We’ve prepared this little guide to help you understand how to create a Template Kit that can be sold on Envato.
You will also need the Template kit requirements and the Template Kits Commercial Demand guide to make sure your item gets approved and you can starting earning that cash.
- What is a Template Kit?
- How is a Template Kit different to a Theme?
- Which Page/Site builders can I use to create my Template Kit?
- What software/subscriptions do I need?
- Step by step process to create a Template Kit.
- How to Export your Template Kit
What is a Template Kit?
A collection of pre-designed starter templates for a WordPress Site Builder that share a cohesive visual style.
Template Kits can include a range of templates for all kinds of things including home pages, contact pages, headers, footers, staff profiles, pop-ups, sections, products and much more.
Template Kits can be used to quickly build a beautiful website with WordPress, they can be focused on one style or one niche/industry.
How is a Template Kit different to a Theme?
A Theme can contain lots of features and bundled functionality - like booking systems, bespoke page builders, rigid page layouts as well as one or more demos.
A Template Kit however, is focused on one page/site builder and it contains flexible starter templates to help a website creator with the visual layer/designs of their project. It’s similar to just the “demo content” layer that some theme authors provide.
Which Page/Site builders can I use to create my Template Kit?
At the moment, we only support Template Kits for Elementor (and or Elementor Pro). We’re looking to allow Template Kits to be created for other popular page/site builders in the future.
What software/subscriptions do I need?
At a minimum you need a public WordPress site and the latest version of Elementor. If you’d like stock assets like photos and graphics in your kit, we recommend our Envato Elements subscription. And if you’d like to create a kit with advanced features and functionality, you should consider Elementor Pro - from the Elementor team.
Step by step process to create a Template Kit.
Step 1 - Read the requirements
You’ll need to read through the Template Kit requirements, it explains what you can and can not do. There’s also some specific rules around the use of images/photos that you should understand before you begin!
Step 2 - Setup your public WordPress site
You’ll need to setup a publicly accessible WordPress site, on a domain/subdomain of your choice, as this will be where your “live demo” or “live preview” will be hosted. If you plan on creating multiple different Template Kits, we might want to use WordPress multisite.
Step 3 - Install Plugins
You’ll now need to install both the Elementor Plugin and the “Template Kit - Export” Plugin.
Step 4 - Create Templates
Once you’ve installed the Template Kit - Export Plugin, you’ll see a new menu item called “Template Kit”. When you click that, you’ll see a sub menu item for “Templates”, this is a post type that we’ve defined and this is where you need to create and save all of the templates that belong to your kit. Please note - all the templates for your kit will need to go in here, we ignore the pages, posts and the Elementor Library so you can use that for your own workflow or other purposes.
Now your kit has been created, it’s time to Export!
How to Export your Template Kit
Step 1 - Define your kit
In WordPress, under the “Template Kit” menu item, click export, you’ll see the first step of the Export process, which asks you for some basic info such as the intended name for your kit and which third party plugins from WordPress.org (if any) are required for your kit to work.
At this stage, we also have a bit of a health check, the most important thing to note is the export needs to happen on a public site (that will be your live preview/live demo in the future).
Step 2 - Select your Templates
Now it’s time to select the templates you wish to export, and to categorise each template, this will really help improve the customer experience when it comes to importing!
You’ll also need to upload a screenshot of each template here - 600px wide x 320px high will work best here. Also, you can drag and drop or order - as well as rename the templates from this step if you like!
Export Step 3 - Media Info
At this step, we need you to explain how each of the media assets (such as images, photos, graphics etc) are licenced. Please see our guidelines for more information.
Export Step 4 - Export your Zip file
Awesome work, you’re almost done, now you just need to hit Export and a zip file will be created for you. This is the zip file you can upload to ThemeForest!