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Learn how to install and activate a WordPress theme and essential plugins. You’ll set up Elementor and prepare your website for visual design and page building.
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Now that our WordPress site is cleaned up
0:00
and properly configured, it's time
to start shaping how our website looks.
0:03
In this video, we're going to install
a theme and the Elementor page builder.
0:07
These two tools work together to control
the design and layout of our website.
0:11
Before we install anything,
I want to quickly explain
0:16
the difference between a theme
and a page builder, because this is
0:19
something that can confuse
a lot of people at first.
0:22
A theme controls the overall structure
and visual foundation of your website.
0:25
It handles things like layout styles,
typography, and global design settings.
0:30
A page builder, like Elementor, allows you
to visually design individual pages
0:35
by dragging and dropping content elements
exactly where you want them.
0:40
Let's start by installing our theme.
0:44
In the
0:48
WordPress sidebar, click Appearance,
then click Themes.
0:48
This page shows
all the currently installed themes.
0:52
WordPress usually installs
a few default themes automatically.
0:55
To install a new theme click the Add
New button at the top or this one here
0:58
There are tons of themes available
for WordPress
1:03
Most are great
starting points for polished looking sites
1:06
I want us all to be on the same page
while we learn to add, remove,
1:09
move and edit elements though, so please
feel free to search through and play
1:12
with different themes a bit later.
1:16
For this course,
we'll be using the Hello Elementor theme.
1:18
This theme is lightweight, flexible,
1:22
and designed to specifically work
well with Elementor.
1:24
If you don't see it right away,
you can search for it up here.
1:27
Once you see the Hello Elementor
theme, click Install.
1:31
When the installation
1:38
finishes, click Activate.
1:39
Our theme is now active and ready to use.
1:42
Now let's install Elementor, which we'll
use to build our pages visually.
1:45
Typically you'll get this pop-up
at the top here, but just to show
1:50
the standard approach,
in the sidebar, click Plugins, then click
1:53
Add Plugin.
1:56
In the search bar, type Elementor.
2:01
You should see
2:07
Elementor Website
Builder appear in the results.
2:08
Click Install Now.
2:11
Once installation
2:17
finishes, again, click Activate.
2:18
After activating Elementor, you may see
a Setup Wizard or a Welcome Screen.
2:21
You can safely skip or close this for now.
2:26
We'll configure Elementor settings
later in the course.
2:28
This will now open Elementor for us.
2:35
It's its own editing suite as we see here.
2:37
We can close this for now
and get back to our WordPress dashboard
2:40
by clicking the Elementor menu logo up
top here and selecting Exit to WordPress.
2:43
This actually takes us back
into WordPress's default page builder.
2:49
To get back to the dashboard,
again, click the logo up top here.
2:53
there we go.
2:58
If we go to the Pages tab again,
you'll see that what we just did
3:00
actually created a draft page.
3:03
Let's just trash this real quick
so we're back to a clean slate.
3:05
You might have noticed a new option
in our sidebar titled Hello.
3:10
This is for our Hello Elementor theme
we installed and provides some theme
3:13
settings and customizations.
We'll touch on this later.
3:17
Before we finish up, I provided some files
you can download and use in your project
3:21
to follow
3:25
along with me. Again, if you're going to
build this for yourself, then no worries.
3:25
But you can click the Downloads tab
beneath the video and grab the WordPress
3:30
project files
now if you'd like to use them.
3:33
Once you have the folder downloaded
and extracted,
3:36
you'll see there's some images
and a text file.
3:39
The text file is there for you
so you can copy and paste text content
3:42
I'll be putting into the site so you don't
have to manually type it all out.
3:45
Let's go to the Media tab in the sidebar
and select Add Media File.
3:49
From here, you can either
click and drag your images straight in or
3:53
click Select Files and find them manually.
3:57
I'm going to add all the images.
4:00
We have a headshot, a logo, a laptop,
and some mock project screenshots.
4:02
At this point, we
4:08
have everything installed
that we need to begin building our site.
4:09
We have a theme controlling our site
4:12
structure and Elementor
giving us visual page building tools.
4:14
Coming up next, we're going to create
the core pages for our portfolio website.
4:18
Once those are created, we'll begin
designing them using Elementor.
4:22
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