“HotNews WordPress Theme” Documentation by “Rifki AG” v1.0.2

“HotNews WordPress Theme”

Created: 21/10/2012
By: Rifki AG
Email: me@rifki.net

Thank you for purchasing my theme. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to email via my user page contact form here. Thanks so much!

Table of Contents

  1. Installation
  2. Theme Features
    1. Theme Options
    2. Backup Settings
    3. Sidebar Manager
    4. Sidebar Widget Area & Custom Widgets
    5. Page Templates
    6. Shortcodes
  3. Setting Up the Theme
    1. Install Required Plugins
    2. Import Dummy Data
    3. Set the Main Page & News Page
    4. Upload Logo
    5. Configure Menu
    6. Homepage Setting
  4. Writing
    1. Create a Page
    2. Create a Blog Post
    3. Create a Review Post
  5. Sources & Credits
  6. Changelog

A) Installation - top

Extract/Unzip the theme package, there are 3 main folders:

  1. Documentation - A folder that contains help and documentation.
  2. Licensing - A folder that contains theme license information.
  3. Theme Files - A folder that contains all files related to the theme.

You've two options to install the theme

1. Install Theme via WordPress Dashboard

  1. Login to your WordPress site dashboard and go to Appearance → Themes → Install Themes → Upload.
  2. Locate hotnews.zip inside of Theme Files folder and install.
  3. Activate the theme.

2. Install Theme via Hosting File Manager

  1. Hosting providers usually has a feature called File Manager. Login to your hosting panel then go to the File Manager.
  2. Upload hotnews folder and all files inside to ../wp-content/themes/.
  3. Login to your WordPress site dashboard and go to Appearance → Themes, there you should see a new theme named HotNews in the list of avaliable themes.
  4. Activate the theme by clicking a activate link under the HotNews theme screenshot.

3. Install Theme via FTP

  1. Before starting to upload the theme you need a FTP client tool such as FileZilla. See http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_FileZilla for more information.
  2. Copy hotnews folder and all files inside and paste to ../wp-content/themes/.
  3. Login to your WordPress site dashboard and go to Appearance → Themes, there you should see a new theme named HotNews in the list of avaliable themes.
  4. Activate the theme by clicking a activate link under the HotNews theme screenshot.

B) Theme Features - top

1. Theme Options - top

HotNews comes with a powerfull theme options panel which contains a tons of useful options, every options has an instruction to follow that making it easier for you to use. Below is a screenshot of our theme options.

2. Backup Options - top

HotNews also comes with backup options, which allows you to save the current settings as a json file and import it at a later time. Backup options is located separately from the theme options, a link to this page is located just below the link to theme options.

3. Sidebar Manager - top

With this feature you can create sidebar as many as you want and you can apply for individual posts and pages that can be set on an option when you make a post. Go to Theme Options → Sidebar Manager → Instruction tab to know how to use this feature.

4. Sidebar Widget Area & Custom Widgets - top

HotNews has 9 custom widgets 6 built-in sidebar widget areas

5. Page Template - top

HotNews comes with one page template :

1. Homepage Template
A template to be used for your main page.

To use the page template simply select the template name in the page attribute box when you create a page as seen in the screenshot beside.

6. Shortcodes - top

We provide a special shortcodes plugin called Fresh Shortcodes which allows you to enter a complex element into your post/page. Our shortcodes has been integrated with WordPress post editor that allows you to insert a shortcode markup without writing any codes.

To add a shortcode simply click the <> icon as seen in the picture below and select one of available shortcode, it will launch the shortcode generator where you can configure it before inserting to a post.

C) Setting Up the Theme - top

Once after the theme has been activated, you'll be automatically redirected to the theme options page, save all options to store the default theme options into the WordPress database.

1. Install Required Plugins - top

HotNews require an additional plugins, at first activation you will be prompted to install the necessary plugins, as seen in the picture below.

Click the "Begin installing plugins" to install the plugins or click "Dismiss this notice" to hide the notification.

2. Import Dummy Data - top

This is an optional step. The dummy data files is included in the theme package and located in the Theme Files → dummy-data folder. The dummy data is divided into two files:

a. Import the Site Content

Go to Tools → Import, if you do not have WordPress Importer plugin already installed please select the WordPress in the list of available importer plugins

After the importer has been installed and activated, run the importer and start import the dummy content.

b. Import the Theme Options

Go to Theme Options → Backup Settings → Import, locate the themeoptions.json in dummy-data folder and click Upload.

3. Set the Main Page & News Page - top

At the time of installation the theme will create 2 pages "Home" and "News" (if both doens't exist on your site), go to Settings → Reading, set front page displays options to a static pages then select the Home page for the front page and News page for the latest posts page. See image below

Go to Theme Options → General Settings, upload your logo image ideal size is 250x30 of pixels, set the display logo to "Image" to show the logo or set to "Plain Text" if you wish to use plain text for your brand.

Go to Appearance → Menus, create a new menu and add the menu items then assign your menu with the theme menu location and save. Available two menu location : Top Menu and Primary Menu

6. Home Page Settings - top

To set up your site's home page go to the Theme Options → Homepage Settings. Available 5 homepage modules which you can enable or disable from the homepage settings.

  1. Featured Slider
    Display your featured posts in the slider.
  2. Popular Posts Block
    Display your popular posts, you can choose to order your popluar posts by comment count or by view count ( if WP-PostView installed and activated).
  3. Latest News Block
    Display your most recent posts.
  4. Category Block 1
  5. Category Block 2
  6. Category Block 3

D) Writing - top

Create a post and page with HotNews theme is basically the same as usual you create a post with another theme. Add the title, put a post content, set the category, add a featured image and add a tags then publish it.

1. Create a Page - top

Go to Pages → Add New, perform the steps as usual you create a page and fill out some additional information by scrolling down the page, there you will find a meta box as shown in the figure below.

2. Create a Post - top

Go to Posts → Add New, perform the steps as usual you create a post and fill the Layout Settings information were the same as when you create a page, but for post the option to eliminate the post title will not affect at all.

Since WordPress 3.1 there is feature called post formats and HotNews also support this feature, In case you haven't used Post Formats before, you may want to check what they really are and what they are meant to do: http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Formats

Each post format has their own metabox, the metabox will only shown if the post format is selected. example: If you're select a gallery post format then the gallery metabox will shown up and so on.

Also there is an additional metabox.

3. Create a Review Post - top

HotNews also has a Review System feature with unlimited criteria, to create a review posts simply perform the steps as usual you create a post then scroll to bottom you should see a review control as seen below:

  1. Click this option to enable review to the current post.
  2. Add a criterias as many as you want by clicking the "Add Criteria" button and specify the criteria name and score value, you can add number from 0 to 10 with 0.1 incerements.
  3. Select the rating type, available type : Number, Star, Letter Grade and Percent.
  4. Choose the position of the review box in the single post.
  5. Enter the review box title.
  6. Enter the total score label.

G) Source & Credits - top

PHP
  1. Options Framework - Devin Price
  2. Filosofo Custom Image Sizes - Austin Matzko
  3. TGM-Plugin-Activation - Thomas Griffin
JavaScripts
  1. jQuery FlexSlider v2.1 - WooThemes
  2. Superfish v1.4.8 - Joel Birch
  3. jQuery Mobile Menu v1.0 - mambows
  4. webTicker v1.3 - Jonathan Mifsud
  5. prettyPhoto - Stephane Caron
  6. jQuery Backstretch - Scott Robbin
  7. jFlickerFeed - Joel Sutherland
  8. Jribbble v0.11.0 - Tyler Gaw
  9. jQuery Tweets - Todd Matthews & Steve Purcell
  10. jQuery imagesLoaded - Paul Irish
Fonts
  1. Google Web Fonts - Google Web Fonts
  2. Font Awesome - Dave Gandy

H) Changelog - top

HotNews v1.0.2

HotNews v1.0.1

HotNews v1.0.0 - Initial release

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.

Rifki AG

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