How To Install The Theme

This page covers getting the Canvas theme from your account onto a WordPress site: the download, the upload, activation, and what to expect immediately after. It assumes your server already meets Requirements For Canvas.

Where The ZIP Comes From

Sign in to your account at dashboard.canvaswp.com and open Downloads. The theme is canvas-theme.zip, and a child theme ZIP is available beside it. Download the theme ZIP as it is, without unzipping, because WordPress expects the packaged file.

You will not find a Canvas Core plugin ZIP there, and that is by design: the plugin installs from inside WordPress after your license is active, so it is never downloaded by hand. How To Install Canvas Core covers it.

How To Install Through The WordPress Admin

Starting screenyour WordPress admin, AppearanceThemes.

Select Add New Theme, then Upload Theme. Choose the Canvas ZIP, select Install Now, and when the install finishes select Activate. Activation switches the site's front end over to Canvas at once, so on a site with an existing theme do this at a quiet moment and look at the front end straight after; on a fresh install there is nothing to disturb.

After activation a Canvas entry appears in the admin menu. On a first install it holds one screen, License, because the rest of the Canvas admin (Theme Options, the builders, the Setup Wizard) appears once the Canvas Core plugin you install next is active.

How To Install By FTP

If your server's upload limit blocks the ZIP, or you prefer working on the filesystem, unzip the package locally and upload the canvas folder it contains to wp-content/themes/, so the theme sits at wp-content/themes/canvas. Then activate it from Appearance > Themes as usual. The ZIP contains exactly one top level canvas directory, so what you upload is what WordPress expects to find.

Should You Install The Child Theme

Install the child theme only if you plan to edit Canvas template files directly, because a child theme is what keeps such edits safe from theme updates. Most sites never need it: settings live in Theme Options and page composition lives in the editor, and neither is touched by an update. The Canvas > Health Check screen states this trade off beside its child theme check, and the child theme ZIP in your Downloads installs the same way as the parent, activated in its place after the parent is installed.

Pitfalls

The upload fails before it starts. WordPress refuses uploads larger than the server's limit, and the message comes from the server rather than from Canvas. Raise upload_max_filesize and post_max_size to 64M, or use the FTP route above.

The Canvas menu shows only License. That is the expected state of a theme only install, not a broken one. Activate your license and install Canvas Core, and the full menu appears.

The child theme was activated without the parent. A child theme is an add on to the parent and cannot run alone. Install and keep the parent Canvas theme installed, then activate the child.