Kadence AI Tutorial: Build a Website in 10 Minutes or Less in 2026

Think building a website on your own is difficult or time-consuming? It’s not, and I’m going to prove it to you.

I’ll show you how to use Kadence AI to build a website from scratch in 10 minutes or less.

Follow my step-by-step Kadence AI tutorial and see for yourself.

Steps to use Kadence AI to build a website from scratch

If this is your first time trying Kadence AI, use a test/staging site to learn your way around it. You can follow this tutorial to set up a WordPress website on Cloudways.

Then, follow the rest of my Kadence AI tutorial to design your website.

1. Install Kadence Theme, Blocks, and AI Starter Templates plugins

Once your test site is up and running, install the following plugins:

1. Kadence Theme.
2. Kadence Blocks.
3. Kadence Starter Templates.

To install the Kadence Theme, go to Appearance > Themes inside your WordPress admin.

Click Add New, type “Kadence” in the search bar, and click Install. Once the theme is installed, click Activate to enable the theme for your website.

After that, go to Plugins > Add New, search for “Kadence Blocks,” and click Install Now.

Repeat the same process for Kadence Starter Templates and activate both plugins before proceeding.

2. Activate Kadence AI and connect to your Kadence Account

Installing Kadence Blocks adds a new “Kadence” item to your WordPress admin menu, and installing AI Starter Templates adds a “Starter Templates” listing under that.

Go to Kadence > Starter Templates in your WordPress admin and select Activate Kadence AI Starter Templates.

Kadence will redirect you to the Kadence account login page.

Log in to your account (or register for a new one) and then select Connect to proceed. This step connects your site with Kadence’s AI credits system.

The number of credits you have available will depend on your subscription. Free users get 250 free credits, whereas paid users get anywhere from 4,000 to 16,000 credits.

For more specifics about Kadence AI’s credit system and how it all works, read this post where I explain everything you need to know about Kadence AI.

Also, if you’re wondering which plan offers the best value for your money, it’s the Kadence Full bundle. It gives you 8,000 AI credits each year for a fraction of the Lifetime Full bundle price.

Plus, because the AI credits don’t expire, you can use Kadence AI to generate website designs and content without worrying about running out of credits.

3. Enter your business details in the Kadence AI wizard

Once your website is connected to your Kadence account, Kadence will direct you back to your site and inside the Kadence AI setup wizard.

The AI setup wizard is a 5-step process that helps you understand how Kadence AI works and collects information about your business and the kind of content you want on your site. Kadence AI then uses this information to design your website and generate content.

The first step in the wizard gives you a quick overview of Kadence AI and how it works. Click Next to proceed.

The next step is where you enter information about your business and industry to improve the quality and relevance of Kadence AI content.

Select the type of entity your website is for an individual, company, or organization. Then, enter the Name of your company or brand.

For example, I’m creating a website to sell surfboards, so I’ve selected Company and entered the Company Name as “BlueWave Boards.”

Set your business type as a Business Address, Service Area, or Online Only. After that, enter the industry you’re in. If your industry isn’t listed in the options, click + Add.

For this section, I’ve set my business location as Online Only and industry as Surfboard Manufacturer.

Finally, click Next to proceed to the next step of the Kadence AI wizard.

The third step is where you tell Kadence AI more about your business. That includes things like what you do and what makes you unique. This information helps the AI understand your business and create content specifically for you.

If you need help writing about your business, click the Show Tips button.

You can enter basic information and click the Improve with AI button to improve your content.

Once you’re happy with your business description, click Next to proceed to the fourth step.

In this step, you need to add keywords related to your business and target audience and select a tone to reflect your writing style. Kadence AI will use these inputs to generate on-brand content for your website.

First, enter up to 10 keywords in the Add Keyword… field.

You can select keywords suggested by Kadence AI and even add your own. For example, I’ve chosen two suggested keywords and entered the rest myself.

Then, choose your preferred communication tone from the 10 options Kadence AI provides. Select a tone that will appeal to your target audience.

For example, I’ve selected Friendly as I’m targeting surfing enthusiasts.

Once you’re done, click Next to continue to the final step.

Kadence AI will search the Pexels library based on your keywords and business information and create a collection of relevant images for your site. It divides the images into two sections: Featured Images and Background Images.

Don’t like the images you see? There are three ways you can find more relevant images.

The first method to edit the images for both collections is using the Edit Collection button in that section.

The second method is to adjust the image search terms by clicking Edit AI Search Query and modifying the keywords to get better matches.

Finally, the third option is using the Use Image From dropdown to select where Kadence AI sources its images.

Kadence AI uses the AI Search Collection by default. But you can select images from your WordPress media gallery or use Kadence’s premade collections too.

Once you’ve created your image collections, click Generate Base Content to have Kadence AI generate your website design and content.

Kadence AI will consume approximately 70 credits and need about a minute to generate base content for your site. Once it’s done, you’re ready to proceed to the next step.

4. Select and import an AI-generated template

Kadence AI gives you six different premade starter templates to choose from. Choose one to personalize it.

Selecting a template opens a three-step import wizard that lets you change the styling, content, and plugins installed with the starter template.

The first step is the Style Starter, where you can customize the colors and fonts of your site.

Let’s look at Colors first.

Click the empty swatch next to Highlight Color and pick a color for your website. Let’s say you choose a shade of Blue like #0073E6.

Kadence AI will use that as a base color and generate a color palette for your site. It’ll apply the color to the live preview in the right-side window.

You can adjust the color, set the Background Style to Light or Dark, and even play around with the color saturation levels.

Once you’re happy with the colors, click Fonts to open the tab.

Kadence AI selects a font pair for your site automatically. But you can override the default selection using the font pairs in the Fonts tab.

Click different fonts to see how they might look on your site, and click Next once you’ve found the perfect font.

Now, it’s time to choose which content you’d like to import into your site.

By default, Kadence AI will import sample pages, blog posts, WooCommerce products, footer widgets, and theme settings. But you can choose any that you don’t want to import.

For instance, if you don’t want the blog posts, deactivate the Import Example Blog Posts? toggle. Similarly, you can deselect pages to import from the main preview window.

Once you’ve selected everything you want to import, click Next to go to the final step of the Kadence AI template import process.

In the Plugins step, Kadence AI will suggest all the plugins you should install for your site. It checks all required plugins by default and allows you to select optional ones like Solid Security and Kadence WooCommerce Email Designer before proceeding.

The best part is that all suggested plugins are free to use. Select the ones you need and click Finish and Launch to import the AI-generated template.

The import process takes about a minute. You’ll see the following screen once Kadence AI imports the design and content and installs all the plugins. Click See my site to visit your website.

Once your starter template is imported, you’ll have a ready-to-launch website with pages, products (if applicable), and AI-generated content.

From installing Kadence plugins to generating and importing your site, this entire process might take you less than 10 minutes to complete. It truly doesn’t get any easier than that!

You could go live immediately and you’d still have a better-looking website than some of your competitors.

But I’d recommend you spend some time editing the AI-generated content before going live.

Don’t worry. You won’t have to do it all manually. Kadence AI will speed up those tasks too.

Let me show you how.

5. Edit your website design using the Kadence AI Design Library

Kadence AI creates pages using predesigned content sections populated with AI-generated text and AI-curated images. The advantage of this approach is that it results in much more consistent designs and is also easier to edit.

Let’s say you aren’t happy with the design of one of your pages. Here’s how you can use Kadence AI to edit your page design.

Open the WordPress admin, go to Pages > All Pages, and select the page you want to edit.

Click the Document Overview button in the top-left corner of the WordPress editor to open the Document Overview Panel, which shows you all the blocks used in your page.

Kadence AI places each section in a separate Row Layout block. You can easily rearrange the sections on a page or remove them.

You can copy, move, or delete the Row Layout by hovering over the Row Layout in the panel, clicking the Ellipsis icon to open the block options menu, and then selecting your preferred action.

What if you want to add a new design section to your page? That’s easy too. Here’s how you can do it.

Click the Design Library button on the top of the WordPress editor to open the Kadence Design Library.

You can add patterns from the Design Library in two ways: with placeholder text or with AI-generated content.

By default, the Design Library starts in the “By Design” mode, where all patterns use placeholder text that you can edit manually.

Select a section to add to your page, then edit the placeholder text using Kadence AI’s in-line text generation feature. I’ll show you how to do that in the next step.

My preferred way to add content sections is to use the ones created by Kadence AI. You can access those by clicking the With AI button.

Then, filter the results by category, such as “Hero” or “Call to Action,” and select a pattern to import into your page.

Feel like the text Kadence AI generated isn’t on point? No worries.

Let’s explore how you can use Kadence AI’s inline text generator to make sure your website copy is fully on brand.

6. Improve AI-generated content with the inline AI text editor

Whether you use patterns with placeholder text or AI-generated content, you can make the text truly yours with the help of Kadence AI. Here’s how.

Select the text you want to edit to access its block toolbar. Click the Kadence AI icon to open the inline editor.

The inline AI text editor allows you to improve your text in two ways: preset or manual text prompts.

The preset text prompts are best for small adjustments to your text, like making it shorter, longer, or changing its tone.

You can access the preset prompts list by clicking on the Kadence AI icon inside the inline editor. Then, select your prompt and wait a few seconds for Kadence AI to perform its magic.

Generally, Kadence AI will consume anywhere from 1 to 4 credits each time you ask it to rewrite your text. If you’re trying to maximize the quality of the results, I recommend using manual prompts to get more accurate results.

To write a manual text prompt, click inside the input field of the inline text editor. Write a detailed prompt of what you want Kadence AI to do.

For example, to make your headline text more compelling, don’t just write a basic prompt like “make it more compelling.”

Try to be more specific and descriptive about how you want Kadence AI to make the text more compelling. Here’s how you could structure your prompt:

“Revise the headline so it appeals to surfers. Make sure the headline is catchy and fun while showing how our products improve their surfing experience.”

You can also ask Kadence AI to refine the text further for you. Just type how you want it to improve the generated headline, and Kadence AI will do it for you!

7. Update Kadence AI Design Library patterns

Kadence AI populates patterns and pages in the Design Library with AI-generated text and images from Pexels.

And if you’re not happy with the generated content in your library, it allows you to regenerate content for each category, page, or the entire Design Library.

Here’s how you can do it.

Open the Kadence Design Library, click With AI, and select a pattern category. Then, click the Refresh Icon.

Kadence AI will launch a popup modal that displays how many AI credits you have remaining, informs you that all existing content will be lost forever, and shows you the number of credits it will need to regenerate the content for that pattern library.

Click the Regenerate Content button to generate new content for the patterns in your library.

Here are the updated AI-powered patterns in my website’s Design Library:

You can repeat the same process for all patterns and pages in the Kadence Design Library.

8. Update the Kadence AI image collection

Kadence supports two main categories of image collections:

1. My Collections: These are collections you may have created using images from your media library.
2. Premade Collections: These are images curated by Kadence’s team for different industries. This also includes a group called AI Search Collection, which contains the AI-curated images for your website.

Each image collection is further divided into two groups: featured images and background images. Kadence AI uses these groups to identify which images to use in different parts of your website.

Here’s how to edit the image collections to keep them updated and relevant.

Open the Design Library, click the AI Settings icon, and select Update Design Library Images.

Here, you can:

• Select different collections from the Use Images From dropdown.
• Change the AI image search query by clicking Edit AI Search Query.
• Add or remove images from the Featured Images and Background Images collections by clicking the Edit Collection link.

The Edit AI Search Query link lets you use Kadence AI to source attribution-free images from Pexels automatically.

Click on the link, edit the keywords in the image search query field, and click Save.

Kadence AI will then update the images in the Featured Images and Background Images groups. You can also edit the image search query to add or remove keywords to get more relevant images.

Once you’re happy with the AI-suggested image collection, click Update My Design Library.

Kadence AI will now use the updated images in all its AI-powered patterns.

9. Update your Kadence AI details

As your business evolves or your design preferences change, you might want to refresh the AI-powered content on your site. Luckily, Kadence AI makes this process incredibly simple.

You can do it by opening the Design Library, clicking the AI Settings icon, and selecting Update Kadence AI Details.

This will launch the Kadence AI wizard, where you can edit all the following details:

1. Industry information.
2. Business description.
3. Target keywords and tone.
4. Image library.

Once you’ve updated all your information, click Generate Initial Content to regenerate the Design Library patterns and images using your new details.

Closing thoughts: Building a website doesn’t get any easier

Kadence AI helps you build a website in less than 10 minutes and allows you to fully customize every aspect of your website to make it truly yours.

Don’t like the text Kadence AI generated? Use the inline editor to update it.

Want different images? Update the AI-curated library with a few clicks.

The best part is that you can do it all without any coding or design skills. So I don’t think there’s any excuse to have an unattractive or slow website.

It’s your turn now. Follow the steps I’ve shown you in this Kadence AI tutorial and build your website from scratch in minutes.

Have more questions about using Kadence AI? Get in touch with me.

Want to learn more about Kadence?

Make sure you check out these posts I’ve written to make the most of your Kadence subscription:

• How to use Kadence Blocks as a beginner
• How to use Kadence Theme like a pro
• How to use Kadence Shop Kit for WooCommerce
• How to create a table of contents with Kadence
• How to create a mega menu with Kadence