How are authors going 1-click demo install?

Mod: please change this title to “How are authors doing 1-click demo install?”

I’m wondering about this cool “1-click demo install” I keep seeing on the newer themes. I provide a .xml and .sql file for each of my themes, but it would be even better if I could provide a very simple one-click install of the demo content that imports not only the content from the demo but all of the settings, menus, and other peripheral data that wordpress cannot export in a .xml file.

Just curious if you’re one of the authors offering this how you generally go about doing this? Did you build a custom script that handles this, are you using a plugin, or is it just the .xml demo content (or a mix all all three)?

Thanks! Brian

I know the thread is quite old but I’m just wondering the same thing. Do you guys have any advice on how to implement “1-click installation”?

Thanks!

+1

I use custom install.php script you simply just install it like regular WordPress and you get demo content, all settings and all menus basically the whole demo.

Can you share your technique with us, other authors @webthemer ???

Thank you!

The script was developed by YOOTheme i use there Warp Framework for developing Joomla and WordPress Themes.

Simply download the WordPress Master Theme Demo

Unzip it and in wp-content there is a install.php this is basically MYSQL database installer.

When you open it you will need to add your SQL here from your demo see what tables are in there i believe that user table is missing this you don’t need to add because the installer will add user automatically on install.

Now replace table prefixes with @TABLE_PREFIX@ and your site url with @SITE_URL@ and you demo is done put the script in the wp-content folder and erase the wp-config and you have wordpress installer with everything.

I would recommend that URL for images in Text Widgets starts with wp-content/... and not with http://sitename... because of the database serialization it will break the widgets.

Hope this helps

The way I did it was (very roughly):

1)Use the WordPress importer plugin, this is the easy bit. Download the plugin, rename the classes / functions etc so you don’t get clashes.. add to your theme code in the usual way. Then place an xml export in a folder and slightly modify the installer code to use this rather than a user uploaded version.

2)Where it gets a bit fiddly.. you need to manually place certain things in the database that the installer doesn’t. I am not sure off the top of my head what is missing, but (pre 3.5 at least) any widgets will need placing in manually, perhaps menus.

You could skip 2) and just have a rudimentary installer, though its nice to replicate your demo site almost exactly.

I can say tho, its worth spending a day getting it done just because it cuts down on a lot of support issues and makes the buyer’s life much easier – Whether it increases sales or not, the installer pays for itself just from cutting support requests .

Thank you for your advices @Webthemer and @ThemeShaper!

Perhaps I will start off by trying to integrate WordPress Importer plugin into the theme. Sounds fun!

write php code , anything else?