Important!

Before installing and activating a Thrive Theme Builder theme on an existing website, we recommend setting up a staging website, to avoid making any big changes (such as a theme switch) directly on your site.

When you install a Thrive Theme Builder theme, Thrive Theme Builder will be automatically installed along with it. This is the tool that allows you to fully customize the theme and its templates.

You can start using the Thrive Theme Builder right away, by clicking on the “Go to the Theme Builder Dashboard” button, which appears after the installation process is finished:

The other way to access the Thrive Theme Builder is the following:

Hover over the “Thrive Dashboard” item, from the left side menu of your WordPress admin dashboard, and click on “Thrive Theme Builder”, from the sub-menu that opened:

Once you do that, the Thrive Theme Builder dashboard will open. There are four main steps you should consider taking when you first start to use the Thrive Theme Builder.

The Site Wizard helps you set up the basic and essential aspects of your theme, such as the logo, the header & footer, the menu, etc., that should be used, when this theme will be applied to your website.

You can access the Site wizard from the Thrive Theme Builder dashboard:

Make sure to complete every step of the wizard, in order to set up the site structure you want the Thrive Theme Builder Theme to use. Start with the “Get Started!” button that appears on the page:

This will take you to the first step from the wizard, where you can upload a logo that the theme will use for your website. After you have done that, you can go on to the next step and continue until you have completed each step from the wizard.

If you want detailed information on how to do that, check out this article which describes completing every step of the Site Wizard.

Using the wizard will be quick and simple. All it will take is a little time and many aspects of the site for the theme will be set up easily.

After you have completed the steps of the Site Wizard, you can go to the “Branding” section of your Thrive Theme Builder dashboard. To do that, click on the “Branding” section from the left side of the dashboard:

When the section opens, you will see three different aspects you can customize here: the “Theme Colors”, the “Logo” and the “Favicon”:

These are the ones that are specific to the theme, so they will be used by the theme for each template. If you click on them, a drop-down will open with options to customize them. You should customize all three of them, to make sure they match your brand.

For detailed information on how to customize these aspects, check out the corresponding articles below:

After you have used the "Branding" section, you should go to the “Typography” section, by clicking on it from the left side of the dashboard:

Here you can set up the general Typography for your current theme. In order to do that click on the “Edit” option (pencil icon) from the Default Typography Set:

Then, a separate page will open where you can define various aspects (Font Type, Color, Alignment, Font Size, etc.) for each type of text (headings, paragraphs, list items, hyperlinks, quotes, etc.) that will be used by your theme.

Take the time to define these, because this way you will have a consistent Typography throughout every template that your theme will use. For further details on how to set this up, take a look at the article here.

Last, but not least, after you have set up the “Typography” for your theme, go back to the tab with your Thrive Theme Builder dashboard and click on the “Templates” section from its left side:

The “Templates” section is where you will probably spend the most time because here you can create and customize as many templates as you like. These templates will make up the design of your theme:

You can use any of the default templates, make them uniquely customized for your business, and you can create new ones as well, according to what type of templates you need.

If you need extensive information on how to add, edit or manage the templates, from the “Templates” section, please consult the following articles:

After all your templates are ready, you can apply them to the pages/posts of your website. These are the four basic steps you can start with to use the Thrive Theme Builder. This way you will have a fully customized theme, representing the new look of your website.

​For optimizing your site's speed and performance, you can use the settings ​available in this section of the Wizard:

There are three different ways ​through which you can achieve that:

You can read more about how to set up each of the above-mentioned plugins/solutions in this article, where we have also ​explained in depth what each of them does.

If you want to find out more about various options, features, or elements of Thrive Theme Builder, don’t forget to check out our knowledge base section here.

Hopefully, this article was useful for you. If so, please give it a smile below :)