Before you Start:

  • Your have your own hosting platform running up to date stable versions of Apache/nginx, PHP, MySQL. If you need hosting we recommend Siteground.
  • You have installed the latest version of self hosted WordPress.
  • You have logged in to WordPress and are looking at the WordPress dashboard.




1. Install the Theme

When you are ready to install a theme, you must first upload the theme to your WordPress directory. There are two ways you can install the theme:


Using WordPress: Navigate to Appearance > Themes > Install Themes. Go to upload and select the zipped theme folder (newspread.zip) and hit install now and theme will be uploaded and installed. Once you have uploaded the theme, you need to activate it. To activate your new theme, go to Appearance > Themes and activate your chosen theme.


Using FTP: By using any FTP program of your choice you can upload the non-zipped folder to the /wp-content/themes/ folder on your server.




2. Install the Required Plugins

Once you've activated Newspread, you'll be prompted to install a set of plugins which are required to get the most out of Newspread. The message will look like this:





Click the "Begin Installing plugins" option.

Tick the checkbox just under Bulk actions and from the Bulk options dropdown select "Install" and click "Apply".

Give it a few minutes to install all of them.




Click the 'Return to Required Plugins Installer' link at the bottom when it's complete.

For simplicity, tick the checkbox just under Bulk actions and from the Bulk options dropdown select "Activate" and click "Apply". This will activate all plugins that you'll need for the theme.




You'll know you've done everything correctly when you see this confirmation.




 

3. Add the Demo Content

We highly recommend you add the demo content so you can get setup quickly. Just go to Appearance > Import Demo Data




It can take up to 2 minutes to import the demo pages so don't touch it!

Once correctly imported you'll get an "All done - Have fun!" message.

This adds the demo content as well as the widgets.



Have issues with the import?
  1. Try increasing the memory required by WordPress and then run the import again. Instructions
  2. On some hosts (we're looking at you GoDaddy) the timeout limits are set very low which doesn't allow it to complete. Solution




4. Set the Menu


Installing the demo data automatically assigned the menu for you so this is just a review step.

Go to Appearance > Menus ensure that the menu is set to be the Main Menu.



Next, Set the homepage link.


Open the 'Home' menu item and replace the # with a full link to your website. e.g. http://www.mysite.com



To enable the Social Menu go to Appearance > Customize > Header and Navigation - Social Menu.


Set the Social Menu to be set as 'Show'




You can edit the icons and links in this section. The icons follow the Font Awesome convention, e.g. fa-twitter, fa-instagram etc. For a full list of the icons available see the Font Awesome site. 




5. Reading Settings

Go to Settings > Reading and set the Front Page to be 'Your latest posts'

Set the 'Blog pages to show at most' to be 6 if you wish.






6. Set up the Homepage

Next, go to Appearance > Customizer > Layout > Homepage Slider


Set 'Show the slider?' to Show


Next, set the category you would like to display within the slider. 


NOTE: Try choosing a different category - not the default one selected to make the slider appear at first.




Showing the Carousel instead


You can set the slider to 'Hide' via the option above. Then, go to Appearance > Customizer > Layout > Homepage Carousel - and set the Carousel to 'Show' in its place.


Set the Category you would like to display within the carousel. 


NOTE: Try choosing a different category - not the default one selected to make the carousel appear at first.




Show the 3 Feature Boxes


You can do this via Appearance > Customizer > Layout > Homepage Features.


Set the 'Show the feature boxes?' option to 'Show'


You can then upload an image, text and link for each.






7. Setting up Instagram above the Footer


Go to Appearance > Widgets > Instagram Footer


Drop in the Instagram widget into the Instagram Footer widget area. You can set the account name and other option within the widget settings. For optimum results select 8 and image size 'Large'.






8. Resizing Images


If you are migrating to Newspread from another theme you may wish to resize your images first so that they look better within the new theme.

To do this, install and run the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin.


Once the plugin has been installed, go to Tools → Regenerate Thumbnails to redo the sizes of any images already uploaded.





9. All done!

Next, let's get started with using the theme. We'll show you how the Customizer works and how to add your own logo. Next steps


See the full list of articles for this theme, including a guide on setting up WooCommerce if you want to add a beautiful shop or how to include the infinite scroll feature.


Full list of articles.