{"id":7,"date":"2026-02-15T17:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T17:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/2026\/02\/15\/installation\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T17:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T17:49:09","slug":"installation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/2026\/02\/15\/installation\/","title":{"rendered":"Installation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This guide walks you through installing the <em>Legal WordPress Theme<\/em> on a fresh WordPress site. The whole process takes about three minutes, after which you&#8217;ll have a working theme with the default editorial palette \u2014 bone canvas, oxblood ink, gold leaf accents.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve already installed WordPress themes before, the only thing worth flagging is that Legal is a <em>parent theme<\/em>, not a starter kit. You install it as a regular theme; you don&#8217;t unpack it into your existing theme folder.<\/p>\n<h2>Before you begin<\/h2>\n<p>Make sure you have:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A WordPress site running version <strong>5.8 or higher<\/strong> (Legal uses block-editor APIs that aren&#8217;t reliable below 5.8)<\/li>\n<li>PHP <strong>7.4 or higher<\/strong> on your server (most managed hosts default to 8.x in 2026)<\/li>\n<li>Administrator access to your WordPress dashboard<\/li>\n<li>The <code>legal.zip<\/code> file you downloaded from <a href=\"https:\/\/fasterthemes.com\/wordpress-themes\/legal\/\">fasterthemes.com<\/a> \u2014 keep it as a zip, do not unzip it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You don&#8217;t need to install any other themes or plugins first. Legal is self-contained.<\/p>\n<h2>Method 1 \u2014 Upload through the WordPress dashboard (recommended)<\/h2>\n<p>This is the path most people take. It works for fresh installs and for sites you&#8217;re switching over.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Log into your WordPress dashboard.<\/li>\n<li>Go to <strong>Appearance \u2192 Themes<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Click the <strong>Add New Theme<\/strong> button at the top of the page, then click <strong>Upload Theme<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Click <strong>Choose File<\/strong>, select your <code>legal.zip<\/code>, and click <strong>Install Now<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>WordPress will unpack the theme. After it finishes, click <strong>Activate<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The site immediately switches to Legal. If you visit your home page now, you&#8217;ll see the theme&#8217;s default editorial layout with placeholder content \u2014 your existing pages, posts, and menus are still there; only the visual theme has changed.<\/p>\n<h2>Method 2 \u2014 Upload via FTP \/ SFTP<\/h2>\n<p>Use this if your host blocks zip uploads (some shared hosts do for security reasons), or if you maintain themes through version control.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>On your local machine, unzip <code>legal.zip<\/code>. You should see a folder called <code>legal\/<\/code> containing files like <code>style.css<\/code>, <code>functions.php<\/code>, <code>template-firm.php<\/code>, and so on.<\/li>\n<li>Connect to your server via SFTP using credentials from your host.<\/li>\n<li>Navigate to <code>wp-content\/themes\/<\/code>.<\/li>\n<li>Upload the entire <code>legal\/<\/code> folder. Do not upload the contents of the folder \u2014 upload the folder itself, so the final path becomes <code>wp-content\/themes\/legal\/style.css<\/code>.<\/li>\n<li>Back in WordPress, go to <strong>Appearance \u2192 Themes<\/strong>. You&#8217;ll see Legal in the list. Click <strong>Activate<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2>What you should see after activation<\/h2>\n<p>The theme adds a few things to your dashboard immediately:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A new menu item under <strong>Appearance \u2192 Legal Pro<\/strong> \u2014 this is where you&#8217;ll go for the welcome screen and Pro upgrade information. (The menu name is &#8220;Legal Pro&#8221; even before you install the Pro plugin; it&#8217;s a convention from FasterThemes&#8217; theme family.)<\/li>\n<li>A handful of new options inside the <strong>Customizer<\/strong>: Hero, Practice tiles, Counsel cards, Ledger, Testimony, and Engage sections.<\/li>\n<li>Three new <strong>menu locations<\/strong> available under Appearance \u2192 Menus: Primary, Mobile bottom-bar, and Footer.<\/li>\n<li>Four <strong>footer widget areas<\/strong> (the third one is intended for a &#8220;Counsel&#8221; or contact-info widget; the fourth is reserved for a future release).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you&#8217;re seeing a default WordPress fallback theme instead of Legal, the upload didn&#8217;t complete. Check the file size of your <code>legal.zip<\/code> against what you downloaded \u2014 incomplete zips are the most common cause of failed activations.<\/p>\n<h2>Verify the theme version<\/h2>\n<p>After activation, you can confirm the version by going to <strong>Appearance \u2192 Themes<\/strong> and clicking on Legal&#8217;s thumbnail. The &#8220;Theme Details&#8221; sidebar shows the version number, which should match what&#8217;s on the download page. As of this writing, the current version is <strong>3.0.0<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re seeing version 2.x, you have an outdated package. Re-download from <a href=\"https:\/\/fasterthemes.com\/wordpress-themes\/legal\/\">fasterthemes.com<\/a> and use Method 1 to upload the newer file \u2014 WordPress will replace the older copy automatically.<\/p>\n<h2>What&#8217;s next<\/h2>\n<p>Now that the theme is installed, the next step is to populate it with your firm&#8217;s content. Read <a href=\"\/getting-started\/\">Getting Started<\/a> for the four-step setup that takes a blank Legal install to a working firm home page in about ten minutes.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve also purchased the Pro plugin and want the one-click Lex &amp; Co. demo to seed your site with sample content, see <a href=\"\/demo-importer\/\">One-Click Demo Importer<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Install the Legal WordPress Theme \u2014 three minutes from download to firm-ready home page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,6,7],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-getting-started","tag-first-steps","tag-installation","tag-setup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/docs.fasterthemes.com\/legal-wordpress-theme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}