How to Switch to Astra from Another Theme?

Have you already created any layouts built with Page Builders? Have you completed part of your website? And now want to switch to Astra to make your site super fast!

You might be wondering what will happen if you deactivate your current theme and activate Astra. What will happen to the layout of the site?  This document will help to set your site after switching your current theme with Astra.

Step 1: Take a backup of current site

Before you switch themes, we recommend you to take a full backup of your current site. While it’s unlikely that anything will go wrong, it’s always good to have a full backup of your site before making any big changes.

Step 2: Change Your Theme

Follow the below enlisted steps to change your current theme to Astra theme.

1. In the WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance → Themes → Add New.
2. There, search for ‘Astra‘.
3. Then, click Install and then Activate.

Step 3: Redo Customizer Settings

Once you activated the Astra theme, your first stop should be the WordPress Customizer, where you can have the configuration options. Since, you are switching to Astra, you have the option to import just the Customizer settings from all of the Astra starter sites, which is a great way to quickly get the design that you want without overwriting your existing content.

Step 4: Reassign Menus (Headers and Footers)

Next, you’ll want to double-check your menus and reassign them if needed. You might not need to do this because WordPress will try to automatically assign them for you, but WordPress doesn’t always get it right.

To manage your menus, go to Appearance → Menus. Select a menu using the drop-down (if you have multiple menus) and then use the Display location settings to assign the menu to the proper spot:

Step 5: Redo Widget Locations

Next, you’ll want to do the same thing for widgets that you did for your menus. Again, WordPress will try to seamlessly assign your existing widgets to the proper areas, but it doesn’t always work.

To verify this and fix things if needed, go to Appearance → Widgets and make sure all of your widgets are assigned to the proper areas:

Step 6: Tweak Your Content (Especially Page-Level Settings)

If you created your content with the native WordPress editor or a page builder plugin, all of your content should look roughly the same after changing themes. However, you still might need to tweak some/all of your content to make it look right.

For example, maybe your previous theme came with page-level controls to change the layout of individual pages between full-width or contained. If you switch to a new theme, you would need to re-do those page-level settings. Here’s an example of what we’re talking about:

Since you have switched to Astra theme, we have Astra Bulk Edit that can help you do this more efficiently.

Steps to Bulk Edit Astra Meta Settings –

1. Install and Activate the Astra Bulk Editor plugin from WordPress Repository
2. Select the pages or posts that you need to edit
3. Click on Bulk Action -> Edit
4. You will find Astra Meta settings. Astra Bulk Editor plugin added those extra settings.
5. Once done, you can remove this plugin as it has completed after it’s job.

Please keep in mind that, take a backup before using any plugins like Astra Bulk Editor which does large changes on the website to remain safe!

Step 7: Add Code Snippets and Custom CSS (If Required)

If you were using any custom code snippets or CSS that you want to keep in your new theme, now’s the time to move those snippets over.

For code snippets that are unrelated to your theme, you might want to consider adding them to the free Code Snippets plugin instead of your theme’s functions.php file. That way, you’ll never need to worry about migrating them in the future since they’re stored by a plugin and not your theme.

If you do want to add them directly to your theme, make sure to use a child theme so they don’t get overwritten when you update your theme. For Astra, you use our child theme generator to create your child theme.

To add simple CSS tweaks, you can add them to the Additional CSS area in the WordPress Customizer. Or, you can use a plugin like Simple Custom CSS.

Step 8: Test and Make Your Changes Live

At this point, you should be finished. But to make sure that everything is working, we recommend giving your site one more thorough test, paying special attention to:

• Menus
• Widget areas
• Key pages (Homepage, Contact, etc.)
• Blog posts
• Any features/content related to custom code or custom CSS (if applicable)

Related resources:

• How to change theme in WordPress