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Start with a Theme: Magazine Styles in WordPress

Start with a Theme: Magazine Styles in WordPress

with Morten Rand-Hendriksen

 


This installment of Start with a Theme explains how to set up an online magazine using WordPress and three different themes that result in three completely different looks—without getting bogged down in code. Author Morten Rand-Hendriksen helps you get your WordPress site up and running quickly, and add the additional authors (or bylines) and standard content typical of any online magazine. He then illustrates the benefits and drawbacks of each of the three free themes, Max Magazine, Path, and Oxygen, and shows how to install and tweak their unique settings.
Topics include:
  • Adding content
  • Providing roles and access levels for multiple authors
  • Setting up an about page and a contact form
  • Installing and activating each theme
  • Customizing themes
  • Using custom Max Magazine widgets
  • Setting up the Oxygen front page
  • Configuring widgets and menus in Path
  • Getting the word out with social media sharing

show more

author
Morten Rand-Hendriksen
subject
Design, Web, CMS, Blogs, Projects
software
WordPress 3.x
level
Beginner
duration
1h 18m
released
Nov 27, 2012

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Introduction
Welcome
00:04Hi, my name is Morten Rand-Hendriksen, and this is Start with a Theme Magazine Styles in WordPress.
00:11In this course we'll look at three different free WordPress themes you can use to create
00:16a cool, attractive, and easy-to-use magazine website.
00:20To start off, I'll give you a crash course in user management, then we'll take a look
00:25at the Max magazines theme and its features, we'll swap to the Oxygen theme and look at
00:31it's more advanced customization options,
00:34and finally, we'll activate the Path theme and see what it can do.
00:39The web is a great place to publish your ideas, and making a magazine site with WordPress
00:44is now easier than ever.
00:46I'm excited to show you how you can get up and running in a snap.
00:49So let's get cracking with Start with a Theme Magazine Styles in WordPress.
00:56
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What you should know before watching this course
00:00I know you're itching to get started,
00:02but before we jump in, let me just briefly explain how this course is going to work.
00:07First of all, if this is the first time you're using WordPress, and you're not familiar with the application,
00:12I recommend you go check out my WordPress Essential Training course right here in the
00:17lynda.com online training library.
00:20That way you'll have a clear understanding of how WordPress works and how Themes work before we get started.
00:26Throughout this course, I'll be working with an example site on my local server.
00:30To help you get the most out of this course, I encourage you to use your own assets, populate
00:36a WordPress site with the content that you are going to use on your real website, and work with that content.
00:42That way you can configure a site to work with your content, and when you're done with
00:46the course, you can simply publish your website.
00:51
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1. Setting Up WordPress as a Magazine Site
Adding content
00:00One of the many great things about WordPress, and something that really matters when you're
00:04creating a magazine site is that WordPress gives you the ability to have multiple different authors and contributors
00:11on your site, and they all have different access levels and can do different things.
00:15This is often overlooked.
00:17I tend to see people use just one or two capabilities, either people are subscribers, or they're administrators.
00:24But if you know how these roles and capabilities work, you can give people different access
00:29levels and then have people contribute in different ways to your site.
00:33To see how this all works, you can go to the Dashboard of your site and go to Users, and
00:39here, I have added a bunch of different users to give you an idea of how this all fits together.
00:43Here is me, I'm an administrator, that means I have access to everything.
00:47I can publish or unpublish posts, I can edit anything I want, and I can also make changes to the site.
00:53However, most of your contributors don't need to have access to all this content.
00:58They may be editors who are going to go in and check content and publish content, they
01:03may be authors who should be allowed to publish their own content and edit their own content,
01:08or they may even be contributors who are just submitting content into the site and then
01:12some one else has to go check it.
01:14As an administrator, I can assign roles to any of the users.
01:18So I can go in and edit Michelle here, for example, and when I scroll down you'll see
01:23here we have a Role, and when I drop it down you see we have five default Roles: Subscriber,
01:30Contributor, Author, Editor, and Administrator. The Subscriber role is the most basic roles.
01:37All the subscriber can do is subscribe to the site and change his or her own profile.
01:42A Contributor has a bit more power a Contributor can submit a story that means write up a page or a post.
01:49But a Contributor can only submit it for a view.
01:51The Contributor can't publish a story someone else has to do that, an Author has the capability
01:57of submitting a story or a post and publishing that post and editing that post.
02:02However, he can't publish or edit anyone else's posts.
02:06An Editor can publish their own posts and edit other people's posts and publish or unpublish
02:11those posts, and like I said, the administrator has complete control over the whole site.
02:16My tip to you is this:
02:18make sure you have as few administrators as possible.
02:22Most people don't need to be administrators because they don't need control over the whole site.
02:26They just need capabilities to either publish their own content or edit other people's content.
02:30Basically, if you have several different contributors to your site, give them access levels that
02:35are appropriate to what they're going to do. In most cases, contributors will be Contributors.
02:41In some cases they will be Authors, and you also need Editors on your staff to make sure
02:45that content is edited and then published.
02:49If you need to know more about roles and capabilities and see how far this rabbit hole really goes,
02:54you can go to the WordPress Codex and check out the Rules and Capabilities article.
02:59Here you get a complete breakdown of every role and capability and what they can do, and
03:04at the very bottom you also get the links to plug-ins you can add to add more roles
03:08and capabilities or augments the existing roles and capabilities that are there.
03:13
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Understanding access levels and roles for multiple authors
00:00It goes without saying that no website is complete without content, and that is especially
00:05true when it comes to magazine type websites , because in a magazine website, the whole point
00:10is to constantly publish new content and often from different authors.
00:15Let me show you how the process works when have authors with different access levels.
00:19Let's say for the moment that I'm Andy, and Andy is just a contributor to the site.
00:24That means he has limited capabilities when it comes to uploading and publishing content.
00:31I've written a post, it's here in a Word document, and I've also taken some pictures that I want
00:36to attach to the post.
00:38So I'll open my Word document and then I'll log in to my site as Andy.
00:46The first thing you notice when I'm logged in as Andy is that the interface is far simpler
00:51than it is when you're logged in as an administrator.
00:53I only have a very few options here on the left-hand side, and you can also see that
00:58all I can do here is click on Posts.
01:01When I click on Posts all I see is my own posts, no one else's, I can add a new post,
01:11I can give the post a title, paste in the content using the Paste as Plain Text function,
01:21and I can also set a category and some tags So I'll copy the tags then I'll go and look
01:27at the category this is Food, and I'll paste in the tags.
01:33But because I'm a contributor, I don't have the upload media function here so I can't add
01:37any images, and I also can't add a featured image. If I click on it, it just tells me,
01:43I don't have permission to upload files.
01:46All I can do as a contributor is submit the story for review.
01:50So I'll click Submit for Review, and the story is now submitted into the system.
01:58To get the story published, someone else now has to take an active role in the story.
02:02They can add pictures and also publish a story.
02:05So I'm going to log out, and then I'm going to log in again as the editor Michelle.
02:12Now because Michelle is an editor, she has more capabilities.
02:16You see she's still missing all the administrative capabilities, she can't control users, and
02:20she can't control the look and behavior of the site.
02:23But she has more control over the posts.
02:26If we go to Posts, you see that there's one post pending right here, Autumn's Best-Apples from Andy Lort.
02:34I can go in and Edit this post, and then I can add images and work with images.
02:45I'll give each image a title, then an alternate text, turn off the link URL, and when I'm done
02:56changing all this, I'll click save changes first and then I'll go back and assign one
03:02image as my featured image. I'll select this image.
03:06Click Use as featured image, and then I'll place in the two next images.
03:13So I'll place my cursor where I want the image to be, I'll go back to Upload/Insert.
03:20Go to Gallery and show the image I want to insert I want to be Center, no link, Full
03:29Size click Insert into Post and then I'll hit Enter again and do the same thing with the second picture.
03:40Because I'm now logged in as Michelle and Michelle has the role of editor, I can now
03:45publish the story so I'll publish the story, and when I jump to the front page of the site,
03:51you see the story got published, it's down here under the sticky posts, and you'll also
04:00see that the author is set as Andy Lort.
04:03So even though Andy didn't actively publish the story, he still owns the story.
04:08However, because he is just a contributor, he can't go in and edit the story once it's published.
04:13If you want to give Andy the capability of editing a story after it got published, you
04:17need to upgrade his role to author.
04:22
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Setting up an about page and a contact form
00:00Whenever you make a website, and especially if that website is a publication site like a magazine site,
00:06it's important that you add information about yourself and also a simple way for people to contact you
00:12so that they can send an information and have a conversation with you about your content.
00:17Adding pages and features like contact forms and WordPress is very easy.
00:22As you can see, in this site I've already created an ABOUT page and a CONTACT page.
00:29But these pages aren't very interactive.
00:31These pages were created by going to the back end, selecting Pages, and clicking Add New.
00:40Creating pages is no different from creating posts.
00:43If you need to know more about creating pages and posts, you should go check out my WordPress
00:47Essential Training course right here in the lynda.com online training library.
00:52What I want to show you now is how to add a contact form to your contact page.
00:57I'm going to do that through a plug-in.
00:59So I'm going to go to Plugins and click Add New, and then I'm going to add a cool little
01:04plug-in called the grunion contact form plug-in.
01:08The grunion contact form plug-in was created for wordpress.com and has been released for
01:14self-hosted WordPress sites as well.
01:18It was created by Automatic Incorporated, which is the company that runs wordpress.com, it's
01:23a very simple contact form plug-in that not only provides contact forms in your site but
01:29also adds this feature here on the side called Feedbacks where you can see the responses
01:33that are sent in, in the plug-in right inside WordPress, so you don't have to read them in your email.
01:39To add a contact form to my contact page I first go to my contact page, I find the contact
01:45page and click Edit to edit it then I place my cursor where I want my form to appear and
01:52then I click on this new button here that says Add a custom form.
01:56Grunion will give me a default form that I can use if I want to, and I can also augment
02:01this form by adding new fields and the fields can be anything that can be Checkboxes,
02:07Drop Down, Email, Name, Radio, Text, or anything else.
02:12As I work with this form I can also move different elements up and down, or I can edit individual
02:17elements to put in different information here.
02:20But I'm going to leave this form the way it is because it's good enough.
02:24If you want the form entries to be sent to you by email, you can go to Email notifications
02:30and put in the Email address you want this form to be sent to.
02:33You can also put in the subject line so that you can see that this is coming from this particular form.
02:38The reason why you can do this for each individual form is because grunion allows you to add
02:43as many forms as you want.
02:45You can have one form on your contact page, another form on your submissions page, and
02:50a third form on your advertising page so people can contact you directly about specific topics.
02:56Once you're done with your form, click Add this form to my post, and you see what the
03:02plug-in does is it puts in a lot of these small little code snippets. These are called short codes.
03:08It doesn't look like much inside the edit view but if I update the page and then view
03:14the page, you'll see we now have a nice contact form in our page.
03:19That makes it easy for people to go into your page and contact you directly. I'm going to
03:24answer the question you already have here.
03:26Why didn't I just add an email address in my post? Adding an email address in your page
03:32or post is a very bad idea for one simple reason.
03:35There all these computers on the Internet they are called bots, they are just automatic
03:39computers that serve the Internet looking for email addresses.
03:43So if you put in your email address in plain text in your page, that bot will pick up your
03:48email address and then start sending you spam.
03:51So by putting a contact form on your page you avoid that, and you also make it much easier
03:55for people to contact you.
03:56Because instead of having to copy your email address and then open your email program and
04:00fill in all the information, you can ask them directly to just fill in the information here,
04:05and you get the exact information you want, and then they can submit their question or
04:10information to you, and you can process it on your own time.
04:15
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2. Using Max Magazine
Installing and activating Max Magazine
00:00The first theme we're going to look at is this one called Max magazine.
00:05Max magazine is a fairly new theme and has a lot of interesting components like sliders
00:10and featured carousels that make it easier to create a good landing page for a magazine site.
00:15Because Max magazine is available inside the WordPress.ORG Themes Directory,
00:20we can install it from directly inside WordPress.
00:24So I'll go to my WordPress site, go to the back end, go to Appearance and Themes, and then
00:31go to Install Themes. In here, I'm going to search for Max magazine, and once I find the
00:39theme, I'm going to install it.
00:42WordPress downloads and installs the theme, and now I can either Live Preview it or Activate it directly.
00:47So I'm just going to activate it directly to make sure it works.
00:51Once the theme is active, I'm going to go back to the front page and take a look to see that everything works properly.
00:57Now the one thing I do with every new theme I install these days is make sure it's responsive.
01:02This is becoming extremely important, because not everyone uses desktops to access your websites anymore.
01:08They may use a phone or tablet or some other tool therefore you need to make sure that
01:13the theme will change and reorganize to fit different size screens.
01:18The easiest way to do that is to simply take your window and change the size of the window.
01:23When you change the width of the window if this theme is responsive you'll see it does what you see here.
01:29It'll change the layout and configuration as the window gets smaller.
01:34That way you know that the site will work well on tablets and other devices with small screens.
01:41Now that Max magazine is activated on our site,
01:44we need to do some work to make it look the way we want it to so that it fits with our branding.
01:49
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Basic theme customization
00:00With Max magazine installed and activated on the site, you can see that just out of
00:05the box these themes actually are quite advanced.
00:08Starts off with a big menu, and it has some ad space up here, then it has a slider with
00:13featured stories, it has another carousel with more featured stories, and then underneath
00:19we have each our posts.
00:24Like with most other modern WordPress themes, you can also make some changes to the overall
00:28look of the site very easily using the theme customizer built into WordPress.
00:33To get to the theme customizer, you just need to be logged in and then you can go to the
00:37WordPress menu at the top and click Customize, and this activates the customizer.
00:45From here we can change things like the Site Title & Tagline, Background Color, The Background
00:51Image if you want to use it, and swap around Navigation and also set whether
00:55the front page should be static or your latest posts.
00:59In this case, you may have noticed that the title hasn't changed, and that's because the title
01:04on Max magazine is actually an image.
01:06So we need to put up an image, and we're going to do that later.
01:09But for now we're going to make the change we can make here, that includes changing the
01:13Background Color, and also changing the Navigation. I've already created a couple of menus, and
01:20I want to use one of those asked the Main menu on the site.
01:23And as you can see, Max magazine has a Primary Navigation area which is this main menu.
01:29So here I can put in the menu I want to use, it's this one down here, I call it menu, and
01:36now you see I have the navigation I want at the top. Because the theme only has one navigation area,
01:42if I want to add additional menus, I would have to create a new menu place it in a widget
01:47and then place it either here on the side or in the footer.
01:50I also want to change to background color.
01:53If I collapse the theme customizer for a second, you'll see the background color by default
01:57is this very like gray. But I want to change it to a different color.
02:03First, I'm going to see if I can use to color from my logo.
02:06I have this logo I created that I want to use in the site, and it has this orange.
02:11So I'm going to see if I can match that orange and then use that as my background color.
02:15So I'll go into my site, open Colors, and then enter the hex value for my color, its e06531,
02:24and I'll collapse again to see what that looks like.
02:30It's a little too intense so I don't thing I'm going to go with that instead, I'm going
02:33to go with a darker gray.
02:36So I'll pick a random gray color, here, collapse it again, and now I have a menu I want and a back I want.
02:45So I'll open the Theme Customizer again and Save & Publish my changes.
02:50That covers the basic theme customizations that you can do from regular WordPress functions.
02:55But Max magazine has a lot of other features, and that's what we're going to be looking at next.
03:01
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Max Magazine options: Homepage settings
00:00When you activate a more advanced theme like Max magazine, you'll often find that in addition
00:05to the standard customization options that you find in most WordPress themes you also have additional theme options.
00:12The Theme Options are usually found under your Dashboard under Appearance.
00:17If you go to Appearance you should see either Theme Options or theme customization or customization or something like that.
00:28That's where you want to go to see what's available in terms of Theme Options, and this
00:32varies greatly from theme to theme.
00:34In the case of Max magazine, we have a lot of theme options and most of them have to do with the front page.
00:40When you go to Theme Options, you see we have these options down here, and if you open Homepage
00:45Settings you'll see there are lots of options for the Homepage.
00:48From the top we have the Logo URL, we have a Favicon URL, and we have a Custom RSS URL.
00:54So I want to add in a Custom Logo, because if you remember, open this in a separate tab,
01:01the logo on the site right now is the Max magazine logo.
01:05I also want to add in a Favicon, because right now my browser is still remembering the website
01:09we were working on earlier, so the Favicon for the site is wrong.
01:13I want to add a new Favicon but I have to create one first.
01:16Unfortunately Max magazine doesn't allow you to upload your logo URL directly, so I am
01:22going to show you a little trick here.
01:24Because I need to copy a URL and paste it in here, what I am going to do is open the
01:27Media panel in a separate tab and then I'll upload my logo here and then grab the URL.
01:35So I'll go Select Files, navigate to my desktop, and find the logo I want to use, this is a transparent PNG.
01:44Once it's uploaded, I'm going to go down here under File URL and copy the URL for the file.
01:52Then I'll go back to my Theme Options and paste that logo in.
01:58I'll Save that change, reload my page, and now you'll see my new logo appears in place
02:06of the Max magazine logo.
02:08I also want to do the same with the Favicon, but first I have to create my Favicon.
02:12On my desktop I already have the graphic I want, but it's a PNG file.
02:17What I need for the Favicon is an ICO file instead.
02:22So, now I am going to a site where I can create this ICO file, it's called xiconeditor.
02:26There are tons of these sites out there, you just have to find one that you like.
02:32At xiconeditor I'll click Import to import the file, and I'll upload the file that I
02:37want to convert, I'll size it the way I want, click OK, and from here I can edit the image
02:45if I want to, or I can simply go to Export and download the icon.
02:50Now that's it's on my computer, I'll open the folder so I can see where it is, and I'll grab
02:56the address for the folder then I'll go back to Upload New Media files in WordPress and
03:02add a new media file right here by going to Select Files, and I'll paste in the location
03:09and then find Favicon, click Open.
03:13The Favicon is uploaded into WordPress, then I'll again go and grab the URL, go back to
03:20Theme Options > Homepage Settings and paste in the Favicon URL.
03:27When I now save this and reload my page, you'll see that the Favicon changed to this Boulder Rocks logo.
03:38In addition to the Logo URL and Favicon URL you can also add in a Custom RSS URL.
03:43This is only if you have a Custom RSS feed that's separate from your regular RSS feed
03:48in WordPress, so in most cases you don't need to this.
03:51Directly underneath that you can Enable or Disable the slider, the Carousel, and Featured
03:57Categories on your front page.
03:58If you go back to the front page you can see we have a slider at the top here, then we
04:03have a Carousel, which shows a series of posts, and then underneath we have Featured Categories.
04:09Well, we don't have Featured Categories yet, but we can activate Featured Categories if you want to.
04:14So let's see what happens if I turn off the slider and the Carousel.
04:21I'll simply uncheck these two boxes, reload my front page, and now you see we only have the posts.
04:30I can also try to assign Featured Categories instead, so I'll go in here, and now I'll
04:35say I want Events and Food and Outdoors as my Featured Categories.
04:42I'll click Save Settings, reload the front page, and now you see each of my Featured
04:50Categories gets its own section.
04:52Here is the first story of the Events category and the second story, here is the first story
04:57of the Foods category and the second and the third and so on and so on down, and then when
05:02we were done with all the featured categories then we get the regular post.
05:09So what you're seeing here is by toggling the slider, the Carousel, and the Featured
05:14Categories on and off and maybe selecting specific categories to displaying each of
05:19them, you can create a highly-customized front page that fits your exact needs.
05:24It also means that if you have a new story you want to feature, you can add it in the
05:29Carousel and feature it and then later you can take the Carousel out when you don't want it.
05:34With this theme you have a lot of flexibility, and you can customize your front page to fit almost every need.
05:40And just like with everything else in WordPress, always remember that anything you do is not
05:44permanent, so you always have the opportunity to change something later if you don't like it,
05:48or if you want to add a new feature.
05:53
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Max Magazine options: Other settings
00:00The Max magazine theme also has other options that are not strictly related to the front page. Let's take a look.
00:08The Post and Page Settings allow you to toggle on and off Display Author Info, Enable comments
00:14on pages, and Enable comments on media.
00:16To see what the author info is, I can go to the site and go to one of the posts.
00:21So I'll go to this one and here when I scroll down to the bottom, you'll see at the bottom
00:26we have this box that says About the author, it has the name of the author that links directly
00:31to the author archive for that author, and it has the small bio for that author.
00:36If the author had a gravatar setup you would also see the picture of the author here.
00:40If I go back to the Theme Options and toggle Display Author Info off and Save Settings,
00:46you'll see that when I reload this post the author info is gone. So that's what that function does.
00:54I recommend leaving this function on.
00:57Now just to clarify one thing, the only way the author info will appear is if the author has a bio inserted.
01:04If you go to the profile of an author, for instance, I'll go to Andy, you'll see here
01:10at the bottom you have a box that says Biographical Info.
01:14For the author info to appear you need to fill out the biographical info for this author
01:19otherwise it won't show up, because there would be nothing to show.
01:22So, if you activate the author profile, but you don't see the author information,
01:27it's because that author does not have the biographical info inserted yet.
01:33Back in Theme Options you see the two other options are pretty self-explanatory.
01:38One enables comments on pages. I recommend turning this one off because you rarely want
01:43comments on your contact page or about page, and the other one enables comments on media pages.
01:48I also would turn that one off. I'll save these settings, and that will skip down
01:53to the next option, Ads and Custom Styles.
01:57Here you have two options: the first one is the Header ad code.
02:00If you look at our site, scroll out to the top, you'll see we have this big ad here at the header.
02:06To insert and add in the header you have to put in the code in this box, and this box
02:10takes straight up HTML, as you can see, here there is a link that's wrapping around an image.
02:17So if you want to add a new ad you simply upload the image and replace the URL to the
02:23image and also the target URL here, and you can put in other HTML if you want.
02:28If you don't want an ad all you have to do is cut it out, save the settings, and reload
02:36the page and the ad disappears, so now you just have an empty space. And of course, you
02:41don't have to use the space for an add, you can put anything you want there since it's
02:45HTML, so you can put text or images or whatever you want.
02:50The other option, custom CSS styles, allows you to enter custom CSS into your theme that
02:57will then override the existing theme.
02:59This is a fairly advanced option, and it requires that you already understand how to create
03:03CSS for a WordPress, but if you do, and you don't want to create a child theme, you can
03:08simply insert some CSS here, and it'll work the same way as a child theme.
03:13The last option is Webmaster Tools.
03:16Here you can enter a meta description for your entire site that will be the description
03:20that a browser or a search engine sees if someone links to the front page of your site.
03:26You can also put in statistics tracking code if you're using a tool like Google Analytics,
03:32and you can enter Google site verification code and Bing site verification code.
03:37These are all custom features that require you to have accounts with Google or Bing or
03:42somewhere else, and you can choose which ones you want to use.
03:46Now I am just going to tell you that a lot of plug-ins like the WordPress SEO plug-in
03:51and the all-in-one SEO plug-in do the same things, so if you put it in here and then
03:56you run one of this plug-ins as well, you may double up on all this information it that's
04:00not necessarily a good idea.
04:02So if you're using one of those plug-ins, if you're using a Google Analytics plug-in,
04:06for example, don't put in statistics tracking code here as well, you only want one instance
04:10of the statistics tracking code.
04:14At the bottom, you have the Support us tag this is becoming fairly common, because theme
04:18developers who create free themes don't get paid for the themes because they're free,
04:23so they say, hey, if you like what we're doing, and you want us to continue please give us a small donation.
04:29So if you'd like to support the developer who created this theme and give the developers
04:33a credit for building the theme consider giving them a small donation.
04:38
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Using custom Max Magazine widgets
00:00Max magazine has one more trick up its sleeve in the form of a series of custom widgets.
00:06To see them, you have to go to the back end and go to Appearance and Widgets and here
00:10you'll see you have five extra widgets Max: Latest Tweets, Max: Social Links, Max: Facebook
00:17Likebox, Max: Sidebar 125x125 Ads, and Max: Subscriber Counter.
00:24These widgets are associated with the theme so they're only active if you're using a theme
00:28and they add-on extra functionality to your site.
00:31Let's take a look at a couple of them.
00:33Max: Latest Tweets allows you to show your latest tweets in the sidebar or in your footer,
00:39all you do is a give it a title and put in your Twitter handle--in my case mor10--Save
00:44it and load your front page and here you got a link to my Twitter profile along to my Twitter
00:50photo, and you see a list of my latest tweets.
00:52So as I am tweeting you'll see my new tweets show up.
00:55This gives people the impression that stuff is going on, on Twitter and they want to follow you.
01:03If you want to, you can combine the my latest tweets widget with the subscriber counter widget.
01:09This one lets you show how many subscribers you have to FeedBurner and also to Twitter.
01:14FeedBurner is a service you can hook up your RSS feed to, but if you don't have it there
01:19is no point putting it in.
01:21The Twitter ID, if you put in your Twitter ID, you'll show how many followers you have on Twitter.
01:27When I reload the page, you'll see I have zero subscribers because I don't have a FeedBurner
01:33ID, but I have over 3000 followers on Twitter.
01:37As you can see, you only want to put this in if have quite a lot of followers and subscribers,
01:42otherwise it looks kind of sad, so this is an option.
01:46If you don't like this view, you can swap it out for Max: Social Links instead this
01:52gives you the ability to link directly to different social networks.
01:56So let's say you have Twitter, and you have a Facebook page, you don't have a Google+
02:03page, and you also don't want to link to your contact page, but you want to link to your feed.
02:13This widget provides nice-looking links to all the services you enter.
02:17So if you have the services you add them on, if you don't have them you don't have them on.
02:21That way you can get people to follow you on the services you are using and not on the
02:26ones they're not using.
02:29If you're a heavy Facebook user you may also want to add the Facebook Likebox.
02:33Here you just put in the URL to your Facebook page, and you may want to give it a title
02:39like Follow us on Facebook, and this automatically inserts the Likebox with the Facepile.
02:47Now if you've ever tried to work with Facebook code before you know that it can be kind of
02:52a challenge to get it to work properly. So here Max magazine does all that work for you.
02:57All you have to do is provide the link to your Facebook page and Max magazine will insert
03:02the Facebook Likebox for you.
03:04The Facebook Likebox is extremely valuable, because if people are logged into Facebook
03:10and then they visit your site, they'll see pictures of their friends in this box if their
03:15friends like this page, and that makes them far more likely to like your site.
03:20So if you want to up the likes on Facebook, you should add one of these Facebook boxes
03:26and with Max magazine that's super easy.
03:29The last custom widget is the Sidebar Ads widget.
03:33This widget allows you to add a title like sponsors and then you put in the URL to the
03:38image you want to use, has to be 125x125 pixels and then you put in the link you want
03:44to land on when people click on that link.
03:46It's a very, very simplified ad function and to be honest with you I wouldn't use this
03:51one I would use a proper ads plug-in if I wanted to have ads in my sidebar.
03:56But if you just want to experiment, you can try this one and see what happens.
04:01Using the custom widgets in conjunction with the other custom features on the front page
04:06like your slider, your carousel, you're featured categories, and other elements, you can create
04:12a highly customized landing page for your magazine and make this site quite interesting for people to visit.
04:19There are two widgets areas on the site, you have the sidebar, and you also have the footer,
04:23and you can put any of the widgets in any of these areas.
04:28
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Things to keep in mind when using Max Magazine
00:00If you like what you see in Max magazine, and you want to use this theme for your site,
00:05here are a couple of things to keep in mind.
00:07Make sure you add a custom logo at the top, so it's easy for people to understand where
00:11they are and also that you create a custom menu, so it's easy for people to get to the
00:15page you want them to go to.
00:18Use these front-page feature sparingly, meaning only add either the slider or the carousel.
00:24Because if you look, you'll see that it gets quite distracting when you have multiple elements
00:28moving around at the same time.
00:31Also try to assign categories to these features if you decide using them.
00:36If you don't assign categories, these features will display all the new posts in the same
00:41order that you display lower down.
00:43So if you decide to display all the posts up here, you have to remember to go to your
00:47Theme Options, scroll to the bottom of Homepage Settings and turn off Latest Post List, otherwise you're repeating yourself.
00:56On the other hand, if you're displaying only categories up here like I have now--I have
01:00one category up here, another one underneath, and then two more categories down here--
01:05may be a good idea to have all your latest posts on the bottom,
01:10add in some custom widgets, and see what looks best so you give a nice experience to the
01:15people who visit, because that's what matters more than anything with magazine sites.
01:19You don't want to overload people with content, and you also want to drive them to specific places.
01:24So if you want people to follow you on the Facebook, that's what the focus should be.
01:28If you want people to follow on Twitter, that's what the focus should be.
01:31If you want people to read a specific story, it should be at the top and have a large picture.
01:37And one last thing, as you've noticed, all these features revolve around featured images.
01:42So if you're going to use this theme, I highly suggest you always assign a featured image to each post.
01:48Just be advised that sometimes those featured images will get squished and stretched because
01:52of the theme, and that's not something that's very easy to do anything about.
01:57
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3. Using Oxygen
Installing and activating Oxygen
00:00The next theme we're going to look at is the Oxygen theme from DevPress.
00:05Oxygen is an advanced theme built on top of a framework from DevPress.
00:10And if you go to the Theme Homepage, you can get more information about the theme framework
00:14right here, it's called Hybrid Core.
00:17This means that if you learn how to use Oxygen, you can also use any other theme developed
00:21on the same framework very easily.
00:24The framework has some really advanced features and allows you to do things like build child themes very easily.
00:30But most of the themes you find on this framework cost money.
00:34This on the other hand, is a free theme you can deploy on your site, so you get a feel for this framework.
00:42Because Oxygen is in the Themes directory on wordpress.org, we can install it directly from WordPress.
00:47So I'm going to go to my backed on WordPress, go to Appearance > Themes, Install Themes
00:57and search for Oxygen and Install Oxygen.
01:03Once the package is downloaded and installed I'm going to activate the theme, jump to the
01:09front page, and just like before make sure that this theme is responsive.
01:16Like I said earlier in the course, that's the first thing I do when I activate a new
01:20theme, because if the theme is not responsive you really shouldn't be using it on your site.
01:25Oxygen is responsive, meaning we can now move on to customization.
01:30
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Configuring Oxygen settings
00:00Out of the box, Oxygen looks like a pretty sophisticated standard WordPress theme, you
00:05have the title, you have some widgets, and you have the posts in reverse chronological order.
00:12When you go to any of the posts, you see the featured image, you see the content, and when
00:17you scroll to the bottom you have comments.
00:20But what's cool about Oxygen is that it has tons of customization features, so you can
00:25make this theme look like something completely different just by using those features.
00:30We're going to start off by looking at the widgets and the menus, so let's start with menus.
00:35You notice that out of the box there are no menus on the site, so I want to add some menus.
00:40In the back end, I've created three menus. I have the standard menu that's going to be
00:44the menu for the top on my sites, I also have a Footer menu for the bottom of my site, and
00:49I have a Categories menu that is a list of my category indexes.
00:54I can assign these to three different areas primary, secondary, and subsidiary.
00:58So I'll assign the main menu to the primary area first, and let's see where it shows up.
01:05So I'll reload my page, and you see now we get a menu directly under the header where
01:10you would expect it to be.
01:12If the main menu has sub-items, let's see we add another element here and put it underneath
01:21and save the menu and reload the page. You'll see an arrow appears, and that sub-item becomes
01:30a dropdown menu that looks really nice.
01:35If we populate the secondary menu with the categories menus, you'll see that one will
01:41appear directly under the main menu, but it looks quite different.
01:45So here you can differentiate different menu items just like I did.
01:49I put all my meta items, so about and contact and things that have to do with the general
01:55site at the top, and then I put stuff that's more likely to be clicked on when people are
02:00surfing through the site on the side. And just like with the main menu, you also have navigation
02:05here, so if you have sub-items that would fly out when you hover over the menu items,
02:11the subsidiary menu is the footer menu, so I'll assign the footer menu to it and scroll
02:18to the bottom, and you'll see down here we now have a nice menu at the very bottom.
02:24I always add a menu at the bottom, because I find that when people scroll down to the
02:28bottom they may want to navigate some where else usually to an about page or a contact
02:33page, and if you don't give them a link they're very unlikely to scroll all the way up to
02:37the top again they just abandon the site.
02:39So by putting menu items at the bottom, you ensure people find what they're looking for.
02:45You also have several widgetized areas in this theme, you can already see one it's right
02:49here on the left side under that secondary menu, and if we go into the dashboard and
02:54go through appearance in widgets, you'll see that we have a primary area, a secondary area,
03:01a subsidiary area, and also the a widgetized area that goes after singular posts and another
03:07one for the header. But what's really cool about this theme is something I have to show you.
03:13If you add a widget on here, you'll notice that the widget options have changed that's
03:18because this theme framework ships with more advance features in the widgets.
03:23So instead of having the regular widget options you have more advanced options.
03:27For example, here in Search where you can get a different type of search option.
03:30So I can put in a search text here, click Save, I reload the page and my search box
03:41actually says search in it and then when I click on it goes away.
03:45I can always choose to revert back to the default search function if I want to, but
03:50because the theme ships with more custom functions, you're better off using those custom functions,
03:55because they're generally better.
03:58Now you'll also see where the secondary widegtized area is it's on the right-hand side here,
04:03so here we can put in some extra widgets like Archives and again the custom archive option
04:12and maybe a list of pages.
04:18Now I'm not going to go through all these features in great detail, you have to kind
04:22of experiment and find out what they do, and if you want more information you have to go
04:26to a forum where you can find information about the theme framework, but experimenting
04:31with this is quite easy and what you end up with is far more detailed control over every
04:36aspect of your widgets, so it's really cool to play around with.
04:41When I reload my page now, you'll see we have Search box and Archives and a list of pages,
04:48so we have a lot more navigation and more information that people can play around with.
04:54The subsidiary widgets end up on the bottom of the page and the after singular widgets,
04:59of course, end up after singular.
05:01To see the header widgets, we'll add the reason comments to the header just to see where they
05:05appear, and when I reload my page again the header widgets appears in the header of the
05:11page, so this is obviously intended to add information like ads or information about the site itself.
05:18This is great if you use an additional plug-in like to add rotator plug-in where you can
05:23place an ad rotator widget in your header, and then you have a rotating ad in your header in a very easy way.
05:29
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Setting up the Oxygen front page
00:00If you look at my site, the way it's configured right now, you'll notice that it doesn't really
00:05look a lot like the site that's pictured in the Screengrab for the Oxygen theme.
00:10That's because I've yet to activate the front page Page Template that comes with the theme.
00:16To get this front page look we first have to use a specific front page template and
00:20then we have to assign that front page template to the front page.
00:24The first step is to create two pages.
00:27I need one page that's going to work as the front page and then I need a second page that's
00:31going to work as my blog page.
00:34I've already created the two pages, they are called Archive for the blog page and Front page for the front page.
00:41If you open any of these pages, you'll see that the page is empty that's because this
00:46is a placeholder, so this page will be filled with the content on the front page.
00:51Now that I've created a page I'm going to set a template here on the side to Front page.
00:58I'll update this page.
00:59I'll go to my site, I will go to the WordPress menu and click Customize, and once the page
01:05loads I'll go down here to Static Front Page and change from Your latest posts, which is
01:11the standard index, to A static page.
01:14I'll assign the Front page page to the Front page and Archive page as the blog page.
01:21As you can see here in the preview, we now have a different layout for our Front page,
01:25and if I save and publish this and close the customizer, you'll see instead of having the
01:31regular index I now have two areas, I have recent articles, and I have more articles.
01:37Now you may not have any content in these two areas yet.
01:42That's the next step, you need to assign content to these areas to make this work properly.
01:47
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Assigning posts to the Oxygen front page
00:00Now that you have a static page assigned as the Front page, and you've assigned the Front
00:05page page template to that static page, we can start populating the front page.
00:10And this is important, the Oxygen theme doesn't work like many other themes.
00:16In this theme you have to tell WordPress what posts you want to be on the front page and
00:21where you want to place them. Let me show you.
00:24If we go into any of our posts on the back end here, you'll see that once we edit the post
00:31and scroll down a bit you now have a new option here, it's called Location and here you have
00:37four different locations. You have Do not display, Secondary, Primary, and Featured.
00:43These locations correspond with locations on the Front page.
00:47So let's set a post to Featured and update it.
00:53When I now reload my page, Featured post is this at the very top in the slider, Primary
01:01is the next post the ones that under Recent Articles, and Secondary are the ones that are under More Articles.
01:08Now that I know that I can go back and assign posts to different areas.
01:14So I'll assign these three first posts as Featured and update it.
01:21I'll go back, Featured post, I'll assign the three next ones as Primary, Primary > Update.
01:39Go back, edit the post, Primary, go back, so I will edit the post.
01:56Primary, and I'll assign the three next ones as Secondary, update it.
02:13Edit the post, Secondary, back, Location > Secondary, and update it.
02:32The result is we can now control what's on our front-page with very great detail.
02:37So now you see I have a slider here at the top.
02:45I have featured articles underneath, and then I have lists of more articles underneath that again.
02:51But you may also have noticed that some of articles I assigned aren't showing up, and
02:55this is really important, it actually took me a while to figure out what was going on
02:59when I was looking at this.
03:01It turns out that when you're using the Front page template, if a post is set as Sticky,
03:07it doesn't show up on the Front page even if it's assigned to the Front page.
03:11So if you want to use this template you need to just turn your Sticky posts off sticky.
03:16So I will go and Quick Edit and unstick the posts and then reload my Front page again,
03:29and now you'll see that these extra posts appear.
03:32So now I have three here and three here at the bottom.
03:39Now my Front page looks way more like the one in the Screengrab for the theme, but there's
03:43still something that's not quite right, you notice that these images are acting kind of funny.
03:49That's because we need to resize our thumbnails to make everything work properly.
03:54We'll do that next.
03:57
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Resizing featured images to fit the theme
00:00In the previous movie we repopulated the Front page to make it work the way that Oxygen intended the front page to work.
00:07However, you may notice that the slider at the top doesn't really work very well, it's
00:13looking quite strange because it has these images that are shaped differently, and it
00:18just looks odd and doesn't really work the way it's supposed to.
00:22That's because when all these posts were posted they were posted using a different theme and
00:27different themes require different image sizes.
00:30So when you switch themes the image sizes that WordPress has to work with don't match
00:35with what the theme needs.
00:36To make this work, we need to regenerate all of our images so that they fit with what WordPress is looking for.
00:42Fortunately, there's a plug-in for that.
00:45So all we have do is install this plug-in called Regenerate Thumbnails and the plug-in
00:49will go through all the images on our site and then it'll resize them to fit with the current theme.
00:56So I'll go to my Dashboard to Plugins and click Add New to add a new plug-in, and I'll search for regenerate.
01:07Here I find the plug-in called Regenerate Thumbnails by Viper007Bond, I'll then install
01:12that one, activate the plug-in.
01:15Then I'll go to Tools and click Regenerate Thumbnails.
01:21When I click Regenerate Thumbnails, the plug-in will now go through every single image on
01:26my site and create the sizes I need.
01:30Depending on how many images you have on your site, this might take quite a while, and you
01:34can't navigate away from this page while the process is ongoing because then you stop the
01:39process and the images are not regenerated.
01:42So if you have a lot of image, expect to leave your computer on for quite a bit while this process is rolling.
01:47Now that all of my images have been resized, I can go back to my Front page and reload
01:52it, and you'll see that now all of my featured images at the top here are sized the same,
01:59and my slider works the way it was intended.
02:02Regenerating thumbnails is a process that you should always undertake whenever you activate a new theme.
02:07And like I said before, if you have a lot of images on your site, this will take quite a bit of time.
02:13However, it will ensure that the images on your site match what the theme is looking for.
02:17So you don't give people who visit your site a weird experience when images get stretched
02:22or squished or cover each other in some way.
02:27
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Configuring Oxygen settings
00:00Now that we've been able to customize the front page of our theme to make it look more
00:04like a magazine, it's time to look at the other customization settings you have with this theme.
00:10You have the regular customization settings you get with a WordPress theme, you can access
00:14those by going to WordPress menu and going to Customize.
00:20And from here you can change things like the Site Title and Tagline if you want to, you
00:25can also change the Colors, more specifically the Background Color.
00:32You can change a Background Image if you wanted to use a Background Image--something I strongly
00:37advise against with this theme.
00:39You can swap out the Navigation right here in the Customization options, and you can
00:44also configure your Static Front Page to be the latest post instead and put in custom footer information.
00:51The Footer option is actually quite an advanced option where you can put in any HTML you want,
00:56and it'll appear down here at the bottom in the footer.
00:59So if you wanted to add a custom copyright note or something else, you can put it in right here.
01:06In addition to the regular WordPress customization options Oxygen also has Theme options that
01:12are specific to this theme.
01:14The Theme Options are usually found under the Dashboard, under Appearance and either
01:19under the Theme Options or Theme Settings or the Theme Customizations.
01:24In the case of Oxygen it's called Theme Settings.
01:27Here you can do things like upload a Favicon or a logo--just to note if you upload a logo
01:33it has to be 110x70 pixels, if you upload anything else, it gets cropped down.
01:39You can also do something really cool, you can change the Title font family.
01:44If you look at the site out of the box it's using this narrow Sans Serif font called Abel
01:49for its titles, you see it here in the title of the site, and you also see it in the post titles.
01:55You can change this to a set of other fonts, you have some different options here.
02:00For example, you can set it to a Serif font like Droid Serif, update the settings, reload
02:07the page, and you'll see just by changing that font alone you're kind of changing the
02:13overall look of the site, because a Sans Serif font, the original font, is quite different
02:18from the Serif fonts like the one we added here.
02:21If you wanted to look more modern you can also pick the font called Bitter.
02:25This is a Slab font and right now Slab fonts are really popular.
02:29So if you activate the Slab font, you'll see you get this very modern look with a bold
02:38Slab font and all the titles.
02:42The theme also allows you to change the base font size for all the fonts on the site so
02:47that you can make all the fonts bigger or smaller.
02:50And you can change the Link color.
02:52So let's say you have a specific color you want to use throughout your site, you can
02:56change that Link color either manually by punching in the code, or you can drag this
03:03color wheel around to match the color you want.
03:10Changing the Link color is a really effective way of customizing your site to make it your own.
03:18Below the Link color you have the slider Timeout option, this is the count in milliseconds
03:23how long it takes that front-page slider to switch from one image to the next.
03:27As you can see, 6000 is roughly long enough but if you wanted to go either faster or slower,
03:34you can change that value. You can also enable a built-in FancyBox.
03:41A FancyBox is when you click on an image, and it pops up in a larger image on top of your existing site.
03:46Many times you want to use a custom FancyBox plug-in, but since this theme ships with the
03:51FancyBox built in you should just activate it if you want that kind of functionality.
03:56And below that you can enter your own custom CSS.
03:59So just like the first theme we looked at, here you can enter CSS into the theme to override the existing styles.
04:06So this is like a basic version of a child theme without actually using a child theme.
04:11And at the bottom of the Theme Settings you'll find the Footer settings or just like in the
04:16Theme Customizer you put in some HTML and then you display that in the footer.
04:21
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Things to keep in mind when using Oxygen
00:00If you like what you see in the Oxygen theme, and you intend to use it on your site, I strongly
00:05encourage you to go through all of the features and experiment and see what you can do.
00:11What I've shown you is only the very top surface of a much deeper ocean of possibilities that comes with this theme.
00:18There are lots of customization options, especially in the widget, and there are also several
00:23different page templates you can use to assign to different pages throughout the site for customized experience.
00:30Because Oxygen is a free theme from a professional web developer, there's very limited resources available about the theme.
00:37That's because a theme developer DevPress wants you to buy a membership so that you
00:42can see all the documentation and get support and build child themes from this theme.
00:48If you're going to use Oxygen it may be a good idea to spend some money and buy the membership
00:52so you can get the documentation for the theme and learn how to use it properly.
00:57The good news is if you don't want to spend the money, you can figure it out on your own.
01:01It will just take some time.
01:04
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4. Using Path
Installing and activating Path
00:00The final theme we're going to look at in this course is the Path theme.
00:05Path, like the other two themes, is available from the Themes directory on wordpress.org,
00:10meaning it's been tested, and it works properly with WordPress.
00:14To install it, I'll go to my Dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes, click Install Themes and search for path.
00:28When I find the theme, I will install it and then activate it.
00:33Once Path is activated, I'll jump to my Front page and immediately test to see that this theme is responsive.
00:41Like I said previously, that is the first thing you should be doing, you have to make
00:45sure your theme is responsive, otherwise people who use tablets or cell phones, will have
00:49a hard time accessing your website.
00:51I can see that the theme is responsive, so now we have to dive further into the Customization
00:56options to get the theme to look and function the way we want it to.
01:01
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Setting up the Path front page
00:00When I installed Path as my new theme, I already had a page assigned as the Front page of my site.
00:07When I start using a new theme, I always want to see what it looks like in its default configuration.
00:12So the first thing I'm going to do is go to the theme customizer and change Static Front
00:20Page to Your latest posts.
00:24I'll save that and close the theme customizer, and now I get a good look at what this theme actually looks like.
00:33Just like with most themes, it pretty much looks like a standard WordPress theme or a blog theme.
00:38Now that I know what it looks like, it's time to start configuring it.
00:41Because this is a magazine theme, I have a feeling there is going to be a custom template
00:45I can use for the Front page.
00:48So I'll go to the back end, to the Dashboard, and I'll go to Pages, find my Front page and
00:56click Quick Edit and take a look to see if I have any custom Front page templates.
01:01Now here you see something interesting.
01:03This theme doesn't ship with a custom Front page template, instead, it ships with all these other options.
01:09We have an Archives Template, an Authors Template, Most Popular, Most Popular by comments, by
01:15months, by year, by last 30 days, and we also have a slider and a Tag Cloud version.
01:21So I'm going to select the slider Template and update.
01:25Then I'll go back to my theme customizer and go to Static Front Page and assign Front page
01:34to the Front page again.
01:36I'll collapse the theme customizer and take a look at the Front page.
01:42And you'll see that the layout of the Front page changed quite dramatically.
01:46Instead of having the posts vertically one under the other, we now have this different
01:50layout where the posts are next to one another in this grid type layout.
01:56But I don't see any sliders here yet. I have a feeling I know why though.
01:59So I'm going to go and uncollapse the theme customizer and save what I've changed.
02:06Then I'll go back to my Posts and assign a couple of the posts as sticky posts.
02:13So I'll go and select the four first posts here, go the Bulk Actions, select Edit, and
02:20Apply and then I'll find Sticky and set all these posts to Sticky.
02:25I'll update all the posts, jump back to the Front page and here we have that slider.
02:33So while in Oxygen, a sticky post means it will not appear on the Front page, in Path
02:38a sticky post means it will appear on the Front page.
02:42It's confusing, but as the way it is every theme is different.
02:45You also see here that we have that same problem we had before.
02:49The images are kind of all over the place in terms of size.
02:52So now that we activated a new theme, we also need to run the regenerate thumbnails plug-in
02:57to make sure that all our images are sized appropriately for this theme.
03:02
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Using custom functions in Path
00:00In addition to the slider templates that we're using on the Front page and a set of other
00:05page templates that Path ships with, Path also has a set of features that helps us to
00:10add extra information into our site. So let's take a look at those.
00:15If I go into my Dashboard, and I go to the Posts, you will see that in addition to the
00:22regular stuff, we have Post Formats, we have Categories and Tags, and so on.
00:27We also have a new panel here called SEO where you can put in a Document Title, a Meta Description,
00:33and also Meta Keywords.
00:34If you're familiar with using a plug-in like All in One SEO or WordPress SEO, you will
00:39recognize this, if not, I'll give you a very quick crash course.
00:44The idea of this SEO panel is that when you give a post a title, for instance
00:50Autumn's Best - Apples, that title will appear in search and also when people share your site online,
00:56but that title may not be the best title possible.
01:00What you can do with an SEO plug-in or with this SEO feature in this theme is you can
01:05type in a separate title for the post and then that title appears in search and in sharing,
01:11instead of the title that you gave the post originally.
01:14That doesn't really make sense if your title is short and easy to understand, but if you're
01:18like me, and you write these really long titles that are kind of clunky and hard to feature,
01:23you want to write a better SEO title that more directly explains what the post is all about.
01:29For instance, in this case the post is called Autumn's Best - Apples.
01:32I'm going to change that to say Apples: Best in Autumn.
01:42Of course, that's not a very good title either, but I want to change it, so I can show you what happens.
01:47I'm also going to add a Meta Description. The idea with the Meta Description is similar.
01:52When Google and other search engines and sharing sites grab the content of your page, they're
01:57looking for whatever content they can find.
01:59If you don't have a Meta Description, it starts by grabbing the first line of text here at
02:04the top of your post. That might not be the best text to show.
02:08Instead, you should write a custom two-line description of your post, and that's your
02:14Meta Description, and that will be what is registered by the search engine and what is
02:18shared when people share your site in Facebook and Google Plus and other places.
02:23In addition to the SEO panel, the Layout panel allows us to apply a custom layout to this particular post or page.
02:31By default, the layout is the same across the whole site, but you can change the layout
02:35for each individual post or page, if you like.
02:38You can change it from Default to One Column or Two Column, Left or Right or Three Columns, Left, Right or Center.
02:45Let's try changing it to Two Columns, Right, update the post and view it in our browser.
02:55Now you see the layout for this post is quite different from the other layout.
02:59You have this sidebar on the left, and you have the content on the right, but you also
03:03notice that though the title here is Autumn's Best - Apples, the title at the top here is
03:08Apples: Best in Autumn. So here you see that SEO panel kick in.
03:14Just to see what another post looks like, I'm going to jump back to October here and open a different post.
03:22And you'll see that the default layout right now is Two Columns with the main content on
03:27the left and the sidebar on the right.
03:30So there you see that Layout panel and what happens when you change it.
03:36Like I said, Path has a lot of built-in features that you can experiment with, and used sparingly
03:43and smartly, this can create a very interactive experience for the people who visit your site.
03:48Just remember to not overdo it because then everything just gets confusing.
03:53
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Configuring Path settings
00:00Just like the two other themes, Path supports some customization through the regular
00:05WordPress functions and also has some custom functions built-in.
00:09Let's take a look at what we can do to change the appearance of Path using the WordPress
00:14functions first and then take a look at the custom functionality in the theme.
00:18So I'll go to my theme customizer and from here, I can make the standard changes, like
00:25Site Title & Tagline, Colors, Background Image, Navigation, Static Front Page, and I also
00:32have the Footer option where I can put in my own footer.
00:36This all matches the Oxygen theme quite well.
00:39In addition, I have the Layout option where I can choose a Global Layout for the entire
00:44site, between one of these options.
00:46These options match what you saw in the single post view, and the single post view would override these options.
00:53Feel free to experiment with these and see which layout you like the best.
00:58You can change the Background Color of this theme.
01:01However, I have to show you how to do it properly because if you simply go to Colors and change
01:06the Background Color, let's say I want the Background Color to be an orange, you'll see
01:11that nothing really happens.
01:13To get the Background Color to change, you have to change the Background Color and then
01:17you have to go to Background Image, drop down the Image and click Remove Image because the
01:23Background Image is covering the Background Color.
01:27Now that the image is gone, you can see the Background Color.
01:29So now we can go back to Colors and change the color to what you want.
01:33Of course, if you don't like what you just saw, or you made a change and you don't like
01:38it, you can simply click Cancel, and you cancel yourself out of the theme customizer, and
01:43you go back to the default look.
01:45In addition to the standard WordPress features, we also have some built-in features that come with the Path theme.
01:52If you go back to our Dashboard and go to Appearance and Theme Settings, you can see these features.
02:00You can upload a logo--well, you actually use the WordPress Header function to upload
02:04a logo--but you can upload a logo.
02:07You can also add a Custom Background if you want and again this is controlled by the WordPress
02:12Background, and you can change the Global Layout.
02:15So here you change the Global Layout just like you could in the theme customizer.
02:19And finally, at the bottom you can add custom Footer code.
02:24So this takes HTML and also short code to get the exact Footer you want.
02:29I'm going to go and change the Header, because I want to add in my own custom logo, instead
02:35of this Path logo, because after all my site is not called Path, and unless I change it,
02:40it will keep being called Path forever. So, I'm going to go here to Custom Header.
02:45You can get to it on the Dashboard, under Appearance and Header, or you can get to it
02:49through the Theme Settings. And then I'm going to go, select a New Image.
02:53So I'll go to my Dashboard, find the image I want.
02:57This is a transparent PNG, I'll open it, upload it.
03:03WordPress will help me crop it if I need to.
03:05I'm going to skip cropping and publish the image as is.
03:09I see in the preview that it looks the way I want, I'll go down, Save Changes, jump back
03:16to the Front page, and now you see we have my custom logo here at the top instead of Path.
03:23
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Configuring widgets and menus
00:00The widgets and menu settings in the Path theme are very similar to those in the Oxygen theme.
00:06If you look at the Menus first, I'll go to my Dashboard, you see that under Theme Locations,
00:10we have a Primary menu, a Secondary menu, and a Subsidiary menu.
00:15So just like before, I'll assign my menu to the Primary menu and click Save.
00:21Then we'll take a look at the site and see where that menu ends up.
00:25When we reload the page, you see that the menu appears up here at the very top of the page.
00:31Because it's at the very top of the page, it gives people a general impression that
00:35what's in this menu is very meta content, meaning you should only put things that are
00:41kind of about the page rather than the actual content in this menu.
00:46So putting things like Advertise, Contact and About in this Primary menu, makes sense,
00:52but putting category links and stuff like that in the menu, does not make sense.
00:58The Secondary menu appears where you would expect a regular menu to appear, under the title of the site.
01:04So this is where I would put menu items that link directly to content in the site.
01:09For example, if I wanted to have a link to my Archives or rather my blog, I would put it in this menu.
01:16So I'll go back, find Categories, scroll down and then find the Archive page.
01:24Now you'll remember the Archive page is the one that's currently pointing out the blog
01:29and then I'll save this menu.
01:33Now when people come to the site and click on Archive, they get the blog.
01:45The Subsidiary menu is the menu in the Footer.
01:48So if you scroll down to the Footer, you'll see currently there is no menu here, but if
01:54I activate the Subsidiary menu, save it and reload the page, you'll see that just as with
02:02the Header, the Footer menu is all the way down here and is detached from the rest of the content.
02:08This means, again, you should only add stuff that's really meta to the overall site in
02:14this menu, because it's disassociated from the rest of the content.
02:18So this is where I would put things like an About page or information about the team or
02:22the authors or a Contact page.
02:26If you jump to the Widgets section, you see that the widgets are much the same way as they were in Oxygen.
02:33You have a Primary widget area, which you can find if you go the Front page, it's right here on the side.
02:43You also have a Secondary widgetized area and the Secondary widgetized area appears
02:48directly under the Primary one.
02:52You also have a widgetized area, After Singular, and if we place something in here, for example,
02:58a Calendar and then go to a single post, scroll down, you'll see that that widgetized area
03:08appears underneath the post before the comments.
03:13That means this widgetized area would be great to use for advertising, or for a plug-in like
03:19the yet another related post plug-in that inserts links to related posts.
03:26You have another such widgetized area that's called Before Content.
03:29If I grab the Calendar and move it down to Before Content and then Reload the Front page,
03:39you'll see that this area appears directly underneath the slider on the front page, and
03:44it also will appear before any content.
03:48This widgetized area would be great if you wanted to add extra navigation through the
03:52Custom Navigation menu, or if you wanted to add advertising.
03:57The final widgetized area, the Subsidiary area, is the footer widgets, and like the name
04:02suggests, they appear in the Footer.
04:05So if I reload my page now and scroll all the way down, you'll see the Calendar appears in the Footer.
04:12And if you add several widgets to the footer, they will stack one next to the other.
04:17
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Things to keep in mind when using Path
00:00Fully built out, the Path theme is a really impressive magazine style theme.
00:05As you can see, on my custom Front page here, I have a slider, I have a nice layout with
00:11a sidebar with information, and these are the posts stacked nicely next to the next ones.
00:16And I even have a list here at the bottom that shows more articles.
00:21This gives the impression of a really professional type of magazine, and that's exactly what
00:25you should be going for, if you're creating a magazine style website.
00:29There are some things to keep in mind if you're using this particular theme, the Path theme.
00:33First of all, remember that if you want to change the background color, you have to first
00:38remove the background image, because otherwise the color won't shine through.
00:42Also, always remember to add your own custom logo to this theme, otherwise everyone will
00:48think your site is called Path.
00:50When you use the Menus, make sure that you put the meta content in the Primary menu and
00:55the main content for the site in the Secondary menu, otherwise people have a hard time finding
01:00the content they are looking for.
01:02I would also recommend adding a third menu in the widgetized area that appears above the content.
01:08This theme is designed specifically for multi-author sites which is great if you have a multi-author site.
01:14But even if you don't, even if it's just your writing, it's still a great theme.
01:19One last thing you have to keep in mind is the featured images in the slider.
01:23If you add featured images to your slider, make sure that all your images are at least
01:27as wide as this image is.
01:29If you want to find out how wide that is right click on it, go to Inspect elements in your
01:34browser, and you'll get the browser tools that will tell you exactly how big this image
01:38is, as you can see, it's 614 pixels wide.
01:43The reason why you have to keep that in mind is if I go to one of these other images, this
01:47image itself is not actually 614 pixels wide.
01:51So what's happening is the image has been scrunched down and then the theme is up-scaling
01:56it to make it fit without width, and that's where you get this weird skipping thing happening
02:00where the image has a different size than all the other images.
02:04So if you have a Sticky Post that has featured image, make sure that the image is wide enough
02:10to fit in the sticky post.
02:15
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Conclusion
Getting the word out through social media sharing
00:00In this course, I've shown you three different magazine themes that give you three very different
00:05looks to your magazine style website.
00:08You can use any of these three in any way you want, or you can find any of the myriad of
00:13other magazine style themes that are available out there.
00:16The most important thing for you, if you're going to create a magazine style website is
00:21to remember the basic principles of a magazine-style website.
00:25It should have as much content as possible on the Front page to give people the impression
00:30that you have lots of things to tell them and they have lots of options.
00:34So focus on putting as much content as possible on the page, add some sliders, and make it all look really nice.
00:41All the three themes I've shown you today do a really good job at advertising your content
00:46and getting people to read your content.
00:49Now that you've created a website, the last step is to make sure that people not only
00:53read it, but share it with all their friends.
00:57So regardless of what theme you chose for your magazine style website, always remember
01:01to add a sharing plug-in, so people have an easy time sharing your content once they read
01:07it and want to share it with their friends.
01:09Plug-in I use a lot these days is called AddThis, and I'll show you how it works.
01:14I'll go to the Dashboard, go to Plugins, and Add New.
01:20Then I'll search for AddThis in one word.
01:25I'll Install AddThis, activate the plug-in, and then I have to go configure it.
01:33You find it here under Settings and AddThis Share.
01:37Keep in mind that this plug-in changes almost on a constant basis.
01:40So what I'm showing you here might not be exactly the same that you see, but it's going
01:45to be very close and all the functionality stays the same.
01:49The reason why I use AddThis is because it has a lot of options and every time there's
01:53a new social service that comes out, it gets added really quickly.
01:57You can also run stats on the sharing.
01:59If you go to addthis.com, you can sign up for a free AddThis account.
02:04And then you can link that account to your site and then you get stats on who shares
02:07what, and how much is being shared of your content.
02:11Once you have AddThis activated, you can pick what type of sharing tools you want to display on your site.
02:17You can add buttons to the top of your posts and to the bottom of your posts, and you can
02:21also add buttons elsewhere on the site.
02:24It's always a bit of a toss up where you put the buttons, if you want to put them on the top or on the bottom.
02:29I don't recommend putting them in both places, because that looks a bit desperate.
02:33So what you have to think about is this.
02:35Do you think people who read your post will read the entire post and then want to share it?
02:40If that's the case, you want to put the buttons on the bottom.
02:43If most people who visit your site are going to skim your posts, or maybe just read the
02:47beginning of it and then share it, this is especially true if you have a lot of images in your posts.
02:52Then you may want to consider adding the sharing buttons at the top.
02:56If you add them at the top, they will appear underneath the title and meta content, so
03:00underneath the title and author information and all that.
03:04I'm going to first add buttons to the top of my site, and I'm going to choose these
03:07very unobtrusive small buttons here.
03:11I'll turn off the option for the Bottom Sharing tool and then I'll click Save Changes.
03:16Now I can jump to my site, go to a post, and you'll see in this post I now have sharing
03:25buttons right here at the top.
03:27What's really cool about this particular row of buttons is that it looks at the behavior
03:32of the person that's using the website right now.
03:35So if I'm logged into Facebook and Google+ and Twitter, I will see links to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
03:41However, if I only use Gmail, and I'm always logged into Pinterest, I'll see links to Gmail
03:46and Pinterest instead. These buttons are not permanent.
03:50They track the behavior of the person visiting the site, and that will incentivize that person
03:55to share your content on their preferred social network.
03:59The buttons are really unobtrusive and they always have this Plus button, so you can look
04:03at all the social networks you can share with, and you can even search if you can't find yours.
04:08So AddThis gives you the most breath in terms of what social networks are available, and
04:14it's incentivizing people in a very subtle way to share your content with their friends.
04:20If you want to change the settings, simply go back to the Dashboard, and you can swap
04:24the Top Sharing tool for the Bottom Sharing tool, or you can go to Advanced and choose
04:30where you want to show AddThis.
04:31You can show it on the Homepage--that's not something I suggest you do--you can also put
04:35it under Pages and on your Archives, and so on.
04:39And you can track different things, if you're logged in.
04:43By choosing a great magazine style theme, configuring it properly, setting up proper
04:48menus and widgets and setting up the front page to have as much content as possible and
04:54then adding sharing tools on top of that, you create the best possible experience for
04:58your visitors and also the best possible chance for new people to find your content.
05:03And that's what it's all about in the end.
05:05Now that you have seen how these three themes work, it's time for you to install them all
05:10in your site, experiment with them, figure out all the little intricacies of each theme,
05:15and them pick the one you like the best, so you get the best site possible for your content.
05:20
Collapse this transcript


Suggested courses to watch next:


WordPress: Building Responsive Themes (2h 55m)
Morten Rand-Hendriksen


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