Ideally, you install and run Elementor on a live website because you can enjoy the real web building experience with it. Especially if you plan to use the pro version.
If you are completely new to Elementor and prefer to try it offline first, that's great too.
By trying Elementor offline on your computer, you don't need to spend money on hosting. You can play around with Elementor and familiarize yourself with its interface before creating a real, live website on a paid hosting service.
In this post, I will show you how to use Elementor offline on your computer in three simple steps.
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Step 1: Install a Local WordPress Development Tool
Elementor is a web builder that runs on WordPress. Thus, you need to have WordPress installed on your computer before you can install and run Elementor.
The easiest way to install WordPress locally on your computer is by using a local development tool.
A local development tool is a tool that has all the components to run WordPress. Including web server, database server and PHP.
The top 3 local development tools I personally recommend are:
- WordPress Studio
- DevKinsta
- Local WP
Out of those three, the one I recommend the most is WordPress Studio because it's extremely lightweight and easy to use. But feel free to try DevKinsta and Local WP too if you are curious.
Another reason why I recommend WordPress Studio is that it is available for all major operating systems (macOS, Windows and Linux).
Installing WordPress Studio
WordPress Studio is a local development tool from Automattic (the parent company of WooCommerce and WordPress.com). It comes with a feature to publish a local website to the internet using the hosting service of WordPress.com and Pressable (another hosting service owned by Automattic).
The feature is optional, though. If you prefer to use another hosting service, you can simply ignore it.
Before you can install WordPress Studio on your computer, you definitely need to download it first. You can download WordPress Studio from its official page. Click the download button and the binary file will be automatically downloaded to your computer according to the operating system you use.
If you want to download the binary file for other operating systems, you can click the download link right below the download button. This will take you to another page where you can pick a binary file for macOS, Windows and Linux.
Once the binary file is downloaded, you can simply double-click to install it to install it on your computer.
Step 2: Add WordPress and Run It
Once WordPress Studio is installed on your computer, you can start to use it to run WordPress. Start by launching the WordPress Studio app on your computer.
Once launched, click the Add site button on the left panel to add a new WordPress site.
Pick the Build a new site option to create a brand new WordPress website.
On the next step, pick the empty site option and click the Continue button.
Give your website a name. If you want to make some advanced settings like setting the PHP version or WordPress version, you can click the Advanced settings button. Otherwise, you can click the Add site button.
Wait a moment while WordPress Studio is preparing your website. Once done, you can access your website by clicking the Open local site button. This will open the front-end of your website in a web browser.
Step 3: Install Elementor
Once WordPress is running on your computer via WordPress Studio, the next step is to install Elementor.
If you are already familiar with WordPress, installing Elementor should not be a problem because you can install Elementor the same way as you usually do with other WordPress plugins.
First off, you need to access your WordPress dashboard before you can install a new plugin on your WordPress website. In WordPress Studio, you can access your WordPress dashboard by clicking the WP admin button.
Clicking the above button will take you to the dashboard of your WordPress website without entering the username and password.
If you are prompted to enter the username and password, you can find it on the WP Admin section under the Site Settings tab in WordPress Studio.
After successfully accessing the dashboard of your WordPress website, you can go to Plugins -> Add Plugin to add a new plugin.
Type "elementor" in the search box and click the Install Now button to install it on your website.
Wait a moment while Elementor is being installed. Once done, you can click the Activate button to activate Elementor on your local website.
Installing Elementor Manually
If, for a certain reason, you can't install Elementor via WordPress dashboard, you can install it manually by adding the ZIP file of Elementor to your WordPress installation folder and extract it there.
To do so, first, visit this page and click the Download button to download the ZIP file of Elementor to your computer.
Once the ZIP file of Elementor is downloaded, go to the Overview tab in WordPress Studio and click the Finder button (you may see a different button label if you use Windows or Linux). This will open the root directory of your WordPress site in the file manager app of your operating system.
Move or copy the ZIP file of Elementor you have just downloaded to the plugins folder (path: wp-content/plugins) and unzip it here and you should see a folder called elementor.
Once done with the above steps, go back to your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins -> Installed Plugins.
You should see Elementor on the installed plugins list. Click the Activate button to activate it.
You will be asked how you will start to use Elementor. At this point, you can select the Continue as a guest option because you want to use Elementor offline on your computer.
On the next step, you will be asked who you will build your Elementor website for. You can skip this by clicking the Skip button.
Next, Elementor will ask you what type of website you want to create. If you don't want to answer the question, simply click the Skip button.
Elementor will ask several other questions before you can use it. You can skip the questions by simply clicking the Skip button.
After answering/skipping all the questions, the Elementor editor will be open and you will be asked one last question. You can pick the Blank site option to start using Elementor from a blank page.
The Elementor editor will be open after you select the above option and you can start using it.
Since you are running Elementor on a local website, an internet connection is not required.
A little note. When you run Elementor on a local environment, you can't install the pro version as the pro version requires you to connect your account with a public domain.
Summary
If you are completely new to Elementor, it's totally understandable if you want to try it offline on your computer because you don't need to spend money on a paid hosting service.
Elementor runs on WordPress and you can run WordPress on your local computer using local development tools like WordPress Studio, DevKinsta and Local WP.
In summary, you can run Elementor offline on your computer via the following core steps:
- Install a local WordPress development tool
- Install and run WordPress
- Install Elementor
We have useful blog posts which you can read to learn more about Elementor.