Theme installation
The easiest way to install the theme, is by accessing your WordPress admin panel, then go to Appearance > Themes.
Click the Add New button on the top of the page.
In the next screen type the theme’s name in the search box
When the search results appear, hover over the theme and click Install
Once the installation finishes click activate and the theme is ready to use.
Importing sample content
Extract the zip file you just downloaded and upload the xml file in Tools > Import > WordPress (if not already present, you will be prompted to install the WordPress importer plugin), assing the authors to an existing user and make sure you check the “import attachments” box. You can now import the sample content.
Importing widgets
You can also import the widgets you see on the theme’s demo. To do that, you need the Widget Importer & Exporter plugin. To install it go to Plugins > Add new search for widget importer exporter and install the plugin. Activate it and go to Tools > Widget Importer & Exporter click choose file and upload the brittanylight_widgets.wie file which is located in the sample content zip file, click Import widgets and you are good to go.
WARNING: As this will create posts, pages, custom post types, categories, widgets, etc. and change various system settings, it is strongly advised that you do this on a clean WordPress installation, without any previous and/or precious data. Under no circumstances we can be held responsible for total or partial data loss, so please be careful.
Setting up your theme
1) Populating your blog
To add new posts to your blog, go to Posts > add new and proceed to:
- add a title to your post,
- enter the content in the editor,
- upload a featured image by clicking “Set featured image” on the Featured Image panel,
- add a category and/or tag to the post,
- once done click the Publish/Update button.
2) Customizing the appearance
All theme customization is done via WordPress’s built in customizer. If you haven’t used it or want to learn more about it, please read this article.
Go to Appearance > Customize and you will see this
TIP: any changes you make in the tabs below will be previewed live on the site which appears in right side of the screen, however to save these changes you need to click the Save & Publish button on the top of the bar, if you have made a change but see the button grayed out (for example changed the font size of a heading), move the cursor outside the input box, for example, to the next input box, then the button should be clickable again.
Let’s take a look at the options each tab gives you.
Header Options
Here you can toggle the social icons.
Menus
Here you can create and assign menus to the theme. The theme features one menu location, the main menu one. To learn more about menu creation check out the Codex’s menu user guide here.
Site Identity
In this tab you can modify the site’s title, tagline, logo and site icon.
Layout Options
Here you can modify the length of the automatic excerpt , toggle the excerpt display in listings and select between numbered and older/newer pagination.
Widgets
Through this tab you can add widgets to the theme’s sidebars. The theme features six sidebars, the blog, the pre-footer Instagram one and four footer sidebars.
Social Networks
Here you can fill in the URLs to your various social network profiles supported by the theme. You can display them in a sidebar by using the Theme – Social Icons widget.
Posts Options
Here you can change the related posts section title.
Footer Options
Here you can toggle the credits text and the Instagram slideshow. Additionally you can modify the slideshow’s speed.
Static Front Page
Use this tab to to set a static front page if you don’t wish to display your posts on the home page.
Upgrade to PRO
In this tab you can see a few of the PRO version’s features and will find links to help you upgrade.
Theme pages
The contact page
To create a contact page similar to the one found on the theme’s demo, you can create a new page, name it Contact and use the Contact Form 7 plugin to help you create a contact form, then paste the shortcode it provides in the page’s text editor, publish and you are done.
Widgets
Along with WordPress’s widgets we have created 3 custom ones.
You will find a small description in each widget detailing its usage.
How to use the latest posts widget
The Theme – Latest Posts widget will help you display posts on any sidebar, let’s take a look at how to use it.
We start by adding a title to the widget, next we select a post category to display on it (leaving the option empty will display posts from all categories), below we can select whether we want our posts to appear at random (default is by date from newest to oldest) and how many posts we want to display on the widget. Save and you are done!
Additional information
Useful Plugins
- Contact Form 7 use this plugin to create a contact form, then copy the shortcode it gives you and paste it in a page which will serve as your contact page.
- WP Instagram Widget: Use this plugin to help you display your Instagram feed in any of the theme’s sidebars.
- WordPress Jetpack: You can use this to create a contact form instead of Contact Form 7, insert sharing buttons, create tiled galleries etc.
Image Sizes
The minimum recommended image sizes for Brittany Light are:
- Post thumbnail: 750x460px
- Square thumb: 300x300px
- About me widget thumb: 360x220px