How to setup theme after activation to look like its demo?

Most of the ‘demo’ is to show off the possibilities and capabilities of a theme.

Any text and images provided are just placeholders to be replaced by your own images and text.

A lot of times you can flesh out a theme with your content and count on much of that content to be visibly present if you later decide to change themes again.

Then there is the customizer in Dashboard –> Appearance –> Themes to enhance the current theme and the block editor to further enhance the look and feel of the content as you add it.

@jnashhawkins I have NO content when I begin. The idea of choosing a theme is based on the layout close to my possible content. Then activating to see how it works with demo content. If satisfied then to customize as per my requirements and content.

Without even the blank placeholder layout, I can take any theme and customize the layout as I want. Infact, then there would be no need for so many themes as well.

I usually start with something like Twenty Seventeen or my old standby Twenty Fourteen and add my logo and/or some text. There are several Child Themes for Twenty Fourteen and I’ll often use one of those.

I’ll then add posts and the standard pages like Contact, privacy and such. Widgets and Menus come next.

If I like the results I’ll stay but I usually go looking for a theme that fits my concept better. When I go looking for themes I usually have content already there.

Some of my other favorite themes are Frontier, Grow, and Tortuga.

I stink at design and art so I go for utility and let the theme flow the ‘toys’ together. Some of the toys I like are sliders, marques, related links panels, social media links with buttons, the widgets and menus with drop downs on top with a text menu at the footer.

I don’t get real excited about themes. The theme just helps me express what I’m thinking in an attractive way.

No, I don’t need demo content. Images? Nah? I have a camera. Artwork? I hire someone if needed. But I want to stuff my own things in there. I got lots to share!

I build content aggregators, blogs, forums, business sites, stores, affiliate and ebay item sales channels, humor, spoof, and classified sites.

One of my sites has a large number of words, slogans, catchphrases and tidbits. There’s a plugin that takes the oldest ‘post’ and recycles it to the top once a day. That site runs the Premium Style theme. Super simple but right slick in my opinion.

Just using the theme to take my story and tell it!

@jnashhawkins I am aware all that and much more can be done by customization. I am talking about initial setup i.e before customization. Hence these points are irrelavant.

But appreciate the suggestions wrt to customization.

I was trying to explain what I believe is the philosophy behind the demos, lack of content at install and what I do in this case.

While thinking of your concerns, frustrations and my own frustration on a different subject with some commonality there I wound up with two more ideas for my ‘book of ideas’ that seemed promising but need to be ‘back burnered’ until time becomes available to pursue them.

I was with the same doubt thank you very much for clarifying!

@ananddevops some themes come with demo data, instead of installing the theme, visit the theme page (usually hosted by the developer) and see if they have a demo content associated with the theme.

@luckychingi Yes I am aware and have tried a few too. But most have no demo content and its very difficult to choose without testing the layout.

Without knowing how to convert my site as the demo preview of the theme, its pretty pointless.

I was with the same doubt thank you very much for clarifying!