WordPress salon website template — install guide

Installing Salon Suite on WordPress: from zip file to your first booking

Salon Suite is a WordPress salon website template that runs on regular, self-hosted WordPress — the same platform behind a third of the web. If you've never installed a WordPress theme before, follow these steps in order and you'll be taking real bookings in under an hour.

Before you start, you'll need:

A WordPress site on your own hosting (WordPress.org — not the hosted WordPress.com) with admin access
The salon-booking-suite plugin zip, plus one of the two theme zips from your purchase email — pick based on whether you want the demo content:
- salon-suite-full.zip — includes all 18 prebuilt layouts, demo services/staff/locations and photos, ready to explore and edit. Choose this one if you plan to import the demo data (step 04).
- salon-suite-clean.zip — identical theme code, but no demo content at all — a blank slate if you're building everything yourself from scratch. Skip step 04 entirely if you choose this one; there's nothing to import.

Install the plugins Salon Suite depends on

In your WordPress dashboard go to Plugins → Add New, search for and install + activate each of these free plugins:

Elementor (the free version — no Elementor Pro needed for anything in Salon Suite)
WooCommerce (free — powers the theme's checkout styling and payment features)

That's all — you don't need a separate demo-import plugin. The one-click importer is built into the Salon Booking Suite plugin you'll install in step 03.

Upload and activate the Salon Suite theme

Go to Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme, choose whichever theme zip you decided on above (salon-suite-full.zip or salon-suite-clean.zip), click Install Now, then Activate.

Upload and activate the Salon Booking Suite plugin

Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose salon-booking-suite.zip, click Install Now, then Activate. This is what adds the "Salon Bookings" menu, the booking widget, and the availability engine — the theme alone is presentation only.

Import the demo content

This step only applies if you installed salon-suite-full.zip in step 02. If you installed salon-suite-clean.zip instead, skip straight to step 05.

Go to Appearance → Import Demo Data (your Dashboard also shows a shortcut to it) and click Import Demo Data. In about a minute you get all 18 layouts, 16 bookable sample services, 7 staff members, a location and the photos they use — with your homepage and menu already set up — so you can see everything working before you swap in your own content. Keep the tab open until it says it's done.

Changed your mind later? The same screen has a Remove Demo Content button that deletes exactly what the import added — pages, services, staff, location and photos — and never touches anything you created yourself. If an import gets interrupted (tab closed, connection dropped), reopening the screen offers Resume Import.

Don't see "Import Demo Data" under Appearance? Make sure the Salon Booking Suite plugin is active (step 03) and that you installed salon-suite-full.zip — the clean package has no demo content to import, so the menu item doesn't appear.

Pick your homepage look

Go to Appearance → Customize → Homepage Style. Choose from the 6 core styles (Classic, Bold, Minimal, Showcase…) or one of the 18 ready-made layouts across Hair & Nails, Aesthetician & Nails, Spa and Barbershop. Every layout is built from real, editable Elementor widgets — nothing is a locked screenshot.

Add your real location(s)

Go to Salon Bookings → Locations → Add New. Add your address and hours. You need at least one published location before services or staff can be booked.

Add your real services

Go to Salon Bookings → Services → Add New. Set a name, price and duration.

Don't skip this: tick the box under "Available at these locations" for every location this service should be bookable at. A service with no location checked will save fine and look normal everywhere on the site — it just silently never appears as an option in the booking widget.

Add your real staff

Go to Salon Bookings → Staff → Add New. Add a name, photo and title.

Same rule applies twice here: tick both "Works at these locations" and "Performs these services". Both have to match a client's location + service choice for that staff member to show up as a bookable option — missing either checkbox makes them invisible in the widget with no error message anywhere.

Check the booking widget

Visit /book-now/ on your site (it's already built and published). Step through it yourself: pick a location, a service, a staff member, then a time slot. If a service or staff member you just added doesn't show up, it's almost always the checkboxes in steps 07–08.

Confirm your first booking

Submitting the widget takes a client straight into a real WooCommerce checkout — behind the scenes, each service is a hidden product priced to match, added to the client's cart the moment they pick a time slot. Enable at least one payment method under WooCommerce → Settings → Payments (Stripe and PayPal Payments are both free; Cash on Delivery is the fastest way to test this yourself) so that checkout page actually has something to pay with. The booking itself lands in Salon Bookings → Bookings as Pending the moment it's submitted, and flips itself to Confirmed automatically — no manual step — once the matching order is marked Completed, which is what finalizes the slot and triggers the site's own confirmation email.

A client who has created an account also earns loyalty points automatically on each completed booking, at a rate you set under Salon Bookings → Loyalty Points (points per dollar spent, default 1) — visible to them on their own Account page. It's deliberately simple: a running balance with no redemption catalog yet. Gift cards and memberships are still on the roadmap — reach out via the contact page if you want to know timing.

Go live

Swap in your own logo, colors (Customizer → Theme Colors, or the one-click Color Palette picker), and content. Once your domain points at this WordPress install, you're open for bookings.

Stuck on a step, or want us to set it up for you?

Email us and we'll help you get unstuck, or send a quotation to build and launch the whole site for you.