About Cousteau
Cousteau is a travel theme for WordPress. It is suited for travel agents and related professionals. It’s built to help you manage and display your packages in a functional and beautiful. This is done by using the specially crafted Packages post type. A Testimonials post type is also available to help you showcase your clients’ opinions. The above act as standard WordPress posts or pages but each of them has extra fields or custom layout which differentiates them from the former. The homepage is comprised of the homepage slider and custom widgets specially crafted to bring those custom post types together as discussed later on in the documentation.
Theme installation
The easiest way to install the theme, is by accessing your WordPress admin panel, then go to Appearance > Themes. Select the Install Themes tab and click the Upload link located just below the tab’s name. Click on Browse… and select the WordPress theme zip file you just downloaded. Then click the Install Now button, and after a few seconds, your new theme should be installed. Click activate and the theme is ready to use.
In order to install the theme manually, or in case you have trouble installing it through the admin panel, you have to unzip the WordPress theme’s zip file on your computer, and upload via FTP the resulting theme folder into your WordPress installation themes folder (wp-content/themes). Then, from the WordPress admin go to Appearance > Themes. The theme should be available in your themes list. Click activate.
After activation, you will be redirected to the CSSIgniter Settings panel (accessible from Appearance > CSSIgniter Settings) to start customizing your brand new theme.
Image Sizes
The recommended image sizes for the Cousteau theme are:
- Default post thumbnail size: 400x400px
- Blog thumbnail: 690x400px
- Homepage slider: 1920x550px
- Header background images: 1920x300px
- Package slider: 950x450px
- Main box thumbnail (used on CI Item/s widgets and on the package search results page): 800x600px
Please keep in mind that any image uploaded should be larger than 800px for best results, and generally for each section at least larger or equal than its recommended width. For example, the images of an inner slider of a package should be 450px in height but more importantly they should be equal or larger than 950px in width.
Useful Plugins
These plugins provide functionality and features used directly (or not) by the Theme. So, it is recommended to install and activate them before importing your sample content.
- CSSIgniter Shortcodes you can use our custom made shortcode plugin to help you create a variety of layouts and elements on your site. Instructions can be found here.
- Socials Ignited use this plugin to create a widget that links to all your social profiles. You can also customize it with your icons and add new social networks, a guide can be found here.
- Contact Form 7 use this plugin to create a contact form, then copy the shortcode it gives you and paste it in an empty page.
- WP Instagram Widget: Use the latest version of this plugin to help you display your Instagram feed in any of the theme’s sidebars.
Importing Sample Content using One Click Import
To automate the process of importing and for a better experience we have natively included support for OneClick Import Plugin. Let install it fist:
From your WordPress dashboard
- Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’,
- Search for ‘One Click Demo Import’ and install the plugin,
- Activate ‘One Click Demo Import’ from your Plugins page.
From WordPress.org
- Download ‘One Click Demo Import’.
- Upload the ‘one-click-demo-import’ directory to your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory, using your favorite method (ftp, sftp, scp, etc…)
- Activate ‘One Click Demo Import’ from your Plugins page.
Once the plugin is activated you will find the actual import page in: Appearance > Import Demo Data.
Click on the Import demo data button and you are done!
This plugin requires PHP version of at least 5.3.x, but we recommend version 5.6.x or better yet 7.x. Please contact your hosting company and ask them to update the PHP version for your site.
Setting up your theme
1) Creating theme pages
Let’s start by adding pages you are going to need. Go to Pages > Add New and create the following pages:
- “Home” this will serve as your homepage, assign to it either the “Frontpage” template from the “Page attributes” panel and publish the page.
- “Blog” this will be your posts page. Just create it, no further action needed.
- “Contact” here you can place your contact form which you will create using the Contact Form 7 plugin.
- “Package Search Page” this page will list the package search results, apply the “Packages Search Page” template. Once the page is published go to CSSIgniter Settings > Package Options and set it as your “Package Search Pages”, while you are here you can modify the text on the search button, if you so desire.
(TIP, all page titles serve as examples, you can name your pages according to your needs.)
Once the pages are created, navigate to Settings > Reading and set the “Home” page to be your static frontpage and the “Blog” page as your posts page, as demonstrated in the image below.
2) Populating your blog
To add new posts to your blog, go to Posts > add new, title 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, if you so desire, from the respective panels and publish the post by clicking “Publish”.
3) Adding Packages
The package post type features four taxonomies, these are Destinations, Types, Duration and Price Range. Start by visiting each one of them and add the appropriate terms to each one. For example under Duration you can add the lengths under which your packages will be categorized, i.e. “Three Days”, “A Week”, “Two Weeks” etc. Similarly for Types, you can set the number of persons each package can accomodate, i.e. “Single”, “Couple”, “Family” etc.
If you decide you don’t need one or more of the four taxonomies you can disable them under CSSIgniter Settings > Package Options.
Once the categorization options are set up, go to Packages > Add New to start creating your packages. Start by giving the package item a title, some text if necessary and a featured image. Then move on to the Package Details metabox.
Here you can set the duration and price of the package. You can also set it as an offer and make its featured image appear on the homepage’s slider. The information set above, along with the selected taxonomies for each package, will appear on the homepage’s and single package’s slider, along with some descriptive icons, for example this is the display on the single package view:
The images can be modified under CSSIgniter Settings > Package Options by following the instructions in the “Package Taxonomy Options” panel.
Next we move to the Itinerary panel.
Here you can set the package’s itinerary, separated by countries/cities/places visited or on a time schedule like days or weeks. Start by giving the desired title to the itinerary section and then click the Add Field button. On the box that appears add a title, a subtitle and a small description for your first itinerary stop, then either click the Add Field button again or move to the next panel if you are done adding itinerary items. As stated in the panel’s description, the itinerary won’t appear by default. You will have to add the
[package-itinerary]
shortcode in your text editor, on the line you want the itinerary to appear.
Moving on, we have the Included – Not Included panel. Here you can display to your clients what is included in the package and what is not. The procedure for adding items is the same as before with the itinerary. Set a title for the included and one for the not included sections and add items to each one, using the Add Field button. Again, you will need to use a shortcode if you want to display the Included/Not Included section, this time the shortcode is
[package-includes]
You can select to either display only the included or the excluded items by using the shortcode like this:
[package-includes show="included"]
or
[package-includes show="excluded"]
Next we have the Maps – Videos panel. Follow the instructions closely to help you add a map and/or embed a video item to your package.
Once you are done with the above, your add the package in the various categories we created earlier. This is done by checking the appropriate boxes from the sidebar on the right.
Finally publish the package and move to the next one.
4) Adding Testimonials
To create a new Testimonial, go to Testimonials > New Testimonial, set the author’s name as the title, and the testimonial’s text in the content box, finally, publish it. Testimonials can be used in any widgetized area you like by using the “CI Item” widget.
5) Populating the Slider
Below the text editor in pages, posts and packages, you will find a metabox which, if checked, will display the current item’s featured image on the homepage’s slider.
The slider’s behavior can be controlled under CSSIgniter Settings > Homepage Options.
6) Setting up your homepage
The homepage on Cousteau consists of the slider (see above on how to populate it) and from a widgetized area named Front Page Widgets. The area is accessible under Appearance > Widgets
Duplicating the demo’s homepage layout
The homepage on the theme’s demo displays three packages on the homepage slider. In the Front Page Widgets widgetized area we have a CI Items widget, displaying six packages, a CI Testimonials widget displaying three testimonials and finally, another CI Items widget displaying three more packages.
7) Creating your menu
Now that your content is in place, you need to set up the menus. Go to Appearance > Menus and create a menu, name it “main menu”, customize it by adding menu items and then go to “Manage Locations”, set the menu on the main menu position and save.
You can also set up the footer menu in a similar fashion, you can either display the same menu or create a different one for the footer.
(TIP, for more info on creating and managing menus, please read the WordPress Menu User Guide here)
8) Setting a Header Image
You can set a custom header background image for each post/page/package by pasting the URL to the image you wish to use in the Header background metabox located below the main text editor.
A default header image can be set under CSSIgniter Settings > Appearance Options, by uploading an image or pasting the image’s URL in the Header Display box.
9) Adding a Header message
You can display a message, such as your telephone number by adding the required information in the Header message box under CSSIgniter Settings > Display Options. To make a clickable link which calls your number on mobile devices you can use something like this in the box
<i class="fa fa-phone"></i> CALL NOW: +12345 67879 or <a href="tel:+0123456789">Click here to call us!</a>
10) Changing Footer text
The theme’s footer features an area for you to enter your copyright info, privacy policy etc. To change the text you need to go to CSSIgniter settings > Site options (5th box down).
11) Widgets
The theme features nine custom widgets specially crafted to help you display your content. They can be found under Appearance > Widgets
Below each widget there is a small description which describes their functionality.
How to use the page builder template
The theme comes bundled with a page builder template which allows you to use your favorite page builder plugin on it and create unique layouts very easily.
To use that template start by going to Pages > Add New. This will create a new page. Add a title to your page and select the Page builder template from the template drop down in the Page Attributes metabox.
That’s it. You can now start building your page using the page builder of your choice, once done publish it and check it out.
Additional Information
Creating Galleries
To create a gallery using our gallery management system follow these steps:
On the “Gallery Information” panel click the Add Images button.
To upload your images, drag & drop them in the Edit Gallery window which will pop-up, or select Add to Gallery in order to select already uploaded ones. Once you are done, click the Update Gallery button on the lower right.
Your “Gallery Information” panel will look like this
You can re-arrange the order of images by drag & drop.
If you wish to remove an image from the gallery, hover your mouse over it and click the X as shown below.
By checking the Randomize order box your gallery images will appear in random order which will change on every page refresh.
When done, publish the gallery item.
If you need to add images after the gallery’s creation just follow the same procedure.
Next Steps
Still have questions or problems setting up your CSSIgniter Theme? We will be happy to help you out! Please visit our support Hub