About ten minutes. The only thing to copy across is your licence key.
Before you start
- WordPress 6.4 or newer, on PHP 8.1 or newer.
- Nothing else to install first: once Aether is active, its Getting started screen installs WooCommerce, Elementor and Digipacket Agency Partner from WordPress.org in one click each. Connecting the plugin is in Install the plugin and connect it.
- Settings → Permalinks set to Post name. Without it, only your homepage opens — see Aether troubleshooting.
1. Get a licence
Buy one from your licences. A licence opens one live site. Development addresses — localhost, *.local, *.test and staging. sub-domains — work with the same key and do not use it up.
Your key looks like AETH-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX. It stays visible in your licences, so there is nothing to write down.
2. Download the theme
In your licences, click Download the theme beside your licence. You get digipacket-aether-{version}.zip. The button is there while the licence is active.
Leave the zip as it is: WordPress unpacks it itself.
3. Upload and activate
- In WordPress, go to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme → Upload Theme.
- Choose
digipacket-aether-{version}.zip, then Install Now. - Click Activate.
On first activation Aether creates — once, never overwriting — the pages and menus a hosting site needs. See Set up your site with Getting started.
4. Enter your key
- Open Aether → Licence.
- Paste your key and click Activate.
The screen then reads The licence is active on this site, with the site it is tied to and when it was last checked.
Important
Until a licence is active, your public site shows only a licence message. Your dashboard, the login page and WooCommerce's payment callbacks keep working, so nothing is lost while you sort it out — and search engines are told the pause is temporary.
5. Add the child theme
Your own CSS and code belong in the child theme, never in Aether's files: an update replaces Aether's folder, and anything typed into it would go.
The child theme comes inside Aether's zip, so there is nothing else to download.
- Go to Aether → Getting started.
- Under Your own code, choose Install and activate.
Note
If your host does not let WordPress write to the themes folder, the button says so. Choose Download the zip in the same place — or Download the child theme next to your licence on your Licences page — then upload that zip under Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme → Upload Theme and activate Digipacket Aether Child.
The first time it is activated, it takes over your Customizer values and your Additional CSS from Aether, so the site looks the same. The licence stays with Aether: nothing to enter again.
Put CSS in the child theme's style.css — Aether loads it last, so your rules win — and PHP in its functions.php.