Styled Themes Blog

Setting up your front page like the live demo site is what this tutorial is about and will apply to both the free version of Celestial as well the Pro version. This tutorial will be written with the assumption you have not setup a “Static Front Page” yet. Step 1 – Create Two Pages for Home and Blog Go to Pages >> Add New Title your first page as “Home” or anything you want, and then assign the page template: Front Page Widgets Only Click “Publish” Make another page called “Blog” or whatever you want, but nothing else needs to be entered Click “Publish” Step 2 – Setup the Static Front Page for WordPress Go to Settings >> Reading >> Then on the Front Page Display section, select the Static Front Page settings by choosing the pages for each of the Front Page and Posts Page (the blog) Click Save…    read more 

This is a big topic but working with fonts in any theme can be a daunting task for many because people will only see certain fonts in a web page that exist in their own computer…or if the fonts are directly embedded into the web site (page) they are viewing. Celestial Lite (and the Pro version) uses a couple custom fonts but currently these are not embedded, but linked to an external source of Google Fonts. The demo site for Celestial also uses a plugin called WP Google Fonts which can be used for any custom fonts you want to use. WP Google Fonts How you manage your fonts will be up to you but please be aware you should have some HTML and CSS skills to make any modifications because depending on what you want to change, whether headings, titles, slider text, or even menus, the theme’s stylesheet is…    read more 

Celestial comes with two layout styles for your blog which change with one option setting. Whatever layout you choose will be set globally also for your category, archive, and tag layout pages…basically anything related to the blog. This is what the small blog image layout looks like: This is what the wide blog image layout looks like: Choosing Your Image Size and  the Left or Right Sidebar Column Layout You also get to select whether you want the left sidebar column or the right sidebar column by selecting this option from the Customizer’s Basic Settings tab. Go to Appearance >> Themes >> click on the “Customize” text link on the active theme Click on the “Basic Settings” tab in the left column Choose if you want the Small Blog Image or leave unchecked for the wide image Choose if you want the left sidebar column, or leave unchecked for the…    read more 

With Celestial, you get several options that are built-into the theme to give you the ability to personalize your website by using the available customization features that come with this theme. Normally theme sites code in third party option panels, but I decided to keep to the official WordPress methods by taking full advantage of their built-in customizer (new to WordPress 3.4). To see what the customizer looks like, you can check out the screenshots below: Celestial Customization Options As you can see in the above screenshot, you get option tabs, each with a series of settings that let you customize your new theme in “real time”…which means as you make a change, you can see the result dynamically in the right side window. The benefit of this is that you can see what something looks like before making it official and live to the public. Available Options Site Title…    read more 

If you plan to customize your theme, a Child Theme is highly recommended if you’re doing ANY changes to your Theme design. A child theme will function and look just like the Celestial Lite theme before you make any changes, but allows you to modify almost everything while protecting the official Celestial Lite theme you installed. This means if you update the original theme, any changes you made in the child theme will not be affected. When to Use a Child Theme? When you need to make a colour change When you want to change a font When you want to change part of the layout When you want to add something of your own ….basically any changes you want to make to the official theme you downloaded As WordPress states, a Child Theme is a Theme that inherits the functionality of the Celestial Lite Theme also know as the…    read more 

There are at least two popular methods of installing a theme into WordPress: Using the built-in Installer Manually uploading the theme The first thing you will need to do is to download the theme to your desktop which will be the file “celestial_free.zip”. Using the Installer Once you unzipped the package, you will need to log into your site’s admin area (dashboard as WordPress calls it). Go to Appearance >> Themes When on the themes page, clickon the “Install Themes” tab Click on the text link “Upload“, browse for the celestial_free.zip and then click “Install Now“ Once uploaded and it’s installed, click “Activate” and then you’re done! Manual Install For most people, you won’t be using this method but is available as an alternative. Unzip the celestial_free.zip file to your desktop Open your FTP program Find the unzipped folder “celestial_free” and make sure the theme files are inside that and…    read more