Free plan: is it possible to use the spearhead theme?

  • anarresti · Member ·

    Hello,

    I have a free plan for many years and I need to set up a podcast.
    This looks like a very nice theme for that: https://wordpress.com/theme/spearhead

    When I create a new site, it is not available.
    After creating the site with one of the available themes, spearhead shows up in search. I can chose it and click activate. But the first theme is always the one that shows. This loop, by the way, happens with all the themes I chose after setting up a new site with one of the themes that show up first.

    Is this by design, do I need a premium plan to choose spearhead, or am I missing something?

    Thank you in advance for your help.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-totoro · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    When I create a new site, it is not available.
    After creating the site with one of the available themes, spearhead shows up in search. I can chose it and click activate. But the first theme is always the one that shows. This loop, by the way, happens with all the themes I chose after setting up a new site with one of the themes that show up first.

    For the most part, changing your theme is a lot like changing the clothing on a mannequin. Your content (pages, blog posts, uploaded media) don’t go anywhere or change that much… they just assume the style of the new theme

    Or, to state it another way, if you activate a new theme on your existing ocolossodemaroussi.wordpress.com site, it does NOT add the demo content (you see in the Spearhead example) on your site, but instead preserves what you already have there.

    This is why there does not always seem to be much of a change to your site when you switch themes, but if you like, we can delete everything you have on ocolossodemaroussi.wordpress.com now, and replace it with the demo content for the Spearhead theme. Is this what you want? If so please let us know and we are happy to do that for you, but it will permanently delete what you have now, so you will want to be sure before proceeding. Thanks for confirming.

    Is this by design, do I need a premium plan to choose spearhead, or am I missing something?

    You do not need a Premium plan to use the Spearhead theme, but I did want to point out that if you want to use your WordPress.com site to power your podcast, you will need the WordPress.com Personal Plan. It’s not possible to upload audio on free sites (such as your podcast episodes) so to be able to upload your audio you will need the Personal plan or higher.

    Learn more about our WordPress.com Personal Plan here: https://wordpress.com/pricing/

    We have a guide here (once you upgrade) for setting up your podcast on WordPress.com: https://wordpress.com/support/audio/podcasting/

    Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

  • anarresti · Member ·

    Hello,

    To put it simply:

    I just want to create a new site, not change the one I already have (ocolossodemaroussi.wordpress.com).

    I have tried 3 times, and deleted the site 3 times, since I did not manage to use spearhead.
    The hosting of the podcast is taken care of, so all I need to is use the theme.

    Let me leave here screenshots:

    001 – the initial theme
    002 – activated spearhead
    003 – with spearhead active, the style of the site did not change
    004 – showing that spearhead is the active theme

    Is this normal?

    the initial theme
    activated spearhead
    the style did not change
    showing spearhead active

  • anarresti · Member ·

    Sorry for a second post.

    Only now I see that, in my initial post, the forum added the text:
    “The blog I need help with is ocolossodemaroussi.wordpress.com.”

    This is incorrect, as I said in my last reply.
    All I want is to create a new site with the spearhead theme.

    And in that last reply, the 4th image was missing:
    showing spearhead active

  • fstat · Staff ·

    Your site is indeed using the Spearhead theme, but as @jerrysarcastic already said, the layout you see on the demo isn’t carried over when you switch to it.

    Spearhead’s demo site has the blog posts showing on the homepage and you can do the same if you enable that option by going to “WordPress.com > My Sites > Design > Customize > Homepage Settings > Your latest posts”

    Then all you have to do is start creating new podcasts to populate that page.

  • anarresti · Member ·

    Thank you so much @jerrysarcastic and @fstat.

    I really apreciate your patience :)) I got it finally, and now I am able to embed audio urls. Great!!!

    Have a great 2021,
    Cheers!

  • The topic ‘Free plan: is it possible to use the spearhead theme?’ is closed to new replies.