---
title: Merlin WP, a release candidate
description: Merlin WP nears its first stable release, enhancing WordPress theme setup with improved content importing and a better user experience.
doc_version: current
last_updated: '2026-03-31T09:58:16.000Z'
date: '2018-03-04T05:00:28.000Z'
author: Rich Tabor
summary: Merlin WP nears its first stable release, enhancing WordPress theme setup with improved content importing and a better user experience.
tags:
  - Themes
  - WordPress
published: true
type: blog
url: /merlin-wp-rc-1
canonical: https://richtabor.com/merlin-wp-rc-1
id: 456
---

[Merlin WP](http://merlinwp.com), the WordPress theme setup wizard that I started working on a number of months ago, has finally neared its first stable release ([GitHub](https://github.com/richtabor/MerlinWP/releases/tag/1.0.0-rc.1)). [Click here to view the release notes](https://primoz.blog/pushing-merlin-wp-towards-stable-release/), detailed by Primož Cigler.

While I [originally announced the project in August](/merlin-wp) of last year, progress slowed down quite a bit while life picked up. You see, I ran into a snag regarding the wizard’s content importing. While the importing process worked “ok” most of the time, it was subpar to the experience I was shooting for. That’s where [Primož Cigler](https://primoz.blog/), co-founder of [ProteusThemes](https://www.proteusthemes.com), and his phenomenal team come into play. If you’re not already familiar with ProteusThemes, they’re the folks who build the infamous demo importer cleverly named, [One Click Demo Import](https://wordpress.org/plugins/one-click-demo-import/). OCDI has amassed well over 200k active installations and is most definitely the best solution for importing a WordPress theme’s demo content.

Now you see, _things are getting pretty interesting_.

Primož reached out in early February and offered his team to essentially add OCDI’s trusted functionality within the first-class user experience that Merlin WP offers. Together, we’ve put together the first release candidate of Merlin WP, which is available today on [GitHub](https://github.com/richtabor/MerlinWP/releases/tag/1.0.0-rc.1). Apart from the major back-end rebuild, we’ve also added support for the Redux framework importer, sponsored by [Chris Robinson](https://twitter.com/contempoinc).

## A New Beginning

When I first announced Merlin WP, I mentioned how superior OCDI was at importing content, but left the user’s experience on the table. That’s the whole reason I started developing Merlin WP in the first place: to improve the first-touch user-experience within WordPress themes. With the contributions from [ProteusThemes](https://www.proteusthemes.com), [Merlin WP](https://merlinwp.com) is well on it’s way to doing just that.

## Sitemap

[Full site index](/sitemap.md)