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Blog theme guidance

This guidance will give you an overview of the blog or 'School theme' functionality and the options available to you.

Dashboard

Logging in will take the user to the dashboard page. From which they can navigate to the different areas available, as shown below. The School theme is designed to be used for the classic blog style site with a homepage feed. With this being the case the basics of viewing and creating posts follow below.

If the user navigates to the posts tab, located near the top of the left had menu, and clicks on it they will be taken to a page that shows all of posts on the site. This page allows the user to create a new post by clicking on add new, and existing posts can be modified by clicking on the name of the page.

Post Formats

Upon creating a new post or editing an existing post the user will be greeted with this interface:

All posts come with 4 style options built in: standard, video, gallery and image (see right hand menu). The user is free to select a desired format for their post. It should be noted that the format affects the front end of the website.

Standard & Image

Selecting Standard or Image post will simply enable the standard style of post page. In the post both formats will display the same as the normal WordPress format and have a featured image.

In post view of standard & Image post style and element

On the homepage (blog feed) the Standard style posts will feature an excerpt from the post and display the posts title above the featured image. The Image style post will display the featured image above the title and will not feature an excerpt.

Standard (left) & (right) Image post home page view

Featured images

Ensure all Featured images are 1280px wide or above, to enable them to be visible on the blog.

Video

If the user selects the Video option under the Format box and waits for the page to update, the Post Video box will appear. The user may then enter a link to a video of their choice for the website to pull in and display - this work best with links to videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo etc.

Video post custom field - no video
Video post custom field - with example video

If a URL is copy pasted into the text area which says Enter URL, and the page is updated, the front end of the page will change. Instead of having a featured image, it will have a large video.

In post view of video post style and element
Video post home page view

Gallery

If the user decides to select gallery in the Post Format area, and they update the page. A box for the Post Gallery will appear, in which they can upload multiple images for the gallery to pull in.

By adding the images into the Post Gallery Items, when loading the page the user will be presented with a carousel gallery rather than a featured image or video.

In post view of gallery post style and element
Gallery post home page view

A preview gallery will also appear in the home page view, so users can view the images from the homepage as well as in post.

Featured posts/pages

Featured posts will appear at the top of the homepage blog feed as a slider.

Posts/pages will automatically carousel or can be navigated between using the < > buttons

Featured posts can be assigned within the post/page editor. There is currently no limit to the amount of featured posts that will appear on the homepage, therefore it will be the Admin's responsibility to update the featured posts and keep the, at a manageable number.

Team page

The team page will feature all users who have posts assigned to them (as the author) and will display the number of article they are attributed to.

The team page will be populated with the name, bio and picture of each user on the site. Therefore, each user will need to add a Gravitar photo, update their profile bio (Biographical Info) and assign a display name (Display name publicly as).

Each post will need to be assigned to the user who wrote it, and this will be linked via the Team page e.g. 10 Articles (see above)

Permissions will need to be asked before adding new users (especially students) as the bios and profile pictures contain personal information.

Theme Settings

Social Media

Under the Theme settings tabs, the Admin can access the social media menu. Within the social media menu the user can select all the different social media links and icons that will be shown in selected areas - currently footer widget.

Menu example
Once the chosen social media has been selected the user must choose which page/profile they would like to link to

Customising the Theme

Using the Appearance menu item on the left hand of the Dashboard the user can navigate to the Appearance tab, which allows the user to access a more visually oriented page editing experience.

From the customisation menu the user can go into the Theme Choice option, in which they can choose either the default display or the visual display.

Within the Site Identity the user can freely rename the site, add a logo and tagline.

Within the Menu tab of the customize area the user has exactly the same amount of control over the site’s menus as the user would usually do within the Appearance > Menus tab.

The widgets tab within the customize area gives the same functionality to add different widgets to the three areas within the footer.

Additionally the user may choose what the home page displays by going through the customize page and Homepage Settings.

Theme Choice - Default

The default format in Theme Choice gives a more blog like feel to all of the elements on the home page. It surrounds each panel with a box showing the date, likes and comments and makes the elements smaller in size, allowing the page to feature more recent articles.

Theme Choice - Visual

The visual style makes everything more image focused and makes the panels larger and more visible, however this does mean that less panels can be shown on the homepage. This style places much more emphasis on the images and video which means that the images have to be of a high quality.

Important Notes

When the site goes live users may have to manually save menus again so that the navigation bar on the header appears. If the navigation bar does not appear, follow the instructions below to create or re save the menu.

1) Navigate to Appearances > Menus

2) Once at the menu screen, as shown above, you will need to click Create menu and your previously saved menu items should appear, then simply click Save Menu, and it should display your original menu structure. If there are no items, then you may have to add them in manually.

3) If you have to add in items manually, you can simply check the box under pages and click add to menu.