Getting Started

Here are the first steps on a new Dirigible site: run the setup wizard, find your way around the Customizer, and build your first page.

Browse documentation in WordPress

Open Dashboard → Documentation to read Dirigible Support docs inside wp-admin. Pages that map to a Customizer section or admin screen on your site show an Open button that launches that destination in a new tab.

See In-Admin Documentation for details.

Run Theme Setup first (recommended)

On a fresh install, WordPress may send you to Appearance → Theme Setup automatically. You can also open it anytime from the admin sidebar.

The wizard walks you through:

1. Adding your site license, then setting up a child theme and installing the core plugins your plan includes (Blocks, Fonts, SEO, and others).
2. Setting the site title, tagline, and tone.
3. Picking a starting palette and fonts.
4. Uploading or generating a logo.
5. Creating starter pages such as Home, About, and Contact (optional).

Use Next, Back, or Skip to move between steps. When you reach Ready, jump into the dashboard or the Customizer.

Full step list: Guided Theme Setup.

Open the Customizer

Most site-wide choices live in one place:

1. Go to Appearance → Customize.
2. Open a Dirigible panel on the left: Styles, Settings, Header & Menus, Footer & Contact, and more.
3. Change a setting. The preview on the right updates as you go.
4. Click Publish to make the changes live.

Global Styles and Live Preview explains how colors, fonts, and widths set here carry through every page.

Suggested order for a new site

You don't have to follow this exactly, but most sites come together in roughly this order:

Settings worth checking early

Under Customize → Settings:

• General: your 404 page, page background color, image lightbox color, and whether the header and footer run full width.
• Social Media: profile links used by social icons, the Socials block, and search engine data.
• Animations: page-load and scroll effects (see also Magic Classes and Scroll Animations).
• Search Results Page: the message shown above site search results.

Build your first page

1. Go to Pages → Add New.
2. Give the page a title.
3. Click + and insert Dirigible blocks (Hero, Section, Columns, and others).
4. Use the block sidebar to adjust layout, colors, and content.
5. Click Publish.

The editor loads your theme styles, so the canvas looks close to the live site. For media tips, see Smarter Media Library and Image Focal Points.

Back up or move settings

Before a big redesign, export your styles and settings from Dirigible → Import/Export. You can restore them on the same site or copy them to another one.

Details: Import and Export Theme Settings.

Related guides

• Palette and Typography
• Widths and Layout
• Header Setup
• Tools and Maintenance: cache, media, and cleanup tools

Add Dirigible plugins

Open Dashboard → Home and scroll to Plugins. A badge next to the heading shows the site license: Site license active (with your plan's name, for example "Site license active · Core"), Site license not valid, or No site license.

With no site license yet, paste your key into the field under the heading and click Activate (or press Enter). Site keys start with ds_site_. If the key is refused, the reason appears under the field and the key stays put so you can check it. Once it's active, Change site license opens the field again to replace the key (Escape closes it). You can also manage the key on Dirigible → License.

A line above the grid sums it up (for example "11 active · 1 ready to install · 1 installed but inactive"), and each Dirigible plugin has a card with a short description, a Docs link and its status:

Your plan decides which plugins the site gets: the cards of plugins outside it say Not in your plan.

Install downloads the plugin from Dirigible and activates it, so there's no zip to find and upload. The card shows Installing…, then turns green with "Installed and active" and a Reload link: the plugin's own menu appears after the next page load. Activate works the same way for a plugin that is installed but switched off. Nothing reloads on its own.

Once a site has two or more active plugins, the panel shows the short version: one line per active plugin with its Docs link. An active plugin without a license keeps its orange !. Click any of them to open every card, with its status and button. Show all plugins, at the right of the summary line, does the same, and Show fewer goes back. Dirigible remembers your choice from those two links for your account.

Dirigible → Extensions is the place to browse what you can add. The top shows your plan, with a Manage license link (or Add site license when there's none). Start here comes first while any of the five plugins most sites need isn't installed: Blocks, Fonts and Optimize (marked Essential, the base of every Dirigible site) and SEO and AI (marked Recommended). On this site lists the Dirigible plugins installed here, each with its status and Docs link; one that's switched off has Activate. Explore lists the other plugins your plan includes that aren't on the site yet, each with a short description, Docs and Install. Type in Search extensions, or click a category (Build your site, Run your business, Show your work, Speed and search, Share knowledge) to narrow the list. Plugins outside your plan aren't listed; a line at the bottom says how many there are. On a Better Breeder plan, Better Breeder and Better Breeder Extended are listed under Start here too. Without a site license, the cards say Needs a site license, and Add site license at the top opens Dirigible → License. A plugin you install or activate moves up to On this site.

Only administrators who can install plugins see the buttons, and only people who can manage the site see the badge and the key field. On a site that blocks file changes (DISALLOW_FILE_MODS), plugins have to be copied into wp-content/plugins instead.

Keep Dirigible up to date

Theme and plugin updates show up under Dashboard → Updates, like any other WordPress update. The Dirigible theme and every Dirigible plugin update automatically: WordPress checks twice a day and installs new Dirigible releases in the background, so on the Plugins screen their auto-update setting shows as on and can't be switched off there. Your other plugins keep their own setting. Updates need an active site license on Dirigible → License (a product key saved for a plugin before site licenses still works for that plugin). Installed Dirigible plugins that aren't active get updates the same way, so they don't fall behind (updating one doesn't activate it).

A site license is one key for the theme and every Dirigible plugin on the site. Paste it under Site license on Dirigible → License and click Activate. Site keys start with ds_site_. Once it's active, the page shows your plan's name, and your plan decides which plugins you can install and which products get updates. While it's saved, it's used instead of any product keys saved before. Those product keys stay saved and apply again if you remove the site license: while there's no active site license, the page lists them under Product keys, with Re-Activate and Remove. There's no field for a new product key. A site license belongs to one site address: after moving the site to a new domain, the section explains why it stopped, and Re-Activate sets it up for the new address. Dirigible asks the licensing server once a day what your plan includes, so plugins added by a plan upgrade show Install within a day; re-activating the key shows them straight away.

While an update is replacing the theme's or a plugin's files (usually a few seconds), a visitor who lands mid-way gets a short "This site is updating, refresh in a minute" page instead of a broken page or an error. Browsers and the host's cache retry it on their own.

Dirigible Studio publishes the exact files of every Dirigible release, and the theme compares an update with them before it installs. If an update's files don't match, an alert appears in wp-admin: please let Dirigible Studio know. Zips you upload yourself (Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin) aren't checked.

To keep a site on its current Dirigible versions (for example while you test something), add define('DS_AUTO_UPDATES', false); to wp-config.php. Updates still appear under Dashboard → Updates for you to install by hand.

To check right away, open Dashboard → Home and click Check for updates at the bottom of the Welcome card, next to the version number. It checks the theme and every Dirigible plugin, then shows the result in place of the link: Up to date, or a count of available updates with a link to the Updates screen. Only administrators see this link.

You can also run the same check from Dashboard → Updates: click Check for Dirigible updates under the Last checked line. WordPress's own Check again link may skip Dirigible products checked in the last hour; this button always checks them all. If it finds updates, the page reloads so they appear in the Plugins and Themes lists, ready to install.

To check many sites at once, for example right after a release, run this snippet on each site (ManageWP Code Snippets, or wp eval over SSH):

if (function_exists('ds_check_dirigible_updates_now')) { print_r(ds_check_dirigible_updates_now()); }

It runs the same check as the Check for updates link and prints what it found: the products checked, updates available, any that couldn't be checked, and any without a license. It doesn't install anything. New versions then show up in ManageWP and under Dashboard → Updates straight away, and sites with automatic updates on install them on their next background update run.