Your First Site In Fifteen Minutes

This page walks the whole first hour of Canvas in one sitting: install the theme, activate your license, let Canvas install its plugin, run the Setup Wizard, import a demo and edit your first page. Each step names the screen you are on, so you can put this page beside your site and follow along. If any step needs more depth, it links to the full article.

Before you start, have two things ready: the Canvas theme ZIP from the Downloads area of your account at dashboard.canvaswp.com, and your license key from the same account.

Install And Activate The Theme

Starting screenyour WordPress admin, AppearanceThemes.

Select Add New Theme, then Upload Theme, choose the Canvas ZIP and install it, then select Activate. WordPress swaps your site over to Canvas immediately, which is safe on a fresh install; on a site with existing content, read How To Install The Theme first.

After activation a Canvas entry appears in the admin menu. At this point it holds a single screen, License, because everything else arrives with the Canvas Core plugin in the next two steps.

Activate Your License

Starting screenCanvasLicense.

Paste your key into the License key field and select Activate License. The screen confirms with an Active badge, your plan name and the license details. The license is what entitles this site to the plugin, the demo library and updates, so it comes before everything else. The full tour of this screen is in How To Activate Your License.

Install Canvas Core

Stay in the WordPress admin. With the license active, a notice appears: "Install Canvas Core plugin for Premium Features and importing Demo Sites." Select Install Canvas Core and wait for the page to reload. Canvas fetches the plugin over your license and activates it in one step, which is why there was never a plugin ZIP in your downloads.

When the page returns, the Canvas menu is complete: Dashboard, Theme Options, the builders, Performance, SEO, Typography, Setup Wizard, Health Check, Demo Import and License.

Run The Setup Wizard

Starting screenCanvasSetup Wizard.

The wizard is eight short steps, shown in a progress bar across the top: Welcome, License, Demo, Plugins, Recommended, Import, SEO and Done. Select Get Started and move through them: activate your license key (or confirm the one already active), pick a demo (a demo imports as a complete website, and editing something real is faster than assembling from nothing), accept or trim the plugin suggestions Canvas draws from that demo, watch the import run, confirm your site title and description, and finish on Visit Your Site, which is worth a moment because what loads is a finished, working website. Every screen, what it saves and what skipping does is walked in The Setup Wizard.

Edit A Page And Publish

Starting screenPages in the WordPress admin.

Open your homepage in the editor. Click any heading or paragraph and type; select any Canvas block and its options appear in the sidebar on the right, grouped into panels. Change a headline, swap an image, then select Update. Reload your site and the change is live. That loop, select a block, adjust its settings, update, is the whole editing model, and every Canvas block follows it.

Pitfalls

The Demo step is empty. The library needs an active license on this site and a connection to the Canvas service; the Pitfalls in The Setup Wizard cover it, and nothing is lost either way.

The import stalls or fails partway. Demo import runs as a sequence of steps and brings media in small batches, so a failure marks the step it happened on and the rest of the run is not lost. Low server limits are the usual cause: open Canvas > Health Check and clear anything it flags, then resume from Canvas > Demo Import rather than starting over. Requirements For Canvas lists the values to ask your host for.