Down Under Instructions

Using Down Under

Once you’ve activated the theme, a new menu will appear under appearance called “Theme Options.” This is where you can configure the site’s main features. The first box contains links to guide you in finding help using the theme and also with WordPress in general. The second box allows you to choose one of the five included design styles that come with the theme. Just select one from the drop down menu and click “save settings” and your new style will be active.

The third box controls your branding for the site. You can choose to have the site’s title appear for the logo by choosing “dynamic text” from the drop down, or you can use an image logo. To use an image, go to media then add new and upload your logo. Once you’ve uploaded the image, copy the URL that appears in the resulting dialogue box and paste it into the box for logo URL on the theme options page. Save your changes and now you’ll have your own logo on the site. The same method can be used to add a favicon (the small icon that appears next to the web address in most browsers). You can make a favicon by visiting favicon.cc.

The top box on the right hand column contains the controls for using Type Kit if you so choose. Type Kit is a service that allows you to use a variety of fonts on your website with a minimal amount of fuss. If you’ve ever worked with web typography you’ll understand how amazing that is. They offer accounts ranging from free to $25 per year for one website. To use Type Kit you’ll need to visit typekit.com and sign up for an account. Then you’ll need to login and click the “browse fonts” button to start selecting.

I’ve set things up so you can easily add a heading font and a paragraph font. The free account allows you to use 2 fonts. Once you’ve found one you like, click “add” and this will launch the “kit editor” where you can further customize your selection. Once you have your fonts selected, click the “publish” in the bottom right hand corner of the kit editor to save your changes. Now you will need to click on the link for “embed code” in the top right of the kit editor. This will give you a bit of code to copy and paste into the theme options page. Select the embed code and copy it. Now go to the Theme Options page in your WordPress control panel and past the embed code into the blank for it.

The next step is to select the font you’d like to use for your headings and click on “advanced” near the top of the left hand column. From there copy the “font-family” values at the top which will look something like this:

“daniel-1″,”daniel-2″

and paste those individually into the boxes for your heading fonts. Repeat the process for your paragraph fonts. Lastly select “include typekit” and save your settings and you will have type kit live on your site. If you’ve elected to use a free account, a small badge will appear in the bottom right hand corner of your site.

The last theme option is to include tracking from Google Analytics or another statistics system here. Just paste the embed code from your statistics provider into the box and select yes to allow your site to be tracked by the service.

Widgets and Sidebars:

There are three sidebar areas included with the theme, one for posts, one for pages and one primarily for an add in the main post listing. To add a widget, just select the one you’d like to use and drag it to the sidebar of your choice. Some have options that you can then configure based on the sidebar. You can also add hundreds of other widgets from the plugins directory at wordpress.org.

The sidebar for pages will appear on every page in the site. The sidebar for posts will appear on any post, unless you are using the portfolio post template (more about that in just a minute). The List Ad sidebar is for placing a horizontally oriented ad just after the first post on any post list. You can see an example of this in the theme demo. The easiest way to add the image for the ad is to go to the Media menu and then click “add new” and upload our image. Once the upload is complete, copy the URL that you are given and come back to the widgets screen. Now drag a text widget to the List Ad sidebar. The text widget can contain html code as well as text. We are going to use the code to display the ad. Into the box type this code:

<a href="add-link-url">

You will need to replace the add-link-url with the link you’d like the add to go to and replace the image-url with the url to your image that you copied when you uploaded it a minute ago. It is important that you leave the quotes in the code above, otherwise it will not work. Now you have an inline ad appearing after the first post.

Thumbnails and Templates:

I’ve included the ability to have horizontal thumbnails with each post. To include a thumbnail with a post, upload your thumbnail image and copy the URL. Now right below the box where you write the post’s copy, you will see a box called “media details.” The first blank in this box is for your thumbnail. Paste the URL to your image and after you publish the post it will appear in your post list. It will automatically resize the image, but it will not scale the image up for you. It will only size it down. Also I would recommend agains using too large of an image as your server may not have enough memory allocated to handle the resizing.

There are also five spaces available if you’d like to host portfolio images on a post. Just follow the procedure above for as many of the portfolio spots as you’d like. It is not required that you have five, but you can have that many. In addition to adding these image URL’s you will also need to select “Portfolio Post” from the next box down that says “Single Post Template.” Now when you publish this post it will have the portfolio layout seen in the theme demo.

The last option is for page templates. There are two templates included for use on pages: Default and Archive. The default is a two column layout with a sidebar on the left. The archive page layout produces a simple list of posts by date. This is a good way to allow people to navigate your site and provides another option for people trying to find your content. It’s use is completely optional.

That covers the features of the Down Under theme for WordPress. If you need any help, please visit the support form here. Thank you again for your business.