Created: 6/3/2021
By: Mike McAlister
Thank you for purchasing Author! If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to check out the Support Forum.
I have provided several installation screencasts to get you started with the Author theme. Be sure to pay attention, as this will help you get the theme installed with ease!
Please note: the setup process may have slightly changed since the video was recorded, so be sure to review the setup instructions below before visiting the support forum. The video should serve as a general guide to setting up the theme.
Author uses a few plugins to provide functionality to the theme.
Options Framework (Required) - This plugin provides the theme options that allow for theme setup and customization.
Contact Form 7 - This plugin creates a fully functional contact form for your site. You can install it directly from your dashboard in the Plugins menu, or grab it from the WordPress.org plugin repository.
Okay Toolkit - This plugin provides several social media widgets including Twitter, Dribbble, Flickr and social media icons. Once installed and enabled, you can find the social media widgets in your Widgets section. You can install it directly from your dashboard in the Plugins menu, or grab it from the WordPress.org plugin repository.
First of all, you should have WordPress installed and ready to roll. It's always recommended that you start with a fresh install of WordPress to prevent a conflict of settings from old themes, etc. Make sure you backup your old theme and your posts, pages, etc. in case of a catastrophe!
Unzip the theme package. In the folder you'll find the Author docs and a zip titled UploadToWP.zip. This is the theme zip that you need to upload into WordPress.
In the WordPress admin, go to Appearance -> Themes. Click on the big Install Themes tab at the top of the page. Next, click the Upload link and navigate to the UploadToWP.zip file. Install and activate the theme.
Optional - Install the dummy data which is included. (You can also get it here: Author.xml ) This will ensure the posts/pages get laid out properly with the correct page templates. Go to Tools -> Import -> WordPress. Browse to the Author download folder and locate the Dummy Data folder. Select the XML file and upload it. Be sure to click "download and import all attachments".
Author needs the Options Framework plugin to add the theme options. You can either click the install prompt at the top of the screen, or go to Plugins -> Add New and search for Options Framework. Install and activate the plugin.
Next you need to grab the Contact Form 7 plugin. Once again, go to Plugins -> Add new. Search for Contact Form 7. Install this plugin. To use this plugin, you'll need to go to the Contact menu (now on the left menu) and create a form. Once you're done, it will give you a shortcode you can use in your contact page. If you've used the dummy data, this should already be in there for you.
If you'd like to use the new, awesome WordPress 3.5 custom gallery feature, or several of the custom widgets, you'll need to install the Okay Toolkit plugin. This plugin provides extra functionality to your theme! Once again, go to Plugins -> Add new. Search for Okay Toolkit. Install this plugin. Once installed and activated, you can visit the settings page in Settings -> Okay Toolkit. From here you can enable the widgets and custom gallery feature.
The Contact Page uses the Contact Form 7 plugin, which can grab for free on the WordPress plugin repository. Once installed, you'll see there is a Contact link in the left hand sidebar of your WordPress admin.
If you haven't already, create a new page called Contact.
Go to the Contact menu on the left admin menu to configure your contact form. By default they give you a simple form with Name, Email, Subject and Message. To keep things simple, I suggest using the default form. Otherwise, to customize this form even further, check out the Contact Form 7 docs page here.
After you've configured and saved your contact form in the Contact menu, you will be given a small shortcode like this: [contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]. Copy this shortcode. We'll use this to add the form to our Contact page.
Now head back to your Contact page. Paste the Contact 7 shortcode that you copied into the body of the post. Update the post. You should now see the form on the contact page.
Author comes with an Archive page template which displays all of your latest posts, pages and categories.
Create a page called Archives (or whatever title you'd like).
On the right hand side of the page, in the Page Attributes pane, select Custom Archive from the Template menu.
Theme options are crucial to the Author theme. If you didn't watch the screencasts, you can read the directions below. You must go through the theme options setup before the theme will work properly.
You'll notice under the Appearence menu, there is a Theme Options menu. Click this link.
Under Basic Settings you can upload your logo, set the link color, turn on and control the excerpt slider and insert your tracking code. Save Changes
Under the Social Media Links tab, you just need to enter your social media links for the icons you want to show up on the sticky part of the sidebar. Save Changes.
The Custom CSS tab can be used to add small style adjustments to the theme. Please note that for heavy CSS changes, you should be editing your theme in a child theme. This allows you to update your theme in the future without losing the changes you have made to the theme files.
Author takes advantage of the new Wordpress 3.0 menu manager. Menus can be found under Appearence -> Menus. For more detailed usage of the menu manager, see this tutorial here.
You'll need to create two different menus; one for the header, one for the footer. Start with the header menu. Create a menu and name it whatever you want.
Now, on the left hand side, select the pages you would like to have added to the menu. You can then click "Add to Menu" and they will show up on the right side of the page. You can drag the pages around to arrange them the way you'd like.
Save the menu.
Now let's create the footer menu. At the top of the page you'll see a new menu button (has a + on it). Create a new menu and call it Footer. Add pages and arrange them the same way you did before. When you're finished, save the menu.
Now that you have both menus created, you need to assign them in the Theme Locations window located on the left. From the drop down menu, select the appropriate menu for the header and footer and save.
Author supports widgets in the sidebar. You can drag and drop any widgets you'd like into the sidebar. If you would like to add Twitter, Flickr or Dribbble to this section, be sure you have the Okay Toolkit plugin installed. Once installed, visit the Okay Toolkit settings page in Settings -> Okay Toolkit. You can enable and disable the widgets you'd like to use in your theme.
Author lets you add social media icons to the footer of your theme. To do so, you need to install the Okay Toolkit plugin and activate the icons in Settings -> Okay Toolkit. Once activated, you'll see the Okay Social Media Icons widget in your Widgets section. Add this widget to the Footer Icons widget pane, and add the appropriate links.
Videos
Create a new post and add a title and post content.
Next, scroll down the page a bit and look for the Custom Fields box. If you don't see the Custom Fields box, look up towards the top of your screen and click the Screen Options drop down. Make sure Custom Fields is checked..
Now you can add the Custom Field. The Name is going to be
okvideo and the value will be your embed code. The
embed code should look something like the following code. Click Add
Custom Field. <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/4143170?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" frameborder="0" width="565" height="229"></iframe>
Once you've added the custom field, you need to be sure to add a category or any descriptive tags if you want.
Publish the post when you're finished.
Text Posts
Create a new post and add a title and description.
Write your content and add whatever styling you want. If you want to have a nice big quote like on the demo site, just use the Blockquote button on the WordPress post editor.
When you're finished, be sure to add a category or any descriptive tags if you want.
Publish the post when you're finished.
Featured Image Posts
Create a new post and add a title and description.
Write your content and add whatever styling you want.
On the right hand side of your page, you'll see the Featured Image Pane. Click Set Featured Image and upload your image. Once uploaded, scroll down and click "Use as featured image". Once set, you can close the image upload window.
Publish the post when you're finished.
WordPress 3.5 Gallery Image Posts (WordPress 3.5 and Okay Toolkit required)
If you have the latest version of WordPress and you have the Okay Toolkit, you can use the new Custom Image Galleries. Be sure to read the setup below and also check out this quick video I made showing how it works.
To use the awesome new WordPress galleries, you first need to be running WordPress 3.5. Secondly you need to install the Okay Toolkit. See instructions above.
Once you have the Okay Toolkit installed, go to Settings -> Okay Toolkit. Enable the Enable Gallery Feature towards the bottom of the page and Save your settings.
Create a new post and add a title and description.
On the right hand side of your page, you'll see the Format pane. Click Gallery to set the post format and activate the gallery options.
Under your post editor, you'll see the Okay Gallery pane. (If you don't see the pane, click Screen Options (top right of screen) and check the Okay Gallery.) Click the Edit Gallery button. Once the Edit Featured Gallery dialog opens, upload the images you'd like in your gallery, or select them from images you've already uploaded with the Add to Gallery link. Once your images are selected, click Add to Gallery. When finished, you can arrange your images by selecting and dragging them into position. If the theme supports image captions, you can add one in the Edit Featured Gallery page.
Once you've added your images and content you can publish and preview your post.
Old Gallery Image Posts (Pre WordPress 3.5 and without Okay Toolkit)
Create a new post and add a title and description.
Click the Upload/Insert button. Once the Upload dialog opens, upload all of the images you'd like in your gallery. When finished, you can arrange your images by selecting and dragging them into position. All of the images you've uploaded will be attached to the post and displayed in the slider gallery.
On the right hand side of your page, you'll see the Format pane. Click Gallery to set the post format.
Once you've added your images and content you can publish and preview your post.
Author comes with a few custom element styles, which are used to easily add extra styling to your WordPress posts.
To use the post styles, simply select your text and then select from the drop down which style you would like to apply. You'll be able to see the changes live, in your editor.
Highlight - This will highlight the hell out of some text.
Intro Title - As seen on the demo, this is a nicely styled block of text to introduce your post or page.
This theme is setup to automatically use the lightbox gallery
feature on certain portfolio images. If you would like to use it on
your own images, simply follow the example below. You're basically
linking a thumbnail photo to a larger photo and adding
class="lightbox" to the link.
<a href="large-image.jpg" class="lightbox"><img
src="thumb-image.jpg" alt="lightbox image"
/></a>
To create a gallery of images to open in your lightbox, you need
to instead use class="lightbox[gallerytitle]".
<a href="large-image.jpg" class="lightbox"
rel="[gallery]"><img src="thumb-image.jpg" alt="lightbox
image" /></a>