Release
Notes

We're incredibly excited to finally announce the release of v4.1.0 of X featuring Expanded Demos! I know that a great deal of our members have been looking forward to this for quite some time, so how about we jump right in and show everybody what we have in store.

One important thing to note is that all Standard Demo content is still available in the theme and both sets of data are managed from the familiar location of the Demo Content page under Addons in the WordPress admin.

Please note, while the importer will not overwrite or alter any of your posts, pages, or portfolio items, your Customizer settings will be altered upon setting up a demo (this is necessary so that we can setup your installation similar to the demo). If you already have your website setup but are still curious to try out this feature, please make sure that you first backup your Customizer settings by going to the Customizer Manager page under Addons.

Upon accessing the Demo Content page you will see the following interface:

The interface is broken down into two sections, Standard and Expanded. These demo content import processes work differently from one another, so we’ll take a moment to outline their functions here to get a better understanding of what to expect with each one.

Standard

This importer is based off of our original demos, and allows users to setup their site similar to the specified source:

This importer will setup the structural layout from the homepage of the demo selected with placeholder content, and will also update your Customizer settings as mentioned above.

Additionally, you can choose to import example posts or portfolio items to see how various features can be utilized. If you select to import posts, a blog will be setup for you, and importing portfolio items will similarly setup a portfolio page for you. The importer also intelligently discerns which items you do and do not have present, so nothing will be mindlessly duplicated or repeated if you go through many demos, keeping your content as clean as possible.

An example menu will also be setup for you depending on the options you have selected, making things easy to get to and check out. The importer is not destructive, meaning it will never touch any existing content you may have in your installation.

Expanded

This importer takes things quite a bit further, and is intended to provide you with a fully functioning, designed site with the click of a mouse! This is how the interface will look:

Importing an Expanded demo will not only setup your homepage and Customizer settings for you, but it will also import all images used in the demo itself, all pages, posts, widget areas, menus, et cetera. Essentially, you will receive a completely finished site design, creatives and all with the click of a mouse! All this content is licensed to be freely distributed and can be used in your final designs, or you can choose to swap out content as you see fit. The setup for our Expanded demos is something that has never been done before in the industry, as it will literally copy every aspect of a completely realized design into your installation for use as you see fit!

Messaging

Once you have selected either the Standard or Expanded demo that you want to use, click the blue button at the bottom of the form on the page. Clicking this button will reveal an overlay with some messaging to give you a sense of the progress in your installation.

Once everything is complete, you will see a confirmation message in the overlay before it disappears.

The messaging between these two installers will differ slightly since the demo content they’re setting up differs from one another. If your server happens to timeout while one of these actions is taking place, the installers will attempt to keep pinging your server a few more times to get everything to work. If you do end up with an error, it could be due to a server configuration setting with your hosting provider, and you can speak with them to see if they can assist you in what the problem in your environment might be.

Comparison

The image below provides a basic idea of the differences between a homepage setup with a Standard Demo (left) and an Expanded Demo (right). We'll talk a little more about this below:

It is important to keep in mind that just the way the homepages look is not all that is different between these two demo setups. While Standard demo content simply provides you with a homepage setup with placeholder content and images, Expanded demos will provide you with the exact images utilized in the demo as well as all of the additional content (blog posts and portfolio items with images if available, additional pages, any Revolution Sliders that may be present, et cetera). Expanded demos literally give you an entire site setup with the click of a mouse with all images and content in tact. Nothing quite like this has ever been done in the WordPress space!

Remember that the demo content is a great way for you to learn more about the theme and the various features it offers, but it is by no means the extent of what is possible with X. Take some time to play around with various features and learn all that you can accomplish with the theme as that is an important part of the process!

Troubleshooting

One potential issue you may run into when using the importer is a message reading “We're sorry, the demo failed to finish importing.” There are a few possibilities for this error, but the most common one is that the AJAX requests used to run the importer are reaching the WordPress memory limit. It is possible this might come up for certain hosting environments, or if you're running WordPress v4.3 as there is a memory leak in the admin that will not be patched until v4.3.1. If this is the case, you can try increasing your memory limit by following the instructions in the WordPress Codex.

If you feel you have run into a different problem with the demo content import process (either Standard or Expanded), please open a new thread in the community forum providing detailed information on the nature of the issue you're experiencing and one of our staff will be more than happy to help look into anything for you. Most of the time, issues are caused by simple connectivity issues or restrictive settings in a hosting environment.

Extras

On top of everything mentioned above, this release of X also includes some minor bugfixes and maintenance items based on some changes that happened with the v4.3 WordPress release and how the Customizer functions. Additionally, support for v4.7 of Visual Composer has been included, as well as v5.0.6 of Revolution Slider. Finally, when fixing a minor bug for BuddyPress, we also made sure that it was compatible with v2.3.3 as well.

If you'd like to read more about about the demo content process within our Knowledge Base, you can do so here.