Smart Documentation

You are AWESOME! Thank you for purchasing Smart. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to contact us through our support forum. Thanks so much!

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Table of Contents

  1. First Steps
    1. A quick introduction to WordPress
    2. Start Out
    3. Installing Your Theme
  2. Theme Options
  3. Widgets
    1. Nice Widgets
    2. Using Widgets
  4. Page Templates
    1. Overview
    2. Nice Themes Built-in Page Templates
    3. Setting Up Page Templates
    4. Setting up your Home Page(The same way as it looks in the demo)
  5. Images
    1. Overview
    2. WordPress Featured images
    3. Troubleshooting(Images are not displaying on in my posts or widgets)
  6. WordPress Menus
    1. Overview
    2. Setting up a custom Menu
  7. Custom Scripting(How to add custom PHP or CSS)
    1. Overview
    2. Custom CSS
    3. Custom PHP

A) First Steps - top

1. A quick introduction to WordPress - top

WordPress is free blogging software. With WordPress, you can install themes and plugins, run advertisements, edit the database and even modify the PHP code that powers your site. Anyone can download the software for free from wordpress.org, but it must be installed on a web server before it will work.

2. Start Out - top

Yey, you now have your theme! You’re about seconds ahead of having a beautiful site running.

Remember you must have a working version of Wordpress already installed in order to install this theme. If you don’t, it’s not a problem at all. You can easily have it with the famous 5 minute install, please see WordPress Instructions for more details.

3. Installing Your Theme - top

To install this theme you must have a working version of WordPress already installed. For information in regard to installing the WordPress platform, please see the WordPress Codex.

Using WordPress admin

1. On your WordPress Dashboard and go to AppearanceThemes, and click the Add New button.

Figure 1: The Appearance > Themes section.

2. On the Add Themes screen, click the Upload Theme button.

Figure 2: The “Add Themes” screen.

3. Choose the theme zip file you downloaded from NiceThemes and click the Install Now button. If you work on a remote server, WordPress may ask for your FTP credentials after you click the button, so make sure to have this information at hand.

Figure 3: Uploading the Theme zip file.

4. Wait until the process is done, and then click Activate.

Figure 4: Activating the WordPress theme.

Directly to the server

If you’re going down this road, it’s very important that you know what you’re doing: messing with the wrong files could break your site entirely. We also recommend backing up your site first, just in case.

  1. Extract the ZIP’s contents and find the extracted theme folder.
  2. Connect to your server using FTP (or the method of your choice) and find the wp-content/themes folder.
  3. Create a folder for the theme (for example, if you’re installing Smart, it should be wp-content/themes/smart) and upload the extracted contents there.
  4. Disconnect from your server.
  5. On your WordPress Dashboard, go to Appearance → Themes.
  6. Find the theme you just uploaded, and click Activate.
Please make sure that the path is wp-content/themes/smart and not wp-content/themes/smart/smart, the latter may cause malfunctioning.

That’s it. Your theme should be installed now.

Registering your theme

After installing, you should register your theme to enable automatic updates.

If you bought the theme on ThemeForest, you will need to get your purchase code and obtain your license key in order to be able to register your theme.

Additional notes

That's all you need to do to install your theme. Some themes need some shifting around of the widgets and Page Templates

If you are installing your theme via an FTP Client, please make sure that the path is wp-content/themes/smart/ and not wp-content/themes/smart/smart, this will affect the ajax and commenting of your theme


B) Theme Options - top

The theme comes with a simple to use administration panel. You can access it by navigating to Smart → Theme Options. The theme options are conveniently spread over a number of tabs and each tab contains the options that pertain to a particular area of the theme.


C) Widgets - top

1. Nice Widgets - top

The theme includes a bunch of different widgetized spaces, along with custom, specific widgets to allow you more customisation options than ever before.

2. Using Widgets - top

  1. Go to Appearance → Widgets.
  2. Choose a Widget and drag it to the sidebar where you wish it to appear. There might be more than one sidebar option, so begin with the first one. Once in place, WordPress automatically updates the Theme.
  3. Preview the site. You should find that the "default" sidebar elements are now gone and only the new addition is visible.
  4. Return to the Widgets Panel to continue adding Widgets.
  5. To arrange the Widgets within the sidebar or Widget area, click and drag it into place.
  6. To customize the Widget features, click the down arrow in the upper right corner to expand the Widget's interface.
  7. To save the Widget's customization, click Save.
  8. To remove the Widget, click Remove or Delete.

NOTE: If you change WordPress Themes, the Widgets will return to the left side of the page in the Widget Archives or Available Widgets list. You may need to add them again and rearrangement depending upon the Theme's ability to preserve other Theme's Widgets.


D) Page Templates - top

Overview - top

Individual Pages can be set to use a specific custom Page Template (a WordPress Theme PHP template file).

Nice Themes Built-in Page Templates - top

All of our themes come bundled with unique page templates which adds additional functionality to your pages. These are our standard page templates included in most themes:

NOTE: Additional page templates might be included in your theme.

Setting Up Page Templates - top

To select a Page Template to your page:

  1. Go to Pages → Add New.
  2. Add a title to your page.
  3. Go to Page Attributes panel in the right sidebar.
  4. Select a Template.
WordPress Page Templates

Setting up your Home Page - top

By default, WordPress shows your most recent posts on the front page of your site.

Our themes come bundled with a special page template for Home Page. In order to use the theme Home Page template as your site home page you’ll need to set a static front page. This "static front page" look is common for those who wish to not have a "blog" look to their site, giving it a more CMS (content management system) feel.

Creating a virtual static front page does not require editing or coding of files or templates. Using the default configuration for a "static front page" in WordPress does not remove the sidebar or change the look of the entire site, just the content area.

To create the static front page, go to the WordPress Administration Panels.

  1. Create two WordPress Pages from the "Add New Page" panel. If you will not be using WordPress blogging functionality, you can skip the second page.
    • Title the first page "Home" (or another name) as your "static" front page.
      1. Set the "Home" template to the default template or any custom template. Do not title your template home.php as this could cause a conflict.
      2. Add content you would like to see within the content area of the "Home" page.
      3. Publish the Page.
    • Title the second page "Blog" (or you could call it "News", "Articles", etc.). This page will be a place-holder for showing the Posts on your site.
      1. Do not use a custom Page template for this page! home.php or index.php will be used to generate this page.
      2. DO NOT add content to the Blog Page. Leave it blank. Any content here will be ignored -- only the Title is used.
      3. Publish the Page.
  2. Go to AdministrationSettingsReading panel.
    • Set 'Front page displays:' to 'a static page' and choose the first page you created above for 'Front page.' If your WordPress site will contain a blog section, set 'Posts page' to the page you created for this above. Otherwise, leave this blank.
    • Save changes.
  3. Enable "Permalinks" to show the "page title" in the address, since /index.php?p=423 defeats the purpose of making a static front page.
WordPress Home Page Templates

E) Images - top

Overview - top

Most themes allow you to set a featured image in your posts. Featured images are dynamically resized to fit in your theme.

To add a featured image using WP Post Thumbnails:


F) Menus - top

Overview - top

Wordpress menus were introduced in version 3.0. All our themes have support for this super easy and simple feature.

Setting up a custom Menu - top

Follow these steps and within minutes you’ll have a nice navigation menu and a complete understanding on how it works:

Figure 1: “The Appearance > Menus” screen.

  1. Log-in to Your WordPress Dashboard and go to AppearanceMenus
  2. Insert a name for your menu, if you have none.
  3. Click on “Create Menu” if you don’t have any, or “Save Menu” if you already have one and you want to update it.
  4. Once you have your menu, you can add Pages, Categories or Custom Links. To add pages or categories check the box beside and add them by clicking the button. To add custom links fill in the URL and Label fields and click the “Add to Menu” button.
  5. Freely organize it by dragging and dropping items from your menu, putting them in the order you want or creating sub-menus (simply giving hierarchy to the structure). Remember to save the changes when you are finished.
  6. Assign your menu to a theme location. This is really important, because it will be the location in which the menu you’ve created and edited will be appearing.
If you want to add other types of content to your menu on step number 4 and you don’t see the box containing the items, click the “Screen Options” button on the top right part of the screen, and select what boxes you want to have.

Ordering menu items - top

As mentioned in step number 4, it is really simple to set an order for items. You just need to drag and drop each item in the place you want it to appear.

Setting sub items, and hierarchies - top

You just need to drag and drop each item horizontally.

G) Custom Scripting - top

Overview - top

Our themes have a special space for advanced users, developers or even designers who want to add some special PHP or CSS styles.

Custom CSS - top

You can choose to add custom styling within the theme files or the options panel. This way you won’t have any trouble with your custom styles when updating the theme.

  1. Options panel
    In the Theme Options panel, you’ll find a special input where you can insert your custom CSS.
  2. custom.css file
    Within the theme files you’ll find the custom.css file where you can add your custom CSS.

Custom PHP - top

Add your custom functions in your theme’s functions.php file, below these lines:

/*
	Add your code below.
*/
		

Once again, thank you so much for purchasing this theme. As I said at the beginning, I'd be glad to help you if you have any questions relating to this theme. No guarantees, but I'll do my best to assist. If you have a more general question relating to the themes on ThemeForest, you might consider visiting the forums and asking your question in the "Item Discussion" section.

Juanfra Aldasoro — founder http://nicethemes.com

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