Created: 12/16/2011
By: Mike McAlister
Version 1.0
I have provided several installation screencasts to get you started with the Deploy theme. Be sure to pay attention, as this will help you get the theme installed with ease!
Theme Setup:
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 Deploy docs and a zip titled UploadToWP. 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.
Deploy utilizes a few plugins to get the most out of the theme.
Options Framework - This plugin adds the theme options. Go to Plugins -> Add New and search for "Options Framework". Install and activate the plugin.
Contact Form 7 - This plugin will add the contact form. Go to Plugins -> Add new. Search for "Contact Form 7". Install and activate the plugin.
MailChimp - (Optional) This plugin will collect email address from those who opt in. Go to Plugins -> Add new. Search for "MailChimp". Make sure you get the plugin by MailChimp and CrowdFavorite.
Once installed, you'll have to go to Settings -> MailChimp and enter your API key. You can find your API keys by logging into MailChimp and going to Account -> API Keys.
WP Opt-In - (Optional) If you don't have MailChimp, you can collect emails in WordPress with WP Opt-In. This plugin will collect email address from those who opt in. Go to Plugins -> Add new. Search for "WP Opt-In". Make sure you get the plugin by Petter.
Once installed, you'll have to go to Settings -> WP Opt-In and setup your form. Enter your email address and customize the email that will be sent to subscribers. I removed the Form Header ("Receive information automagically here.") on the demo site, other than that, you should be able to use the default settings.
[contact-form 1 "Contact form 1"]If you don't already have a contact page created, create one. Paste the Contact Form 7 shortcode into the post and Publish/Update.
Theme options are crucial to the Deploy 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 Appearance menu, there is a Theme Options menu. Click this link.
Basic Settings - Upload your logo, change your link color and background, and insert your Google Analytics code.
Countdown Settings - Set the month, day and year of your launch date to appear in the header.
Social Media Links - Enter your social media links for the icons you want to show up on the right side of the header. Use the full URL to your profiles.
Save Changes
The Deploy menu isn't made of pages, rather custom links that will operate the tabbed content.
Go to Appearance -> Menu. Create a new menu.
On the left side of the page, you'll see the Custom Links pane.
The menu works by adding ID's as the URL and the section name for the Label.
Add a custom link with the URL as # and the label as Launch Info (or whatever you want). Be sure to remove the http:// from the URL field.
Once it's been created and added to the menu, save the menu. If you refresh your homepage, you should see that your link is now in the sidebar.
There are four tabbed content sections you can use on the site. You can add a link to each tabbed section if you'd like.
Save the menu.
I have included custom twitter and flickr widgets for the Social section.
Sidebar - Any widgets placed here will appear on the left hand sidebar. I don't suggest loading this up with too many widgets because the sidebar is fixed, providing a limited viewable area. On the demo, I simply added a very small text widget.
Section One - Launch Info - First drag a text widget over to the Section One widget area. Fill out a title and add a small description of what your launch is about.
Next you need to grab the MailChimp widget or the WP Opt-In widget. Both are styled to work on the theme. Place either widget below the text widget in Section One.
Section Two - Twitter - There are a few options for the Twitter section. You can use the custom Twitter widget, provided by the Okay Toolkit, or you can use one of Twitter's embedded timelines to show your tweets. To use the Embedded Timeline, copy the embed code from Twitter, place it in a text widget, and place the widget in Section Two.
Section Three - News & Updates - Grab the Okay Recent Posts widget. You don't have to fill out any settings here. The widget will grab your latest posts and display them in the post scroller.
Section Four - Contact - Grab the Okay Featured Page widget. Select the Contact page from the drop down. This will set the contact page to show in the tab. Make sure you setup the Contact Form 7 shortcode in the contact page. See the instructions above if you haven't done so.
Create a new post and add a title and description.
Write your content and add whatever styling you want.
Publish the post when you're finished.