4. Setting Up The Theme
Homepage
- Go to Settings -> Reading and make sure the Your latest posts option is selected.
- Go to Appearance -> Theme Options -> Homepage Categories and add the ID categories you want to include OR exclude from the homepage (go to Posts -> Categories and get the IDs from the ID column).
- Add a minus before each ID to exclude the categories instead of include them.
Post Tabs
To set up the tabs on your review posts you need to do the following:- Go to Posts -> Categories and create 6 categories called "Reviews", "Summaries", "Previews", "News", "Images" and "Videos" or whatever names you choose.
- Go to Appearance -> Theme Options -> Tab Settings and enter titles for your tabs and then from the drop down menus select the categories you just created.
Review/Summary Tab/Posts
- Go to Posts -> Add New to create a review or summary post.
- Give your post a title (the name of the item being reviewed or summaried for example) and add your review or summary text in the main writing text box.
- On the right-hand side in the Categories panel add your post to your "Reviews" OR "Summaries" category.
- If you also want to separate your reviews or summaries into subcategories, go to Posts -> Categories and create your subcategories making sure you assign your "Reviews" or "Summaries" category as the parent category. Now assign your post to both the parent and subcategory.
- On the right-hand side you will see a Featured Image panel, click the Set featured image link to set an image for this item.
- After uploading or selecting your featured image click the Use as featured image link in the image upload window (alternatively you can specify your images for each section of the site in the Post Settings panel).
- Scroll down to the Post Settings and in the Group Name text field give your post a unique name (only use letters and numbers, no symbols or spaces).
- In the top right corner of the page in the GD Star Rating panel click the Standard Post Review tab and give your review a score.
Preview Tab/Posts
- Go to Posts -> Add New to create a new post.
- Give your post a title and add your post text in the main writing text box.
- On the right-hand side in the Categories panel add your post to your "Previews" category.
- On the right-hand side you will see a Featured Image panel, click the Set featured image link to set an image for this post (alternatively you can specify your images for each section of the site in the Post Settings panel).
- Scroll down to the Post Settings panel and in the Group Name text field enter the group name you already assigned to your review post.
- You do not need to reenter all the other information as this will be taken from the review post.
News Tab/Posts
- Go to Posts -> Add New to create a new post.
- Give your post a title and add your post text in the main writing text box.
- On the right-hand side in the Categories panel add your post to your "News" category.
- On the right-hand side you will see a Featured Image panel, click the Set featured image link to set an image for this post (alternatively you can specify your images for each section of the site in the Post Settings panel).
- Scroll down to the Post Settings panel and in the Group Name text field enter the group name you already assigned to your review post.
- You do not need to reenter all the other information as this will be taken from the review post.
Synopsis Tab
- Go to Pages -> Add New to create a new page.
- Give your page a title and add your page text in the main writing text box.
- Take note of the page ID (go to Pages -> All Pages and get the ID from the ID column).
- Now go your review post and in the Synopsis Page ID text field add the ID of the page.
Images Tab/Posts
- Go to Posts -> Add New to create a new post.
- Give your post a title.
- On the right-hand side in the Categories panel add your post to your "Images" category.
- Scroll down to the Post Settings panel and in the Group Name text field enter the group name you already assigned to your review post.
- Click the "Add An Image" button above the main writing text box and then click the "From Computer" tab to upload your images.
- You can also display images from the news, previews and video posts associated with your review post by adding those posts to the "Images" category as well.
Video Tab/Posts
- Go to Posts -> Add New to create a new post.
- Give your post a title and add your video text in the main writing text box.
- On the right-hand side in the Categories panel add your post to your "Videos" category.
- On the right-hand side you will see a Featured Image panel, click the Set featured image link to set an image for this post (alternatively you can specify your images for each section of the site in the Post Settings panel).
- Scroll down to the Post Settings panel and in the Group Name text field enter the group name you already assigned to your review post.
- Enter your video URL in the Video URL text field.
- You do not need to reenter all the other information as this will be taken from the review post.
- On the right-hand side you will see a Featured Image panel, click the Set featured image link to set an image for this post (alternatively you can specify your images for each section of the site in the Post Settings panel).
Slider
- Go to Posts -> Add New to create a new post.
- On the right-hand side you will see a Featured Image panel, click the Set featured image link to set an image for this post (alternatively you can specify your images for each section of the site in the Post Settings panel).
- Scroll down to the Post Settings panel and check the Display In Slider option.
- Alternatively, on the right-hand side in the Categories panel add your post to a slider category.
- Now go to Appearance -> Theme Options -> Slider Settings and change the Slider Selection option to Categories.
- You can control a variety of other slider options from this page.
Blog Page Template
- Go to Pages -> Add New, give the page a title.
- On the right-hand side in the Page Attributes panel select the Blog page template from the Template drop down menu.
- Scroll down to the Page Settings panel below the main writing text box and enter your blog category IDs in the Category IDs field (go to Posts -> Categories and get the IDs from the ID column).
- Make sure all the posts you want to display on this blog page are assigned to one or more of the category IDs you entered or leave the field blank to display all posts.
Login/Register/Option Page Templates
- Go to Pages -> Add New and create a page called "Login".
- On the right-hand side in the Page Attributes panel select the Login page template from the Template drop down menu.
- Go to Pages -> Add New and create a page called "Register".
- On the right-hand side in the Page Attributes panel select the Register page template from the Template drop down menu.
- Now go to Appearance -> Theme Options -> General Settings and add the page URLs of the two pages you just created in the Login Page URL and Register Page URL text fields.
Redirect Page Template
- The redirect template allows you to direct pages to external websites.
- Go to Pages -> Add New, give the page a title and then enter the website URL in the main post textbox e.g. http://google.com
- On the right-hand side in the Page Attributes panel select the Redirect page template from the Template drop down menu.
- Now when you click the link to this page in the navigation or sliders it will open up http://www.google.com.
Navigation
- Go to Appearance -> Menus to set up your header and footer navigation menu.
- Click the + button and create two menus.
- On the left-hand side from the Theme Locations panel select your menus from the Header Navigation and Footer Navigation drop down menus.
- To add navigation links to your reviews, news, previews etc. add those categories from the Categories panel.
Shortcodes
This theme comes with several shortcodes. Shortcodes are pieces of code that can be inserted directly into your main text box on posts, pages and reviews to add certain content easily such as videos and dividers.
- Click the Visual tab at the top of the main text box on any post, page or reviews.
- Click the GP button to open the shortcode window.
- From the shortcode drop down menu select a shortcode, which will automatically be inserted into the main text box.
Customising The Background
- Go to Appearance -> Background to add your own background colour or upload your own background image.
- This theme comes with four backgrounds by default named page_bg_[number].png, which you can upload from the images folder.
Contact Page
- Go to Pages -> Add New to create a new page.
- Insert the contact form shortcode into the main text box e.g.
[contact email="youremail@address.com"]. - Replace
youremail@address.comwith your own email address. - If your contact form is not working click here.
Sidebars/Widgets
- Go to Appearance -> Sidebars, click the Add Sidebar link and give your new sidebar a name.
- Now go to any post or page and scroll down to the settings panel.
- Now select one of your sidebars from the Sidebar drop down menu.
- Go to Appearance -> Widgets and drag and drop widgets from the Available Widgets panel over the to your sidebar widget panels on the right.
- This theme comes with the following custom widgets:
- GP Custom Content: Display custom content such as Google ads, flash and javascript.
- GP Featured Posts: Display posts with the comment number.
- GP Posts By Category: Display posts from a specific category.
- GP You May Like: Displays other reviews that have matching post tags.
- GP Latest Members: Displays the avatars of the latest site members.
- Drag the GD Star Rating widget over to the desired sidebar.
- To get the same appearance as the "Top Games" widget in the live preview use the following settings (you can change these settings to suit your needs):
Translation
- Open the language.php file located at mammoth-theme/mammoth/lib/inc.
- Locate the lines of text you wish to translate or edit and then save the file.
- Now upload the modified file via FTP in place of the old file.
- If you use characters that are not displaying correctly on your website try changing the character encoding of the language.php, by default it should be set to UTF-8.
Using The Lightbox
- To use the image or video pop up effect add
rel="prettyPhoto[gallery]"to your links as follows:
<a href="http://example.com/imagename.jpg" rel="prettyPhoto[gallery]"><img src="lib/http://example.com/imagename.jpg" alt="" /></a> <a href="http://youtu.be/JmM6Ribe2Q" rel="prettyPhoto[gallery]"><img src="lib/http://example.com/imagename.jpg" alt="" /></a>
- If you do not want to group images in the lightbox change
galleryto a unique name for each image. - You can add YouTube, Vimeo and QuickTime files to the lightbox, using the following formats:
- Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/8245346
- QuickTime: http://www.example.com/video.mov?width=780&height=418
- YouTube: http://youtu.be/JmM6Ribe2Q
Simple:Press Forum
- Go to the Simple:Press Forum download page and download either the All Skins or Default set of files.
- Upload the unzipped folder to your plugins directory and then go to Plugins -> Installed and activate the plugin.
- Now click the Install link under the new Forum tab.
- Once installed the plugin will have created a page called Forum, edit this page and scroll down to the Page Settings panel and select the Full Width option from the Layout drop down menu.
- Go to Forum -> Forums -> Options -> Style Settings and from the Forum Skin drop down menu select one of the three Mammoth forum skins.
- This theme has been tested and works with this plugin. If you encounter any problems while using it you should contact Simple:Press Support.