The companion plugin is free, and it opens up a set of tools that otherwise live in the Pro layer. It is not a demo of Pro and not a trial: what it gives you works fully, within the free theme.
#What it adds
- Demo import
Including importing individual pages rather than a whole site.
- The fonts library
Browsing, choosing and self hosting fonts.
- The integrations registry
The mechanism and the screen where integrations are switched on.
- AI features on the WordPress side
The parts that do not depend on the Pro layer.
- Multilingual support
Handling for the theme's own strings and layouts on a translated site.
- Housekeeping screens
Tools, Preferences, notifications, announcements and the changelog.
Two of these have limits worth stating plainly rather than discovering later.
Demo import gives you the free demos, meaning the ones that do not need Pro features to render. Demos built on Pro functionality stay behind the Pro plugin, and the demo list shows which is which.
Integrations is the registry and the screen. The catalog those integrations are downloaded and installed from is served by Hub, and access to it comes with a license. Without Pro you have the mechanism rather than a set of installable integrations.
This is not a way to get Pro for free.
It is the free theme with its own tooling, which is a smaller thing and still a genuinely useful one.
#Installing it
From the official WordPress.org plugin repository, and nowhere else.
Open the plugin browser
Go to PluginsAdd New.
Search for it by name
Search for JKD Theme Companion.
Install and activate
Click Install Now, then Activate. The theme screens appear in the sidebar afterwards.
A copy from anywhere other than the plugin directory is not our plugin.
That includes theme bundles and download mirrors, whatever the file is named. The same applies to third party demo importers: our demos are built for our importer, and another one will not unpack them correctly.
#One plugin for every theme
This is a single companion for all current jkdevstudio themes, not a per theme plugin. One codebase, one update channel.
If you run more than one of our themes, you install it once and it serves all of them.
It also makes a useful path possible: try a free theme, deploy a demo, work out whether it fits, and only then move to Pro without reinstalling anything.
#What it is not
The companion is not the Pro plugin. The premium layer lives in a separate plugin and is unlocked by a license.
You do not need the companion if you already run the Pro plugin.
And the theme works without either of them. The companion adds tools; it is not a condition for the theme to run.
#Common questions
Do I have to install it?
No, the theme works on its own, and what you go without is demo import, the fonts library and the tools screens.
Should I remove it when I buy Pro?
You can, since the Pro plugin covers everything the companion does, and leaving it installed does no harm either.
Why is the integrations screen empty?
Because the registry is what the companion ships and the catalog behind it is served against a licence, so an empty list is the expected free behaviour rather than a fault.
Can I use it with a theme from another author?
It only recognises jkdevstudio themes, so on any other theme it simply does nothing.
The theme screens do not appear in the sidebar
Check that both the theme and the companion are activated rather than merely installed, since that is the usual answer, and if the menu is still missing then another plugin is most likely erroring earlier in the load, which you find by deactivating the others one at a time.
#Still stuck
Open a support ticket with your theme name and a screenshot of your plugins screen.
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