I was able to change/select which page shows up as the homepage under Settings -> Reading & set it to a "coming soon" page.

However, this does not allow me to work on redesigning a homepage layout on the backend because the theme only shows the built-in homepage elements if a page is actually set to the homepage. 

Hello and thank you for your reply. 

Downloading the Classic Widget plugin worked. Thank you. 

As for my second question, is there an easy way to set the theme to some kind of maintenance mode and have a simple "coming soon" landing page (like the homepage shows now)? And/or a way to select/control which page appears as the homepage (I used to be able to do this by going to Appearance -> Customize -> Homepage and a dropdown menu would appear where I could select which page to set as home -- but that option no longer appears).

As of now, the only workaround/solution I could find was to strip my old homepage of all its content and set the page template to Elementor Canvas. But because I need to be able to rebuild the homepage (and the rest of the site) to work with your theme I either need to use some kind of maintenance mode option where I can work on the current homepage without it showing up on the frontend OR at least a way to switch out the homepage so that I don't waste time building a whole new page for it that can't be set as the homepage later.

Please advise. 

Hello. Today I purchased your theme to re-do my blog after my previous theme hadn't been updated for over a year & wasn't compatible with updated WP. 

I only imported the demo style, not the content as the instructions said not to do that for websites with existing content... 

I did that and the website is a total mess and I can't access the sidebar widget area (Appearance -> Widgets) to fix it. When I try to go to that page it lags on an empty page and then gives me a bunch of red error messages. I then checked under Solidad -> Sidebar Manager & then the whole page timed out  (see screenshots).

Is this a known issue when importing demo data to a site with existing content? 

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My other question is if there is an easy way to reset which page show's up on the homepage URL? Or perhaps an easy "coming soon" page option that can be switched on and that doesn't require using the homepage URL? Bc I had to strip my homepage of any content and set it to the Elementor Canvas setting to get a functioning "coming soon" style landing page but I would like to be able to work on the homepage layout while I have a temporary coming soon page that shows up for now. 

Thanks!