The Tools page in the theme dashboard holds the operations that act on the whole configuration rather than on one setting. Exporting and importing settings, on its Import / Export tab, is the one people come for.
#What an export contains
Your theme configuration, split into sections you tick before downloading: Theme Options, Customizer, Preferences, Integrations and Fonts Library. Which of them appear depends on what the site runs. Theme Options needs the Pro plugin, and Preferences, Integrations and Fonts Library need an active license.
It does not contain your content. Posts, pages, media and menus are not in it and are not affected by importing one.
Export and import through the toolkit only.
The file is written by the toolkit and is meant to be read back by the toolkit, on the Tools page of a site running the same theme. A general-purpose WordPress importer, a migration plugin's settings feature or a handwritten JSON upload will either refuse it or write values nothing reads. If the file did not come from an export on the Tools page, it is not a settings file.
#Moving a configuration between sites
Export from the configured site
Open the Tools page, tick the sections you want under Export Data, and click Download Data. You get a .json file.
Check the target site is ready
The same theme, installed and active. If the configuration uses Pro options, the target needs the Pro plugin installed and its license active for this domain, otherwise those values import and do nothing.
Back up the site you are importing into
An import replaces the settings that are there. That cannot be undone from the panel, so the backup is what makes it reversible.
Import on the target site
Drop the file onto Import Data on that site's Tools page. A review screen lists the sections in the file; select the ones to apply and click Apply Data.
Rebuild, then check the result
Go to Preferences and click Rebuild now beside Rebuild styles, which builds the site styles again from the options, colors, fonts and style kit that just arrived. If demos, news or product information look wrong too, run Refresh downloaded data on the same screen. Then clear any page cache or CDN cache and load the front page.
An import replaces the target site's settings in each section you apply.
Anything tuned there and not present in the file is lost, which is why the backup step comes before the import. The one exception is the Fonts Library: imported fonts are added to the library, and fonts already there stay.
#Why the rebuild step matters
The theme does not compute your styles on every page load. It writes them once from your options and serves the result, which keeps the front end fast.
So an import changes the options while the old generated styles are still the ones being served. Saving a settings page rewrites them, and the rebuild action does the same for the whole configuration at once. A site that still looks like its old self after a successful import has almost always skipped this.
#When this is worth doing
Building several sites on the same theme, where one configured site becomes the starting point for the rest. Moving a site from staging to production without redoing the setup by hand. Or keeping a copy of a configuration you spent hours on before experimenting with it.
#The other tabs on the Tools page
- Diagnostics
Runs the environment and connectivity checks and produces the report support asks for. Without the Pro plugin or an active license the tab is visible but locked.
- White-Label
Holds the child theme generator, which builds a child theme so your code edits survive updates, and the white label settings. Locked on the same terms as Diagnostics.
One thing is deliberately not here: Reset Data lives under Preferences, not Tools. It erases settings immediately and irreversibly, so it is kept away from the everyday operations.
#Common questions
Can I import settings from a different theme?
No. The file describes the settings of one theme, and another theme has different ones, so most of the values have nothing to land on.
Does the target site need an active license?
For Theme Options and Customizer values, no. Preferences, Integrations and Fonts Library are licensed sections, and any option that belongs to the Pro plugin only does something on a site where the Pro plugin is installed and the license is active for that domain.
Does the export include my fonts?
Fonts added through the theme's font library travel as a list, with their selected weights and subsets, and the target site loads them again from their source. Fonts you uploaded yourself are not included, because the file carries no font files; upload those again on the target.
Fonts in the WordPress font library belong to WordPress and stay with that site.
Will importing settings change my homepage?
No. The front page assignment is a WordPress setting in SettingsReading, not a theme setting, so check it separately after a move.
Can I edit the export file by hand?
You can open it, but editing it is a reliable way to produce a file that will not import. Change the settings in the panel and export again instead.
The site looks the same as before the import
Run Rebuild styles in Preferences, then clear the page cache and the CDN. The options were replaced and the generated styles were not, which is exactly what this looks like.
An import fails partway
An upload rejected as too large points at upload_max_filesize. An import that starts and then stops is usually max_execution_time.
Both appear on the diagnostics screen, and both are host settings rather than theme settings.
#Still stuck
Open a support ticket and say what you tried and where it stopped. Your product, your domain, a screenshot and the exact message you saw are usually enough to settle it in one reply.
Last updated
