items added to your Primary Menu (Dashboard > Appearance > Menus). 

The General tab provides you with several Submenu options: submenu Width, Container Animation (the animation used when expanding a submenu), Item Divider (adds or removes divider between submenu items).

You can also decide if to set your menu items to Stack on Mobile. This is the most common setup for mobile menus – the menu items will be stacked one on top of the other.

The Design tab will allow you to set Menu Hover Style, style your Submenu Container, set the Text and Background Colors, Menu Font, Manu Spacing, and Margin.

Search

Adding this element will add a search function to your header. You can set the Icon Size, Icon Color and Margin.

Social (Header)

You can add your social media icons using this element. You can manage your social media icons using the General tab – add, choose the icon or remove them. 

The Design tab holds the options for styling the icons.

Button

This is used for adding a custom button to your header. Add the Text, Link and style (Design tab) the button here.

Secondary Menu

You can add another (secondary) menu to your header if you need it. You can also use this if you wish to split your primary menu into two separate menus – for example, if you want to create a header with a centrally positioned Logo, with your menu items next to it on the left and right sides.

You can customize this menu the same way as the Primary Menu.

HTML

Use this element to add HTML code or shortcodes.

Widget

This is used to add any of the website widgets (Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets) to your header.

Toggle Button

Toggle Button (also known as hamburger icon or button) is used to expand your tablet/mobile menu. Thus, this element is only available on tablet or mobile views. 

The General tab will enable you to choose the button Icon and Icon Size, add Menu Label (text next to the icon) if you need it, and the Toggle Button Style. 

The styling options are located in the Design tab: Icon Color, Background Color, Border Radius and Margin.

Account

If you have some plugins like LearnDash or WooCommerce active, you can add the user account shortcut using this element.

Cart

This will add a Cart icon (WooCommerce) to your header. Next, set if Cart Title should be displayed as well, or only the cart icon, and whether you want to display a Cart Total too (General tab). You can also style your cart and your cart tray (Design tab).

Previous: Style Your Website With Global Settings

Next: Find the Way With Breadcrumbs

Find the Way With Breadcrumbs

The breadcrumbs are showing your visitors the path in which they came to the current content they are viewing. They will show all the higher-level pages/categories that led to the current content. 

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global SettingsBuild Your Header Find the Way With Breadcrumbs (currently reading)Set Up Your BlogAdd Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the KeySee Other Customizer OptionsHow To Build Quick Sites With Astra?Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

These are navigational links which means that the visitor can easily return to any higher-level category simply by clicking on it.

Use the General tab to enable your breadcrumbs by choosing the Header Position (where should breadcrumbs be positioned in your header) or disable them by choosing 「None」. In addition, you can disable breadcrumbs on specific pages by activating appropriate options from the list.

Also here you can set a Separator which will be used between the categories, as well as the Alignment.

Styling options for breadcrumbs are located in the Design tab.

Previous: Build Your Header

Next: Set Up Your Blog

Set Up Your Blog

A blog page is used to keep track and display all of your past posts. This is why this page is an archive.

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global SettingsBuild Your Header Find the Way With Breadcrumbs Set Up Your Blog (currently reading)Add Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the KeySee Other Customizer OptionsHow To Build Quick Sites With Astra?Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

To set your Blog page, start by creating and naming a page (Dashboard > Pages > Add New). Then, navigate to Dashboard > Settings > Reading and set this page as your 「Posts page」. This will apply the Blog Archive template to this page – that means any previous content on this page will not be visible. This is why we use an empty page for this.

Within this option, you can also modify the number of posts to be shown on each page of your Blog archive (the default value is 10 posts).

Once you set this, you can customize your Blog / Archive page and your Posts using the Astra theme Blog option in the Customizer.

Blog / Archive

Within the General tab, if you wish to change a default Content Width set for your whole website, just select 「Custom」 and set the custom width specifically for your Blog page. 

You can modify the way the posts are displayed on the Blog page. In the Post Structure and Meta sections, you can set the order of elements in which they are displayed by simply dragging each of them to the desired place in the list.

Also, you can hide any element in the list by clicking on the 「eye」 icon on it (click the 「eye」 icon one more time if you decide to have the element displayed again).

The last option, the Post Content, lets you choose if you want to show the Full Content of the posts on the Blog page or only Excerpt.

Available styling options in the Design tab are setting the Archive Title Font Size (the Blog page title) and the Post Title Font Size (title of each of your posts shown on the Blog page).

Single post

A Single post option is used to customize the way your Posts are displayed.

General Tab

Similarly as with Blog / Archive settings, in the General tab you can set the Custom Width for your Posts and modify Structure and Meta.

The last option in the General tab allows you to Enable Related Posts and adjust the settings according to your needs. You can set a custom Title for a related posts section, set the Number of related posts, Grid Column Layout, as well as Posts Query and Structure. You can find more details on related posts in this article.

Design Tab

In the Design tab, you can find options for changing the Post / Page Title Font Size.

Previous: Find the Way With Breadcrumbs

Next: Add Your Sidebars

Host Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the Key

Building a great-looking website is very important, but so is your websites』 performance. Astra Theme is well-known as the fast theme featuring a clean, performance-optimized code that results in fast website loading. Still, there are some additional third-party services you might use on your website (e.g., Google). All these services will have an impact on your performance.

Under the 「Performance」 option (Customizer > Performance), you will find all the options and settings available with the Astra Theme that can help your websites』 performance.

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global SettingsBuild Your Header Find the Way With Breadcrumbs Set Up Your BlogAdd Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the Key (currently reading)See Other Customizer OptionsHow To Build Quick Sites With Astra?Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Load Google Fonts Locally

When you use any Google font on your site, it requires a request to be sent to Google to fetch that font every time you load a page or post. This can harm your CLS points in the Core Web Vitals score. To help improve this, Astra Theme comes with a Self-Hosted Google Fonts feature built-in. This feature was added with Astra Theme 3.6.0 update. You can learn more about this feature in our Blog article.

This feature can be enabled by clicking on the 「Load Google Fonts Locally」 option.

Activating this feature will send only one Google Font API request, which will gather all of the font data & assets files from Google and store them locally on your server. Then, for any further requests, the Google fonts will be loaded using the locally stored files (until this option is enabled).

Preload Local Fonts

Once you have your local font files enabled, you can also preload these. By default, a browser will wait to load the font file until it starts 「painting」 visible content on the user』s screen (lazy loading). This may cause the situation where a browser is ready to load your websites』 text but needs to wait for the font file to be downloaded first, as it isn』t available yet. This situation slows down your page load and creates a bad user experience.

Preloading fonts will 「tell」 the browser to import the font early on, so the font is ready to be displayed as soon as the browser starts painting the text, which will result in a positive impact on your website performance.

To enable this option, just click on the 「Preload Local Fonts」 setting.

Flush Local Fonts Cache

As the fonts will be loaded and saved locally, any changes with Google Fonts will not be applied automatically. However, to keep your website fonts up to date, this feature will occasionally refresh the locally stored fonts. This will happen with the following actions:

Your website will update fonts automatically every month

Every time you save changes in the Customizer

If needed, you can update fonts manually any time you wish by clicking the 「Flush Local Font Files」 button.

Previous: Build Your Footer

Next: See Other Customizer Options

See Other Customizer Options

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global SettingsBuild Your Header Find the Way With Breadcrumbs Set Up Your BlogAdd Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the KeySee Other Customizer Options (currently reading)How To Build Quick Sites With Astra?Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Other Options: WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, LearnDash, WebStories, Hooks

The Astra theme is integrated with different plugins, thus when these plugins are activated, additional options may appear in the Customizer. Some of these plugins are:

WooCommerce – if you plan on building an eCommerce website, you can do this easily with WooCommerce. Astra will provide great options for styling your store and products just the way you like them. Find out more about the Customizer options in this article;Easy Digital Downloads – if you plan on selling digital products you might decide to use this plugin for your store. Astra provides styling options for Easy Digital Downloads too. Find out more about the Customizer options in this article;LearnDash – If you』re planning to build an online learning website, LearnDash is a great solution for this. Find out more about the Customizer options for LearnDash in this article;Web Stories – Web Stories are an engaging way to display your website content. You can design stories with a Web Stories editor and show them on your own websites, just as you do on your Social Media profiles. Check out how you can use this plugin in this article.Astra Hooks – this plugin will help you add code to different parts of your website – for example, Google Analytics to Google Tag code. Find out more about how to use this plugin with Astra in this article;

WordPress Default Options

You can find a few default WordPress dashboard options available in the Customizer. Of course, these seetings can be made through the Dashboard, but having these options in the Customizer allows you to manage settings without leaving it.

Menus – you can use this option to create new or edit your existing menus. You can also set which menu is being used for each website location (Menu Locations)Widgets – this option is used to manage your website widgets. Keep in mind that with Astra Customizer, you will not see the widget options here as they are located directly within the different options like Header and Footer Builder.Homepage Settings – here, you can set which pages you would like to use as your Homepage and Blog / Archive page.

Additional CSS

Though the Astra theme offers a lot of options out-of-the-box, sometimes you might need more. A lot of changes can be done by simply adding some custom CSS code to your website.

To do this, you can use the Additional CSS option in your customizer. Just click on this option and copy your custom CSS code in the space on the left side of the screen like shown in the example here:

The changes will be applied straight away on your Customizer preview on the right side so you can see the result prior to changing your changes.

To remove the effects of Custom CSS, just delete the code you added here.

Previous: Host Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the Key

Next: How To Build Quick Sites With Astra?

How to Remove Page Header Title?

You might ever have a requirement, where you needed to remove Page Header Title. And previously the only option was to hide the same using custom CSS.

We are providing two filters. One to remove the Page Header Title and another one to add the Page Title in the Content Area.

Let』s dive into both the cases and see the filter on how it will work –

Case 1:

How to remove Page Header Title which appears on top of the image. Here, you can remove the Page Header Title on all single pages, archive pages, and posts. Alternatively, you can remove Page Header Title only from single pages (the title will still be visible on archive pages and posts), from all pages (but not posts), or only from your Home page.

Solution 1: You will need to add the following filter, to remove the Page Header Title on all single pages, archive pages, and posts:

add_filter( 'astra_advanced_header_title', 'remove_page_header_title' );
function remove_page_header_title() {
  return;
}

Solution 2: You will need to add the following filter, to remove the Page Header Title only from single pages:

add_filter( 'astra_advanced_header_title', 'page_header_title_disable' );
function page_header_title_disable( $title ) {
if ( is_page() ) {
$title = false;
}
return $title;
};

Solution 3: You will need to add the following filter, to remove the Page Header Title from all pages but leave it on all posts:

add_filter( 'astra_advanced_header_title', 'page_header_title_disable' );
function page_header_title_disable( $title ) {
if ( is_singular( 'page' ) || is_archive() ) {
$title = false;
}
return $title;
}

Solution 4: You will need to add the following filter, to remove the Page Header Title only from the Home page:

add_filter( 'astra_advanced_header_title', 'page_header_title_disable' );

function page_header_title_disable( $title ) {
if ( is_front_page() || is_home() ) {
$title = false;
}
return $title;
};

Note

To use one of the above-mentioned codes, just copy, and paste it in the child theme』s functions.php file.

Case 2:

After removing the Page Header from the Top Banner, we will need to add the title in the below content area.

Solution: Let』s see the filter you will need to add the title to the content area –

add_filter( 'astra_the_title_enabled', 'display_page_title', 999 );
function display_page_title() {
  return true;
}

Note

Paste the above code in the child theme』s functions.php file.

This is how you can remove the Page Header Title and add the Title in the content section.

How To Build Quick Sites With Astra?

Astra Theme Walkthrough Docs:

Astra Theme WalkthroughThis Is Your CustomizerStyle Your Website With Global SettingsBuild Your Header Find the Way With Breadcrumbs Set Up Your BlogAdd Your SidebarsBuild Your FooterHost Google Fonts Locally – Performance Is the KeySee Other Customizer OptionsHow To Build Quick Sites With Astra? (currently reading)Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Hosting and Configurations for Better Performance

Having a fast-loading website is a must today. But once you start building your website for the first time you might notice that it』s not that simple to achieve.

To start with, the Astra theme is a fast, lightweight, and well-coded theme that works great on any hosting. But your theme is just one element of your website that affects your speed.

The choice of the Page Builder, adding various plugins for functionalities, quality of your website optimization, and other factors can significantly damage your loading time.

One of the most underrated factors is hosting. Sometimes, no matter how well-built your website is, having bad hosting will cripple your speed to mediocre results. Here, you』ll find some basic guidelines on how to find the best option for your websites.

Some of the hosting options you might encounter are:

Shared hosting – this is the cheapest and option as it means that your website is sharing server resources with many other websites. For small and simple websites this would be enough in most cases. It』s important to know that your website performance is affected by traffic surges and other resource-intensive processes on other websites on your server and that it will slow down your website too (when it happens). But if your website is growing and you need additional functionality, at some point you will probably need to migrate to some more stable option with more available resources.

VPS hosting – This is usually the next step. Here you are still sharing the server physically with other website owners, but each you have your Virtual Private Server (VPS). The biggest difference here is that your server has guaranteed allocated resources. This will be enough for most of the smaller and mid-sized websites including even e-commerce websites with moderate traffic. Also, this is the moderate option when it comes to the price;

Dedicated hosting – Dedicated hosting means that you are renting a whole physical server. This means that you have all server resources available, but at the same time be aware that you are responsible for everything and that you』ll need some server management skills here. This is a more expensive option too, but also the one that can take higher workload and high traffic;

Cloud hosting – is the service where several computers share and combine their resources. The result is reliable hosting with great performance, and also more resilient (reduced downtime in case of server malfunction). On the other side, often these are 『unmanaged』 hosting options which means that you are in charge of server management and any other needs you might have.  

Managed hosting – Usually combines the great hardware (e.g. cloud hosting) together with software setup, scalability, backups, WordPress server optimization, etc.

Please check some of our recommendations or if you would like to find out more about hosting, and compare different hosting options take a look at our article Top 9 Fastest Managed WordPress Hosting Companies.

Further, be sure to test your website with tools like PageSpeed Insights and GT Metrix. These tools will show you what things should be improved on your website, as well as your server performance.

Also, have in mind that every plugin you decide to add to your website has certain system requirements and configurations, so please check these out and adjust your settings accordingly.

You can check the minimum and recommended system requirements for the Astra theme and Starter Templates to be sure that everything works smoothly on your website.

Use Starter Templates

What are Starter Templates?

The biggest boost to building great websites quickly is our Starter Templates – a library of more than 100 ready-to-use templates available to all Astra theme users. Starter Templates is a free plugin that imports fully designed website templates made by our team.

Astra Theme works great with most major Page Builders but we have dedicated our attention especially to the following four: Gutenberg, Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Brizy… and our Starter Templates are available for each of these builders.

Why Use It?

Starting any project becomes much easier when you have a whole team to help you. Instead of starting from scratch, the Astra team designed a great-looking website for you to use.

You can import the whole website that comes with all needed plugins and dummy content. From there, just add your content instead of the dummy content, and you』re done.

Naturally, if you wish, you can use these designs as a starting point and modify them as you wish. Also, you can import only an individual page (or pages) from any template. This will drastically shorten the time you need to build your websites or develop design concepts. 

How To Start Building Your Website With Astra And Starter Templates?

Once you have the Astra theme installed and activated, navigate to your Plugins menu and click on 「Add New」 button. Search for 「Starter Templates」 there – install and activate the plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, you can find it at Dashboard > Appearance > Starter Templates. 

On the upper right corner of the Starter Templates window, you will see a Page Builder selector. Please choose your preferred Page Builder and the Templates library will be filtered accordingly.

At the top, you will see a search bar with additional filtering options. You can search this way or just scroll down and browse the templates library. Each template is represented by the home page cover picture. To see the template pages and details just click on any Template cover.

On a template page, you can select any available page within the template and scroll up and down, or click a 「Preview」 button to see the live demo site. 

Once you decide which template you would like to use, just click on the 「Import Complete Site」 button to import all template pages. Also, if you like just one or a few pages, you can import pages individually.

Our templates come with all plugins installed and settings already done. But naturally, once your template is imported, you are free to modify all settings and add, modify or remove any content you want.

In conclusion, to help you with building your websites, we created the Starter Templates Walkthrough docs. Here, you will find all the details you might need about importing templates and building websites with Starter Templated.

Previous: See Other Customizer Options

Next: Getting the Most Out of Astra Theme

Colors/Background and Typography options for Footer Bar (Old Astra Footer)

Footer Bar is an area where you can put copyright information. See all footer bar settings here. Colors/Background and Typography options for footer bar are listed below –

Note:

We have released the Header Footer builder in Astra version 3.0.0, due to which you will find some new changes. Please check the following article for to learn more about building your footer with Astra』s Footer Builder.

Colors & Background options for Footer Bar

You can set colors for Footer Bar under Appearance > Customize > Footer > Footer Bar.

With Colors & Background module available with Astra Pro, you get an option for Background Image for Footer Bar.Activate Colors & Background module from Astra Pro settings and you can find the option under Appearance > Customize > Footer > Footer Bar.

Note: Please adjust the opacity of background color, as it will appear on the background image. If you don』t want any overlay for background image kindly set background color opacity to zero

Typography for Footer Bar

Typography options set under Appearance > Customize > Typography > Base Typography will be applied to the footer bar by default.

Additional dedicated options for Footer will be available with Typography module available with Astra Pro.

Activate the Typography module from Astra Pro settings and you can find these options under Appearance > Customize > Footer > Footer Bar.

We provide more styling options in dedicated modules of the Astra Pro Addon plugin. Learn more about the Footer Widgets module of Astra Pro Addon.