Set up your site

Setup Wizard

A guided six-step run that checks your server, installs the plugins you want, and imports a complete demo site.

The Setup Wizard is the fastest way from a bare WordPress install to a finished-looking site. It walks through six steps and does the tedious parts for you. You can leave and come back — it remembers where you were.

Opening the wizard #

NovaSpark opens it for you the first time, right after you activate the theme and its plugins. If you skipped it or want to run it again, it is always available:

Open the NovaSpark menuIn your WordPress sidebar, click NovaSpark — it sits just below Dashboard.
Choose Setup WizardOr click the Setup Wizard button in the top right of the NovaSpark dashboard.

Step 1 — System #

Checks nine things about your server and reports each as a pass, a warning or a failure. Every check, what it means and how to fix it is covered in Requirements.

Step one of the Setup Wizard listing the nine system checks with pass and warning icons. — Step 1 checks your server before anything is written.

You can continue past a failure. The wizard reports problems rather than blocking you, so nothing stops you clicking Next with a red cross on screen. Read any failure before you do — the two that matter most are PHP below 8.1, which stops the theme entirely, and Atomic Widgets being off, which makes an imported demo render as blank pages.

Step 2 — Plugins #

Installs and activates the two plugins NovaSpark needs, straight from WordPress.org:

Plugin	Why
Elementor	The page builder every design is built with. Free version only.
Advanced Custom Fields	Stores Theme Options and per-page settings. Free version only.

Each row shows its current state, so plugins you already have are marked Active and left alone. Installing needs a working internet connection, since the files come from WordPress.org.

Step 3 — Demo #

Choose a starting design. Filter by category or search by name, then click a demo to select it. See Demo Import for what each one looks like.

Step three of the Setup Wizard showing demo cards with category filters above them. — Step 3 — choose a starting design.

This is the one step you cannot skip past — Next stays disabled until a demo is selected. If you would rather not import anything, leave the wizard here and build your pages yourself.

Step 4 — Options #

Decide how much of the demo to bring in. All five parts are on by default, which is what most people want.

Step four of the Setup Wizard showing the five import checkboxes with Elementor Designs nested under Core Content, and the Fresh Start toggle. — Step 4 — Elementor Designs is nested under Core Content and disabled when that is off.

Part	What it brings in
Core Content	Pages, posts, custom post types, terms and menus.
Elementor Designs	The finished page designs. Nested under Core Content, because it applies to those pages.
Media Attachments	Images and other files. The slowest part of any import.
Theme Settings	Colours, typography, layout, logo and sidebar definitions.
Widgets	The widget instances placed inside those sidebars.

Leave “Elementor Designs” ticked. Unticking it still imports every page and post — but strips what makes them Elementor documents. Pages then render as plain unstyled text and open in Elementor as an empty canvas. It reads like optional polish and is not.

Because Elementor Designs sits under Core Content, turning Core Content off disables it — with no pages coming in, there is nothing for the designs to attach to.

Fresh Start

Also on this step is Fresh Start, which clears out a previous demo import before running the new one. Use it when you are trying a second demo, or re-importing the same one — without it you get duplicates of everything.

It removes only content that a previous NovaSpark demo import created. Your own posts and pages, WooCommerce data and WordPress’ default content are never touched. What it deletes is deleted permanently, not sent to the trash.

Fresh Start cannot be undone. Cancelling an import afterwards does not bring the deleted content back. If a previous import contained anything you have since edited and want to keep, back up first.

Step 5 — Import #

The import runs in stages with a progress bar. How long it takes depends mostly on how many images the demo has and how fast your host is — a few minutes is normal.

Keep this tab open. Your browser is what drives the import: each stage is a request it makes. Closing or reloading the tab stops it — there is no background process to carry it on. WordPress will warn you if you try to leave.

If you do reload, nothing is lost. Every stage is checkpointed, so re-opening the wizard picks the import back up where it stopped rather than starting over.

If a stage fails, a Retry button appears. Retrying is safe: the importer keeps track of what it has already brought in, so nothing is duplicated.

Step 6 — Done #

You will see one of two messages:

You’re All Set!	Everything imported cleanly.
Your site is READY — With Notes	The import finished, but some items were skipped. Usually a few images that could not be downloaded.

If you get notes, expand them. They are grouped by cause rather than listed one per item, so a hundred failed images read as one line, not a hundred. There is also a copy-and-paste summary to send to support. See Demo Import.

After the wizard #

Set your homepageGo to Settings → Reading and confirm the right page is set as your homepage. Most demos set this for you.
Swap the logoNovaSpark → Theme Options → General → Site Identity.
Adjust colours and fontsTheme Options → Design and Typography. Changing the palette here updates the whole site at once.
Replace the demo contentEdit the imported pages with Elementor and put your own words and images in.