Documentation for Decorist
Server Requirements
If you already have WordPress installed, it means that you meet the minimum server requirements and you can perfectly install this theme without any issues. To get the most out of your website though, you should get in touch with your web host and ask them if they meet the following criteria:
- PHP version 7.4 or greater.
- MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.1 or greater.
- HTTPS support.
Prerequisites
Ignition Framework
This theme requires our free Ignition framework plugin to be installed. Simply visit the Downloads area, download the Ignition Framework plugin, upload it through your Dashboard > Plugins > Add new and Activate it.
It really doesn’t matter if you install the theme or the plugin first. Just make sure to install both in order for things to function as intended.
For more details on the plugin’s installation check out this article.
Theme installation
Installing the theme is a very simple process. Go to your dashboard under Appearance > Themes > Add new, click Upload Theme and upload the zip file. Once uploaded click Install Now and then the Activate Theme link. For a more detailed overview on how to download and install the theme check out this article.
Once the theme is installed and activated you will be forwarded to the theme’s onboarding page.
Here you will be prompted to install and activate the Ignition Framework plugin if you haven’t done so already. Here you can also install our free custom blocks plugin, GutenBee. Through the onboarding page you have access to many useful links, such as the theme’s documentation, our knowledge base articles and direct links to our support hub.
In the Sample Content tab of the onboarding page you can install and activate all the plugins required to import the sample content and proceed with its installation. More info on that on the next section.
How to import the sample content
If you like what you see in our demo website you can simply import the sample content. This means that a close approximation of our demo website will be imported in your WordPress installation. Now all you have to do is replace the content of these pages with yours. Importing the sample content can help serve as a basis on which you can continue to build and expand your site, however keep in mind that this procedure is entirely optional.
A generic video guide on how to import the sample content can be found here.
The procedure:
- In your WordPress dashboard visit Appearance > Theme Options > Sample Content.
- Click Install and then Activate for each of the required plugins.
- Click the Get Started button and in the next screen, move over the screenshot of the builder/variation of your preference and click the Import Demo button.
Image sizes
Web page loading times are greatly affected by the size of your images. For best results make sure to use images with the recommended dimensions as described below:
- Main post thumbnail: 960x640px
- Item: 615x410px
- Large Item: 1290x860px
- Article Media: 510x510px
- Mini-cart items: 160x160px
Setting up site-wide sections
It’s considered a good practice to set up the areas of your website that you won’t be editing a lot in the future, like the general site layout, the header, footer and some secondary functionality.
General Site Options
You can change your general site options under Appearance > Customize > Site Options. Under the Layout section you can control your site’s and blog’s layout, as well as the site width and content/sidebar column ratio. The layout can then be overridden in each post/page individually. Under the Colors tab you can select the basic color palette for your installation and add a background image. Finally under Typography you can select the ideal font pairing from a full list of Google Fonts and customize font properties for key elements on desktop and mobile devices alike. You also have the option to disable Google Fonts altogether.
Header
The header on the theme consists of four key elements:
1. Top Bar
2. Logo
3. Header content
4. Main menu
The layout of the header can be set globally under Customize > Header > Layout.
Top Bar
To edit the top bar go to Customize > Top Bar. Here you can toggle the top bar entirely and fill the 3 content areas with plain text, HTML, or shortcodes. Refer to the shortcodes section below for information regarding the shortcodes. Here you can also customize the color scheme of the top bar, especially useful if you are using the normal header layout.
The theme’s demo features some text in the left content area and the language switcher shortcode in the right one. You will need to have Polylang or WPML installed for the latter shortcode to work.
Logo
The recommended maximum width of your logo is 122px (or 244px is you want a retina ready logo) while you can use any height you want.
o upload your logo go to Customize > Site Identity. You can upload two logos. The main and the alternative one. The alternative logo can be used if you want a different logo to appear when the header layout is set to Transparent under Customize > Header > Layout. In the theme’s demo we use just the main logo.
This article offers more information regarding the header and its options.
Main Menu
If you are not familiar with WordPress menus here is a detailed guide.
Navigate to Customize > Menus. Enter a menu name (It can be anything you like) and click on the Create Menu button. In the next page click the Add Items button and start adding items to the menu. Now all you have to do is assign this menu to a location through the Menu Locations section, check the Main menu location and you are done. Your navigation menu should be now visible on your website.
The demo’s menu is set to be sticky under Customize > Header > Layout.
Create a menu button
You can create a special button-like menu item by setting a certain class for to it. The class name is nav-button and you can set it under Appearance > Menus for the item you want. First enable this section from Screen Options.
Creating mega menus
This theme provides a multicolumn menu feature as seen under the Elements menu item on the theme’s demo. If you want to use this feature navigate to Appearance > Menus and add a new item with the CSS class mega-menu. Now any direct children will behave as titles for each column and their children will be displayed as column items. You can enable the CSS classes box from Screen Options.
Icons and alignment in the menu
Adding the menu-item-first class along with a class icon like ignition-icons ignition-icons-star for example will keep the menu item align left and add a icon to it. Also, to move a menu item in the end you can use this menu-item-pull class.
You can add icons to menu items by applying custom CSS classes to them, for example you can use ignition-icons ignition-icons-star to display a star next to the menu text. You can also align menu items to the left or right by using the menu-item-first and menu-item-pull classes respectively.
To recreate the Customer support menu item on the theme’s demo add these classes
menu-item-pull ignition-icons ignition-icons-comment
in your class menu box. Check all the icons you can use here, to use them just replace the comment bit with the slug of the icon you need.
Header content
The demo’s header features an AJAX powered product search in the header. This can be toggled and configured under Appearance > Customize > Header > AJAX Product Search as seen below.
Additionally the header features an icon link to the WooCommerce account page and a mini-cart buttons. These can be displayed by adding these shortcodes
[ignition-icon-link icon="user" link="https://www.yourdomain.com/my-account/"][ignition-minicart-button]
in the content area under Customize > Header > Content.
The page title section
This section allows you to create an area just below the menu which can display the page’s title & subtitle along with a background image or color.
The page title section can be modified under Customize > Page title. You can choose to disable the page title with background section entirely, change its height, alignment, content and toggle the site’s breadcrumbs. Under the Colors section you can set a background color, a background image, an overlay color and also set the primary and the secondary text colors.
In some cases, you might want to have different background images on different posts, pages and custom post types.
To achieve that create or edit a page. On the right sidebar locate the Page title image field. Upload a new image and preview this page. This will override the image set in the Customizer settings.
Footer
The footer area is a widgetized area that can be populated with widgets through Customize > Widgets. You can also adjust the colors by setting a background color & image and modify the border, title and text colors.
In the Credits content section you can replace the existing copyright information with yours or use any of the shortcodes included in the Ignition Framework.
Utilities
Lightbox
The theme offers a lightbox for your images which is by default disabled to avoid conflicts with third party plugins which offer lightboxes. If you want to use it you can enable it under Customize > Utilities > Lightbox.
Weather
You can choose to show the weather for a chosen location using the weather shortcode anywhere inside your installation. First you will need to set it up by providing an API key and location under Customize > Utilities > Weather.
Block editor Dark Mode
Some themes might have a dark color scheme which is reflected in the block editor, this can make working with certain blocks a bit harder. Enabling the editor dark mode using the provided checkbox will apply certain styles to the editor in order to improve the content creation experience.
Adding your products
To create a new product navigate to Products > Add Product and start by entering a product Title and Description.
Go to the Product Data panel and select a Simple product with a price and a sale price as shown below:
Next set your Product featured image and product gallery images.
Save the Product, repeat as many times as needed and you can start selling!
You can find a full guide on how to create complex products with attributes and variations here.
Product Categories
Product categories and tags work in much the same way as post categories and tags. They can be created, edited, and applied at any time. This can be done when you first create a product or come back and edit it, or the category/tag specifically. You can also control the thumbnail icon for a particular category as well as the hero page title background image under Products > Categories.
Setting a Product category as a menu item is easy. Navigate to Appearance > Menus and enable Product Categories as menu items from Screen Options.
Setting up the pages
Homepage 1
Create a new page under Pages > Add New. Set its template to Full width boxed under Summary and hide the Normal Page title, Subtitle and Breadcrumbs under Page Settings > Page Title. You are ready to proceed to the content.
We start out with a Container block with a two column layout, with the left one’s width set to 66.66% and the right one’s to 33.33%. The left column hosts a Banner block with its height set to 480px, the vertical content alignment set to bottom and the horizontal one at left, under Block Appearance the Banner has a background overlay color, a background image and 25/25/25/25px padding, inside the banner we find a Heading, a Paragraph and a Button. The right column of the inner container contains two Banner blocks with their height set to 225px, an overlay color, a background image set, 25/25/25/25px padding. The top Banner block has 30px bottom margin as well.
Next we have a Spacer block with 40px height. The Products on Sale section consists of a Heading and a WooCommerce On Sale Products block. This has the Slideshow style selected and set to display 4 columns and 2 rows of products. Under the Advanced metabox it has the is-style-ignition-decorist-post-types-slideshow class applied to it.
Next we have another Spacer with 40px height and a Container block with two equal columns. Each column contains a Banner block with its height set to 480px and its vertical alignment set to bottom, an overlay color, a background image set, 25/25/25/25px configured under Block Appearance. Each Banner contains a Heading, a Paragraph and a Button.
The next section starts again with a Spacer with 40px height. Then we have a Heading, a Paragraph and a WooCommerce Products by Category block. The latter has the default style applied to it, it is set to display products from a specific category in a 4 column 2 row grid.
The next section has the exact same block layout as the first section of the homepage discussed above with the column order swapped.
The New Arrivals section has the same block layout as the Recommendations section above. Here instead of the WooCommerce Products by Category block we use the WooCommerce Newest Products one.
Closing the front page we have another 40px Spacer, a Heading, a Paragraph and a Post Types block set to display 4 posts in a 4 column layout.
Homepage 2
Create a new page under Pages > Add New. Set its template to Full width boxed under Summary and hide the Normal Page title, Subtitle and Breadcrumbs under Page Settings > Page Title. You are ready to proceed to the content.
We start by adding a Container block with three columns. Inside each column we have a Banner block with a background color, a center right aligned background image and 25px padding configured under Block Appearance. Inside each Banner there is a Paragraph and a Heading.
After the Container we have a Banner block with its height set to 700px, its vertical content alignment set to bottom, a background overlay color, a background image, the zoom option enabled and 25/25/25/25px padding configured under block appearance. Inside the banner we find a Heading, a Paragraph and a Button block.
Next we have a Container block with two equal columns. Each column contains a Banner block with its height set to 480px and its vertical alignment set to bottom, an overlay color, a background image set, 25/25/25/25px configured under Block Appearance. Each Banner contains a Heading, a Paragraph and a Button.
The next section starts again with a Spacer with 40px height. Then we have a Heading, a Paragraph and a WooCommerce Newest Products block. The latter has the default style applied to it, it is set to display products from a specific category in a 4 column 2 row grid. Closing the section we have another Spacer.
The next section consists of a Container block with a two column layout, with the left one’s width set to 66.66% and the right one’s to 33.33%. The left column hosts a Banner block with its height set to 480px, the vertical content alignment set to bottom and the horizontal one at left, under Block Appearance the Banner has a background overlay color, a background image, zoom enabled and 25/25/25/25px padding, inside the banner we find a Heading, a Paragraph and a Button. The right column of the inner container contains two Banner blocks with their height set to 225px, an overlay color, a background image set, zoom enabled and 25/25/25/25px padding. The top Banner block has 30px bottom margin as well.
Finally we have another Banner block with its height set to 225px, under Block Appearance the Banner has a background overlay color, a background image, zoom enabled and 25/25/25/25px padding. inside we find a Heading, a Paragraph and a Button block.
Shop Elements
The shop elements column under the Elements menu item consists of pages containing a default WooCommerce shortcode each. You can see the shortcodes and their options here.
FAQ
The page has the Full width boxed template applied to it and the Show Normal Page Title & Subtitle options set to Hide.
Its content consists of a series of Container blocks with two columns each. The left one has its width set to 33.33% and the second one to 66.66%. The left contains a Heading while the right one carries an Accordion block.
About Us
The page has the Full width boxed template applied to it. Under Page Settings the Top/Bottom padding is removed, and the Page title with background, the normal page title, normal page subtitle and breadcrumbs are hidden.
The page starts with a fully aligned Container block with a single column. Inside we find a Banner block with its height set to 400px, middle vertical content alignment, center horizontal content alignment and a background image set under block appearance. Inside the banner we have a Heading and a Paragraph block.
Following the banner we have a 40px spacer block, a Heading, a Paragraph and a Container block with 4 columns. Each column contains an Image Box with the team members.
Closing the page we have a Heading, a Paragraph and a Container block with two columns. The left one contains an Accordion block and the right one a Slideshow Block.
Size Guide
The page has the Full width boxed template applied to it and the Show Normal Page Title & Subtitle options set to Hide.
The page’s content consists of multiple groups of Heading and Core Table blocks. Core Tables have the Stripes style selected and the Header section enabled.
News
This is your posts page. Create a new page and set it as your posts page under Customize > Homepage Settings. You can customize it under Customize > Blog in the Archives section.
Customer Support
The page has the Full width boxed template applied to it and the Show Normal Page Title & Subtitle options set to Hide.
The page’s content starts with a Google Maps block with its height set to 400px. It is followed by a 40px Spacer and a Container block with two columns. The left one has its width set to 66.66% and the right one to 33.33%. In the left column we find a Heading, a Paragraph and a Contact Form 7 block which provides the contact form. The right column contains and image and a few Paragraphs & Headings with contact information.
Decorist’s Global Newsletter Section
Decorist features one Global section (on your site you can add as many as you wish) that appears before the footer globally and serves as a newsletter subscription prompt. Create a new global section under Global Sections > Add New and proceed to the content.
The content consists of a wide aligned Container with two columns, the theme grid option enabled, a background color configured and 40px top/bottom padding. In the left column we find an Icon Box block and in the right one a Core Shortcode block with the shortcode of our newsletter form.
In the Global Section Settings metabox under Conditions set location to be before footer. Under Inclusions select Global (sitewide) and publish the global section.
Common Features
This section offers information on features common on all Ignition Framework based themes.
Shortcodes
The Ignition Framework offers a multitude of custom shortcodes these are:
Custom menu: [ignition-custom-menu name=”your menu name”] Site search: [ignition-site-search] Date: [ignition-date] Weather: [ignition-current-weather id=”your-location-id(optional)”] Minicart button: [ignition-minicart-button] Language switcher: [ignition-language-switcher] Icon link: [ignition-icon-link] Instagram Feed: [ignition-instagram-feed] WooCommerce search: [ignition-wc-search]
For more information about the shortcodes and their usage have a look at this Knowledge base article.
Page options
All themes offer six different templates which modify the location and appearance of the sidebar and the main content’s width.
Additionally pages have a common set of options which allow you to customize the appearance of the page title section, toggle breadcrumbs and more.
All settings are inherited from Customizer. So you can actually set some global settings and if you wish change certain pages to have different behavior.
For a detailed explanation of the available templates and their options you can read this article.
WooCommerce
Ignition Framework based themes are compatible with WooCommerce giving you the ability to create awesome online stores which perfectly match the appearance of the rest of your site.
WooCommerce is an optional plugin. You don’t need to install it if you are not looking to build an online store.
After activating WooCommerce it will create and set some default pages. These will serve as your Shop, Cart, Checkout and My Account pages.
The framework offers various customization options both for the main product listing page under Customize > WooCommerce > Product Catalog and for single products under Customize > WooCommerce > Single Products.
Learn more about the WooCommerce integration and the options offered here.
Global Sections
With the Global Sections custom post type included in all Ignition Framework based themes users can create content which can be easily reused in more than 15 key theme locations. For example users can create a newsletter subscription call to action box and immediately display it above the footer on all (or some) posts and pages, or create a banner ad an easily add it between posts in post listings etc.
For more information about Global Sections check out our knowledge base article.
Blog page
This is you main blog page. You can create a new page and set it as your posts page under Customize > Homepage Settings. You can customize it under Customize > Blog from the Archives section.
Widget areas
The theme provides special widget areas for your posts listings, pages and shop. You can use a plugin/module like Jetpack’s widget visibility to hide or show widgets for certain pages, posts or products.
Page builder support
Ignition Framework based themes work seamlessly with popular page builders like Elementor, Divi, Beaver builder and more to cater to the needs of those who like to build things visually.
Support
If you need help during the initial installation and setup of this theme feel free to get in touch and we will get back to you within 24 hours to help.