The Blog Boat Theme Installation Instructions
If you ever need help with anything, feel free to email us at [email protected]
Read our FAQ's here
1. Installing a Wordpress Theme
Confirming you have a domain & hosting:
Firstly you will need to have a registered domain name (www.mydomainname.com.) If you do not have one you can set one up with a hosting company. ie. http://www.bluehost.com/ You should have Wordpress installed on this domain, if you dont, speak to your hosting company and they will sort it out for you. So when you login to your wordpress you should be greated by the Wordpress dashboard.
Follow these steps to install your theme:
- a.) On the Wordpress dashboard hover over appearances and then click themes.
- b.) Click Add New at the top of the themes page.
- c.) Then click Upload Theme
- d.) Browse your computer for the theme file. It will be a .zip format. Click Install.
- e.) Once it has uploaded click Activate.
2. Setup Your Header
How to upload a header image:
Please Note: Some of our headers use images and other use text, so this section may be irrelevant depending on the theme
- a.) Navigate to Header via Appearances on the dashboard.
- b.) Choose the image you want to upload and click upload.
- c.) Drag the crop to include the entire header image. (ie. there is no grey) Click the Crop and Publish button.
- d.) Deselect the 'show header text with your image. (ie. no blue tick)
- e.) Click save changes.
How to change the heaader text:
- a.) Navigate to General via Settings on the dashboard.
- b.) Change Site Title & Click Save Changes.
3. Menu
To control the top menu, any new pages you create in Wordpress (PAGES -> NEW) will show up on that main menu automatically
Customise your menu:
If you want to add custom links to your menu, links that aren’t pages on your blog (external) ie. Behance, Etsy etc OR remove pages from the top menu without deleting them permanently.
- a.) Appearances -> Menus & then create a custom menu, give it a name
- b.) Select Primary Menu at the bottom of the meny and click Save Menu
- c.) You can now move things around, add pages, categories or external links. This controls your main blog menu
4. Sidebar Setup
Once you have setup your blog header & menu you are going to want to setup your sidebar. Our sidebars are special and go beyond what could be hard coded in. It involves a little manual work on your side but its not difficult at all we promise! Plus, you will be amazed by the results. In your theme package you would have recieved a sidebar.txt file. Follow that file while watching these videos in order to set your sidebar up
- - It involves uploading images to wordpress, copying image links and pasting them into given code for the widget sidebar.
5. The Smiths & Co. Theme Social Sharing Buttons
- In order to get your sharing buttons at the bottom of each post working properly you will need to install the add to any plugin that we provided in the theme folder. You will then need to activate the plugin and go to the plugin options which you will find under 'settings' on your dashboard. For Universal Button select "Image URL' and leave it blank. For Placement deselect all of the options listed. Leave the rest of the settings as-is and click save at the bottom of the page.
6.Handy Tips
- a.) How to remove comment option from pages (ie. about page) Edit page, click "Screen Options" on Upper Right of Edit Page. Select the box next to Discussions. Then scroll down to bottom of page and under "Discussions" option, Unclick "Allow Comments"
- b.) How to setup your round image if you have photoshop. Open the .PSD file. Drag and drop your desired image into the psd. Drag your image layer under the demo image & then drag it back to the top. (Need to make a clipping mask) Save as a .png file.