Visual Theme Instuctions

Here are the instructions for using Visual Theme for WordPress.  These instructions assume that you’ve already installed WordPress.  If you need help installing WordPress, please visit this site.

Unzip the “visual” folder to your “themes” directory.

In your WordPress control panel, click on appearance, and then themes from the menu that appears.

From the list of available themes, choose Visual Theme from the list.

Now you will see two new menu items appear under appearance — “Theme Options” and “Slideshow”

The “Theme Options” menu is where you can configure your logo, choose the design style and make other customizations to the site.  A thumbnail of it is included here on your right.

The “Slideshow” menu is where you can upload images for your home page.  You can upload a single image and have it remain static, or you can upload multiple images and have them rotate.  The transition effects and durations are also customizable here as well.  In addition to displaying the images, these can also link to any URL you would like.  Very helpful if you are using them for announcements.

Now you can create the pages and posts that will make up your site.

There are 5 page styles that are included with the theme, a default, picture, full-width, blog, and site map.  The full-width page is one that does not have a sidebar for when you need more room for your main content.  The blog page presents a list of posts from a category you choose in the control panel.  The blog page is handy if you don’d display your categories in the navigation menu.  The site map creates a map of your site to help visitors navigate.

The picture style page is unique.  It adds a large background picture with a semi-transparent panel for your content.  It has a slider so you can include quite a bit of content without having the unsightly default scroll bars appear.

Adding an image to the background of these pages is quite simple.  Create your page and click on the link in the right hand column that says “Set Featured Image.”  Upload your image (it should be sized to be 998 by 620 pixels).  Once the upload is complete, scroll down to the bottom of the pop up and select “use as featured image” and save your changes. You don’t need to insert the picture into your page.  Now on the right of your screen, you will see a box for page templates.  Choose “Picture Page” from the menu.  Now save your page and view it.  You will now see your new page with it’s custom background behind the slick looking panel.

You can choose to add any custom link colors if you’d like to.  The colors use a hex value that you can learn more about here.  You can also add any custom css code here as well. This allows you to make style changes without needing to edit the theme.

One last style point. You can go to the background menu under appearance and add your own background image to the site.

If you have any questions using the theme, please feel free to contact me for support.  I’m glad to help.

Thank you for your business and I hope your site exceeds all your expectations.