Beach Please - Portfolio WordPress Theme
Documentation
- created: 04/9/2013
- latest update: 01/30/2014
- by: Apollo13
- email: info@apollo13.eu
Thank you for purchasing our theme. In case of any questions or doubts, do not hesitate to contact us via our Support Forum: http://support.apollo13.eu/. We will do our best to solve any problem concerning the project. At the same time we invite you to visit often our profile on ThemeForest since there will be appearing the improvements of our project and the newest actualizations.
You have probably seen our demo page and this is why you baught this theme. To see most of this things in your page you will have to provide proper content for it, and here we will guide you how to achieve this.
Inserting images in theme
Every time you upload some image in settings(for logo, background) or in post/pages/albums if you want to use exactly same image as uploaded, then use Full Size option(screen shot). Other options will be available depending on image size you have just uploaded.
My front page is empty or gives error message.
If you see empty front page after theme installation or message "Apologies, but no results were found for the requested archive. " it means you have to add some content or change front page to display something else.
You will have to add some posts/page or add some works and works list page. Next follow this section.
I would like to see front page same as on your demo. How to do it?
Our front page is Works list page. Firstly you need to add some works and works list page. Next select Works list in this section.
Check this section.
I would like to modify theme, how can I do it?
If you like to edit some CSS and JS, or maybe some theme behaviour you should check compression options and theme modification section.
Since version 1.3 we have removed compressed scripts and styles. This were very good things if you won't make any changes in theme. In other case it was counter intuitive, when editing for example style.css made no changes in site.
We decided that such behaviour(compressing CSS & JS) should be user choice made by installing plugin.
If you choose any plugin for that please test it with theme before trusting it completely:-)
Are there any recommendations of plugins from us? Not yet. We have tested some plugins and none is good enough in our opinion, as many just to do too much. We are waiting for your opinions in that field:-)
Since version 1.2 we have changed back end media selector to one intrduced in Wordpress 3.5. You can now use it for works, galleries or for adding logo.
Twitter widget
Also cause of change in API and policy of twitter we had to remove Twitter widget from our theme as it was no longer usable. Instead we recommend to use http://bluedogwebservices.com/wordpress-plugin/twitter-widget-pro/
To use you will have to provide twitter account info as explained in plugin instructions.
Install
To install theme you can:
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Upload it via FTP(safer)
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Download ZIP file from ThemeForest and find in it beach_apollo.zip(theme file)
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Unpack files from beach_apollo.zip. You should now have directory beach_apollo and in it other directories and files like 404.php, home.php, index.php etc.
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upload whole beach_apollo folder to /wp-content/themes/ in your WordPress installation
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login to admin panel in WordPress, and go to Appearance->Themes and click Activate below Beach Please theme
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Upload it via admin panel(can get error while upload on slower connections)
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Download ZIP file from ThemeForest and find in it beach_apollo.zip(theme file)
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go to Appearance->Themes->Install Themes(Tab)->Upload and choose file beach_apollo.zip
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go to Appearance->Themes and click "Activate" below Beach Please theme
After that you will see new menu named BP Apollo13 theme and that is where all fun begins :-) Also you will see My Works and Galleries menus. We will write about it later.
Since version 1.4.2: Before you proceed any further you will have to install required plugins(if any) by clicking link in top notification, check images below:
If you don't want to install all recommended plugins you can dismiss notice.
If some of embeded plugins fails on install you can go to beach_apollo/advanced/plugins
and install every plugin(zip file) from there manually, by wordpress panel http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins#Installing_Plugins
After installation
Set permalinks
It is good practice to set permalinks for your blog. Go to Settings->Permalinks and set anything other then default seetings.
Social Plugin
If you wish to use social options for that is compatible with theme then you should install AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
Add menu
Next you should choose menu to use in theme. It is very simple. Go to Appearance->Menus, create some menu(even with one position) and select available menu in Theme locations-> Site Navigation. Read more about creating WordPress menu.
If you want to add Single Work/Gallery to menu you have to dig in WordPress hidden options;-). Just look at image below and enable them
Next you should scan through Theme options to set everything you need.
Update theme
As this theme is commercial one, for now we don't provide auto update option for theme, as this will lead to easily stealing our work. In future this may change, but for now updates are only available on ThemeForest in place where you have downloaded your first version of theme:-) Although WordPress will inform you about new version of theme, but you still will have to go to ThemeForest site.
When you got zip file with theme, best way to update theme is to use plugin such as http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/easy-theme-and-plugin-upgrades/. If you have problems with updating theme from Wordpress admin panel, you can also manually delete theme via FTP and upload new version. You wont loose your theme settings.
If you have made some changes in theme files you will have to manually update to keep your changes.
Remember to always backup your data before update!(or cry if you didn't and something went totally wrong)
Use of Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades
Upgrading a Theme(copied form plugin page)
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Download the latest zip file for your theme.
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Log into your WordPress site.
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Go to Appearance > Themes.
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Click the "Install Themes" tab.
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Click the Upload link below the main page tabs.
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Select the zip file with the new theme version to install.
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Select "Yes" from the "Upgrade existing theme?" option.
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Click "Install Now".
Demo data
If you really need to see your new site as our demo page, then this is section for you. This is why we provide sample data, if you like to see how it is all made from backend in admin page. If you are confused about options in theme, we advise to use it only to see how things are made. After that, you should clean your WordPress so you don't have any unwanted content ;-)
How to install sample data:
- Locate the sample_data.xml file in dummy_data folder in file downloaded form ThemeForest
- Open Tools->Import menu and choose WordPress option(Installation may be needed first).
- Upload sample_data.xml file.
- On next page you should check Download and import file attachments
But it would be simple if this will end here :-) Import will probably fail(cause of timeout while downloading images), so you will have to repeat above steps few times, till you get success message. After this fallow next steps:
- Go to Settings->Reading->Front page displays and do this
- Go to BP Apollo13 theme->Main settings->What to show on front page? set to Works list
- Go to Appearance->Menus->Theme locations-> Site Navigation select available menu(adding menu).
- You may need to clean menu listed on the right couse it may have 'doubles' due to many import atempts.
- Widgets will be totaly no good, so go to Appearance->Widgets and make some cleaning and inserting.
- Last thing we have to create user.css file from default settings. To do that, we have to edit any setting of theme. Go to BP Apollo13 theme->Appearance->Main appearance settings->Background color and set to any color. But for real, you can change any option of theme to recreate user.css file.
- Theme should look good enough now.
If you wish to use theme default value for each option(it may sometimes be different frome theme initial value) just delete whole text in input from this option.
What to show on front page?
Here you set what you wish to see on frontpage. You can choose from:
- page - static page added in Pages menu,
- post list(blog) - it is default WordPress front page,
- works list - list of all works(you can also add it as seperate page),
- galleries list - list of all galleries(you can also add it as seperate page),
- single gallery
- Revolution slider
For proper work of theme you should define front-page and blog page:
- Go to Settings->Reading->A static page
- as Front page set some empty page you created in Pages menu, for example you can name it "Frontpage"
- as Posts page use another empty page named for exapmle "Blog".
Select gallery to use as front page
If as front page you choose gallery then here you can select which one should be displayed.
Layout texts
You have there texts that you can fill or not: Under logo text, Footer text, and Copyright text
Contact form settings
Give e-mail address for contact page form or left empty to use admin e-mail.
Google Analytics
Code for statistics from google. It should be full code like this:
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-0000000-11']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
In theme we use shortcodes editor. You can see it below:
- post editor
- page editor
- work editor
Use it to insert predefined elements for your content. To see available shortcodes in theme check http://themes.apollo13.eu/bp/shortcodes/ and select shortcode category from submenu.
You can also use WordPress embeds. Just select emebeds from shortcode menu, and insert your link for embed.
To make frontpage and Blog work as it should you have to follow this steps:
- Go to your WordPress Pages->Add new
- Add new page named Frontpage and another named Blog. You can leave them empty.
- Go to Settings->Reading->Front page displays
- Choose "A static page (select below)"
- In Front page: choose Frontpage
- In Posts page: choose Blog
- Save changes.
- You are done :-)
Now if you want to add Blog as separate page just go to Appearance->Menus and add selected Blog page to menu.
To select what should be visible on front page go to Main settings menu
Since version 1.1 you can add Revolution slider as front page or as part of other page. If you aren't familiar with this plugin please check its documentation
If you wish to add Revolution slider as front page you have two options in our theme:
- Select it from BP Apollo13 theme->Main settings->What to show on front page-> Selected Revolution Slider and then select it from Select Revolution Slider to use as front page
- In same settings select Page and then in this Page you wish to use, select template Page with slider(see image below). In this template every revo slider will be stretched to full width of page area(no padding like rest of content). You should insert it as shortocode into content of page(ex. [rev_slider sliderSrider])
If you wish to get best result with slider set your slider like on images below
For slider on front page use also this setting
For slider as part of other page use also this setting
Pages has almost same options so this description will fit them too
Posts
If you are not familiar with adding posts in WordPress please read http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts
Adding posts is same as always in WordPress, but with few tweaks. Firstly you can use shortcodes editor. Secondly you use Featured image or Video/Audio to represent post.
For image and video you can also select how it should be stretched or aligned and how big it should appear(medium, big or original).
Also you can choose to use full width content by turning off Sidebar.
Pages
For pages you have few other options. You can also use shortcodes editor and have same options(like in posts) for featured image/video. Pages don't have sidebar , but instead you can setup different page layout(left, right, center, full width) and one of predefined content colors(light or dark).
There is also two options for apperance in menu. They will work only for first level items in menu.
Menu short description will show up under name of page in menu.
Menu icon - You can see available icons at Font Awesome. You have to use code of icon that looks like icon-medkit
. To add more icons separate them with white space.
Last thing is setting backgorund image. Kind of connected with this is option Show "hiding cross" - if set to automatic it will show up cross if there is setup some background image or color(probably most of time).
Posts list / blog
If in Blog & Archives menu Type of post excerpts is set to Auto, then If while writing posts you won't use more tag then theme will use excerpt feature. Excerpt are made automatically, but you can also specify what will be displayed. Just find Excerpt box, and type text you wish Read more.
If you won't give excerpt either, then post will be cut after first 30 words.
Before you start anything below, it is good to visit Works menu
Adding Works list
To add Works list to your site first you need to create Works list page:
- Add new page(Pages->Add new)
- Name it as you wish but keep in mind that if you use nice addresses (eg. yourblog.com/about-me ) than slug of your page have to be different then slug for portfolio setted in Works menu, so everything will work correct. Best name this page as "Works".
- From template list choose Works list.
- Publish Page.
- Done
If you wish to use front page as Works list then settings for Works list page you will find in page you defined as front page in here.
Add new work
Adding new work is pretty easy. First you should set title and Featured image as it is cover of your work which is visible on Works list page.
Next you can fill description about this work by using main editor and shortcodes under it. You have to set some settings also, lets check image below.
- Subtitle - just additional title, describing more what is it about.
- Internet address - You can provide link to your work.
- Custom info 1-5 - Five custom fields for more details about work. If empty it won't be displayed. Use pattern Field name: Field value. Colon(:) is most important to get full result.
- Present media in - you have 3 options to choose for: Scroller, Slider or Full width photos.
For Slider you have 4 more options:
- Fit images - you can use auto(Fit always) or decide in which way images should be streched to fill screen. Fit when needed is best for small images, that shouldn't be streched to bigger sizes, only to smaller(to keep them visible).
- Transition type - 3 types: Carousel, Fade and no transition.
- Random slide order - self explanatory.
- Autoplay - automatically changes items.
Next it is time to add some photos & videos to present our work. Lets check screen below:
- If your browser supports multi upload then you can use it to upload many images at once.
- You can add title and description for each photo/video.
- Color under photo - useful only in Slider.
- You can also make photo to be custom link. If link option is filled, then this photo won't be visible in lightbox.
- If you choose video type, you have to add link to video(youtube link, vimeo link, or link to mp4, ogv)
- also you may add video,thumb it will be displayed instead of video placeholder in some cases. If you won't provide any then:
- Vimeo and Native video will use placeholder
- Youtube will use defult youtube thumbnail
- You can also choose to autoplay video.
In case of Slider and Full width photos images are loaded in full size(same as uploaded). Important thing here is to keep images in rational dimensions cause uploading here 10MB file could kill user transfer when viewing single work. And what would happen if you would have 20 images with 10MB each... :-)
Here is cite from our user about uploading too big photos, it is from our forum:
That is a real shame. For any other photographers that might read this post, there are two very important reasons to keep the images a reasonable size:
1) Loading time. The last thing you want when an agent or client is viewing your portfolio is for them to have to wait more than a split second for an image to load. With a 3MB image and even a reasonable connection speed these people will quickly move on and find another photographer for the job (especially if you have a number of images in your portfolio).
2) Discourage theft of your images. An 800px image will print at 300dpi on a 4x6 but no larger. This makes it more difficult for anyone to use your images without permission or payment. If you provide a 3MB image, you are asking for your work to be stolen. This happens ALL THE TIME.
JackieR0
Adding multiple Works list and Genres
You can create multiple works list if you wish. To do it, first you have to asign your works to different categories(genres). You can do it by choosing genres while adding work, like you can see on image below:
All your genres can be find in My Works menu under Genre
After you asigned different works to different genres you may want to add this Works list to menu. To do it go to Appearance->Menus and be sure to activate adding Works Genres to menu, just like you can see on image below
If you are using multiple Works list then template for Works list will display all your works with filter, so you can view them by genre.
For adding Galleries list please follow adding of Works list but while reading please CHANGE all words like "work", "Works" with "gallery", "galleries".
There are two type of galleries:
1. WordPress Galleries
2. In theme Galleries
Here we will talk about second type. In each gallery you have few options to set:
- Theme - You have 2 types to select from:
- Bricks with one additional option of type of hover effect
- Slider with few more options:
- Fit images - you can use auto(Fit always) or decide in which way images should be streched to fill screen. Fit when needed is best for small images, that shouldn't be streched to bigger sizes, only to smaller(to keep them visible).
- Transition type - 3 types: Carousel, Fade and no transition.
- Random slide order - self explanatory.
- Autoplay - automatically changes items.
- Background image - here you can decide to use oroverwrite global background.
Next we will have to add some items to our gallery, but it is exactly same process like in case of works, so please see this section.
To add contact page simply create new page and from templates choose Contact. In this template, contact form will be displayed under page text(content typed in editor). Please also check out Contact page menu for more settings.
Theme comes translated in to few languages and it is prepared for translation, so it will just require some time for you to see our theme in your language(if it isn't translated to it yet). Important files you will find in theme directory in beach_apollo/languages/default.po
This file should be opened in program like Poedit and translated. After everything is done you have to save your translation with proper name. Names for each country can be found here (in parenthesis in titles). So for example for German - Deutsch you should save files as de_DE and get 2 files: de_DE.po and de_DE.mo.
Copy these files to beach_apollo/languages
At end you have to go to your Admin Panel, Settings-> General-> Site Language and set your language.
After that if everything went fine, you will see theme in your language:-)
In every update, file default.po may change as we may add some new functions or fix some spelling, but you can use your old translation to get most of work done.
Good article about translating theme can be found in http://www.solostream.com/blog/tutorials/translate-wordpress-theme/
Also good to read is http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress
There is also file with translation in backend area in beach_apollo/languages/admin/default.po. You can edit it by following same process.
Here we post image where to type translated texts in Poedit, as not everyone get it right away.
Many of you may be tempted to edit theme files, but by doing so you block yourself from geting updates of theme, as you will loose your changes when you update theme. Fortunately there is solution - making child theme. Even WordPress team advice this as best solution:-)
Anyone intrested in this should read http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
But lets check how to do it with this theme.
In file downloaded form ThemeForest there is attached sampel child theme, so you can start changing theme even faster. To install it follow this steps:
- Install normal theme.
- Repeat step 1 but now install theme from beach_apollo_child.zip
- Activate child theme.
- Done.
Now you can overwrite styles, theme functions and even whole templates. Lets check some examples.
Changing CSS
If you want to change color and font size of content area you just have to edit style.css in child theme and add:
#content {
color: #000;
font-size: 20px;
}
Now you have black big text :-)
Good tool to detect what should you change and where is Firebug for firefox. Here is tutorial how to use it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe1nqI4fNRc. Any browser has similar tool(under F12 key you can call it).
Custom CSS
For changes in css you can also special area in theme BP Apollo13 theme->Appearance->Custom CSS. There you can insert your custom css.
In this theme default stylesheet is loaded from main theme, and then you can overwrite CSS rules in style.css in child theme. After this come user.css with changes set in admin panel. So finally it loads in this order:
1. main theme style.css or compressed.css
2. child theme style.css
3. user.css(settings form admin panel)
4. Custom css(it is added at end of user.css)
Changing theme functions
This is not real example, and it wont work with this them. It is only here to demonstrate the idea.
Another example, you may wish to change info that is displayed under title of each post(date, author, categories, tags) so you have to define your own version of a13_post_info() function. Lets say you wish to remove tags from that list. Just open functions.php in child theme and drop this code:
function a13_post_info() {
?>
<div class="post-info">
<span class="categories"><?php _fe('Category' ); ?>: <?php a13_posted_in( ', ' ); ?></span>
<?php echo ' <span class="comments"><a href="' . get_comments_link() . '" title="' . sprintf(__fe( '%d Comment(s)' ), get_comments_number()) . '">' . sprintf(__fe( '%d Comment(s)' ), get_comments_number()) . '</a></span>'; ?>
<?php edit_post_link( __fe( 'Edit' ) ); ?>
</div>
<?php
}
You have now overwritten main theme function, and your version will be loaded.
Most interesting functions you will find in advance/utilities.php(in main theme) , but there is more functions that you can change in child theme. All functions that can be overwritten has before its definition code: if(!function_exists('function_name'))
. If you wish to change other functions ask on our forum for support in that case or just don't bother with child theme and change main theme(if you understand imlications;-) ).
In case of any questions or doubts, do not hesitate to contact us via our Support Forum http://support.apollo13.eu/
Instruction how to get Purchase Code:
Template image sizes
600 x auto - page, post featured image(medium)
960 x auto - page, post featured image(big)
100 x 75 - thumbs in sidebar of works
auto x 500(can be chaged) - Work Scroller image
504 x 384(can be chaged) - Works Covers(Works list)
504 x 384(can be chaged) - Galleires Covers(Galleries list)
360 x 264(can be chaged) - Gallery bricks
Video/Audio support
Theme support Youtube and Vimeo videos, and also HTML 5 types.
You can insert them by shortcodes or as main post video.
For youtube best to use links as : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JByDbPn6A1o
For vimeo best to use links as: http://vimeo.com/12280336
Any other link will be treated as HTML 5 video. Browsers that understand the HTML5 tag will display MPEG/H.264 (.mp4) files, VP8/webm (.webm), or Ogg/Theora (.ogv) files. Other browsers can use Flash to play the .mp4 or .flv.
In pages and posts you can also post audio file. Detection is based on file extension. File will be treated as audio when has one of these extensions: .mp3, .ogg, .m4a
WP Paginate
You can get it from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-paginate/installation/.
For blog and archives you can either use theme native pagination or enable this plugin and gain some more controll at it. You just need to install plugin and activate it. Also it would be good if you disable defult plugin stylesheet like shown on image below.
AddThis
You can get it from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/addthis/.
AddThis is social plugin that will provide support for social media in your blog and works. Install plugin, configure its options, and you are ready. We done already things that if should look nice with our theme.
We have prepared some styles for "Like" plugin so it looks nice with this theme. If you would like to use it install and activate this plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/i-recommend-this/
Here is recommended configuration of this plugin to work best with our theme:
Captcha
Do you have problems with spam from our contact form or comments form? Install and activate this captcha plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/captcha/
Styles for it are prepared in theme:-)
Here is sample configuration:
Rebuliding Thumbnails
If after changing some theme settings(conected to image sizes) images look weird, then you may have to regenarate thumbanails.
To do that you will have to use some plugin, we advice AJAX Thumbnail Rebuild. Just "Upload the plugin to your blog, activate it, done. You can then rebuild all thumbnails in the tools section (Tools -> Rebuild Thumbnails)." (copied from plugin page).
Flickr
To use Filckr widget styled as in our theme you will have to install plugin Quick Flickr Widget.
High DPI Screen users(Retina)
I bet 80% of you users use retina(or alike) display;-) That may be true in few years from now. To support such users you can use this great plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-retina-2x/faq/ . It will serve better quality images for high DPI screens.
The scripts and plugins used is the project:
- jQuery (http://jquery.com)
- Modernizr (http://modernizr.com/)
- Masonry (http://masonry.desandro.com/)
- jQuery resize event (http://benalman.com/projects/jquery-resize-plugin/)
- VideoJS (http://videojs.com/)
- jPlayer by Mark J Panaghiston (http://www.jplayer.org)
- hoverIntent (http://cherne.net/brian/resources/jquery.hoverIntent.html)
- jQuery mouseWheel Brandon Aaron (http://brandonaaron.net)
- FitVids.js ( http://jquery.fitvids.min.js)
- Jackbox(extended license) (http://www.codingjack.com)
- Automatic Updates For Private And Commercial Themes (http://w-shadow.com/blog/2011/06/02/automatic-updates-for-commercial-themes/)
- HTML5 Boilerplate (http://html5boilerplate.com/)
- Font Awesome (http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/)
and lots of internet wisdom out there. Thanks a lot everybody!
Once again, thank you so much for purchasing this theme. As we said at the beginning, we'd be glad to help you if you have any questions relating to this theme. No guarantees, but we'll do our best to assist.
Apollo13 Team
Social menu
Here you provide links to social profiles you have. Nothing new :-) You can also set icons set(circle/diamond white,black or color)
You can drag & drop social items to set them in order you wish to see on your page.
Only filled inputs will activate each social icon. Not filled = not shown :-)