Creating a beautiful site on WordPress is relatively easy these days with all of the amazing theme templates and page builders. With so many options to choose from, it’s hard to find a solid ground to start on. As you start to use more and more themes, you start to see how roughly some of them are constructed, and you quickly start running into issues with your custom themes. That often results in a silly hole that was overlooked in the code that needs updated.
To avoid such pitfalls, people have been leaning to a few major theme and page builder combinations to keep site speed up and uselessjunk to a minimum. The combo that has seen some major success for its ease of use is the GeneratePress theme with Elementor Pro as the page builder since GP Premium has Elementor Pro import templates to kickstart your project.
It’s easy to use, but getting it going might have you running in circles. So to help you get your theme and page builder up and running the right way, we put together a 5 step guide that takes you through activating and installing Elementor Pro and GeneratePress on a fresh install of WordPress.
1 – Add GeneratePress
Let’s start by adding the GeneratePress theme to the fresh install of WordPress. The reason being, GP Premium uses the free version of GeneratePress to unlock your GP Premium, so we need to start there.
Navigate to Appearance > Themes
Onces you are there, click on the “AddNew” button in the top part of the page next to the “Themes” page title.
Type “GeneratePress” in the search bar and hit enter. It should be the very first result.
Click the “Install” button, and when prompted, activate the theme.
2 – Install GP Premium Plugin
If you haven’t already, make your way over to GeneratePress and pick up a premium membership. It gets you tons of crazy stuff and endless uses for under $40, so that’s awesome for developers.
Once you complete the purchase, you should automatically navigate to your account where you can view the details. Download the GP Premium plugin and copy the key.
Now that we have the GP Premium plugin and key, we are going to go back to the wp-admin dashboard and navigate to Plugins > Add New and click the “Upload Plugin” button at the top.
Now that you have access to the “Choose File” button, you can click the box and add the file to the upload, or just drag the .zip file to the “Choose File” button. Click the “install now” button, and activate the plugin.
**If you try to upload this plugin on the theme upload menu, you will get a failure due to missing style.css message because it’s an premium activation plugin for the free theme**
3 – Activating GeneratePress
Once you have the plugin activated, it’s time to use that key you copied.
Navigate back to the plugin menu, and look for the “GP Premium” plugin.
Once you find it, click on the highlighted “configure” button, and it will take you to a screen that has the activation box. Simply paste your code in that box and hit the “activate” button.
Boom! You’re halfway there.
4 – Installing Elementor Pro
Now that we have that theme all set up and ready to rock, let’s set up our page builder. Find the best website page builders for WordPress really comes down to personal preference, but lately there has been a big shift toward Elementor. The price is so right for unlimited developers and single sites, and at $200 and $50 respectively, it’s a steal
So if you haven’t already, head on over to Elementor and set up an account. Once you have your account, you need to download the latest .zip they provide you, and while you are there make sure to copy the key.
Now let’s head back to the wp-admin and navigate to Plugins > Add New again. Click the “Upload Plugin” button at the top, and drag the Elementor .zip to your “Choose File” button. Then click the “Install Now” button. When prompted, activate the plugin.
5 – Activating Elementor Pro
You’re almost there now that you have clicked activate. When you return to the wp-admin dashboard, you will see a warning about elementor pro not being fully activated and it needing to install another plugin. Click the button and let it go threw the install. Activate the plugin when you are prompted to.
Now that you have both parts of elementor activated, you will see an Elementor icon on your wp-admin dashboard under the settings icon. Navigate to Elementor > License and paste the key into the activation box then click “activate.”
Conclusion
That’s all it takes to get your WordPress up and running with GeneratePress and Elementor Pro on a fresh install. This works every instance on WordPress, but if you have content already on the site, it might change or remove it. If you are revamping a site with this setup, make sure you have a backup ready incase it breaks more than you expect and you need to go back.
What do you think of the GeneratePress and Elementor Pro combo? Do you like another page builder and theme combo better? Let us know in the comments below.
