Genesis - Demo Content Import Errors

Seeing these “failed to import media” errors when importing the demo content? There’s no need to worry! Here’s what you should know:

  1. It’s totally normal!
  2. Don’t try to re-import the demo content file! Re-import at your own risk of having some duplicated content.
  3. You can continue following the installation instructions for your theme. There are no adverse effects on the theme if there were some import errors. 

The "failed to import" errors

  • First, they're actually very common because the demo import plugins can be very finicky. Sometimes images will not import into your Media Library for a list of reasons. Because of this, you’ll often have a long list of “failed imports.” This is simply telling you that the images were not loaded into your Media Library. This won't break your site & your theme is fine! You'll just need to upload new images where they are missing with your own images. Your demo content still imported.
  • If you don't have WooCommerce activated, you will most definitely have some failed to import errors. The products, product images and shop pages could not be imported because WooCommerce is deactivated or not installed.

"Error 500" or demo not importing at all

I normally see this happen on sites with Bluehost and Strato hosting. If you see an Error 500 or Internal Server Error 500, or if you find the import won't work at all, this is different than the smaller import errors above. This error usually indicates a poor or slow server configuration, or where you are hosting your WordPress site has some sort of issue when importing the content and it breaks the import. There are many reasons why the server can’t process the import. 

If you see this error: first check, if anything at all was imported. Click through the Post, Pages, Menus, and Media in the WordPress dashboard. If something has imported, then just go back to Appearance > Import demo data and try to import everything again. Repeat the same import a few times (give it 7 tries max), and refresh the page between each try to check if things are importing. The demo import should finish with a success message on one of those 7 tries.

Once it does, you are done with importing. It's possible that you might have some duplicate content. If you do, just go through your posts, pages, menus and media to delete any duplicate content.

This method resolves issues for about 90% of users, so please try this first.

If this doesn't work, next, you can try contacting your hosting provider and ask them to "update your website to the latest PHP version for WordPress" (there is no charge for this). If your site is older, you might have an older version of PHP, and sometimes this can cause import errors.

If you’re still unable to import after these two steps, you can manually set up your site by using your theme’s documentation setup guide -OR- feel absolutely free to submit a support ticket with your URL + login info and I will import the demo content for you using a different method! I'm happy to help!

My demo content imported, but my site still doesn't look like the demo

When importing demo content, sometimes:

  • Widgets are misplaced and not in their proper location. You will just need to move widgets back into their correct widget areas. See your theme's documentation.
  • Menu locations are not set up, or not set up correctly. In Appearance > Menus, you will need to choose a menu location for your menus. Click here to learn more about menus.
  • Missing images? You probably don’t have featured images turned on, or featured images set in your posts. See this page here on how to set up your featured images.