Luminescence Lite comes with (2) menu locations, as well the Pro version of Luminescence. With Luminescence Lite, you can create more as you need them. Before you create your menus, you will have what is called a “fallback” menu which means when you install WordPress, you will get a basic menu of pages showing like this: Again, I will assume you know the basics of WordPress, but I will go through the setup for this theme. Setup Your Primary Menu Go to Appearance >> Menus In the “Menu Name” field, type in what you want to name your menu, for example, Primary Menu and then click the “Create Menu” button Then at the bottom, you should now see a box that is labeled as “Menu Settings“. In the Menu settings, select the location, in this case the “Primary Menu” location, and then click “Save“ Now you can begin adding items… read more
Setup Tutorials for Luminescence Lite
Welcome to the Setup Tutorials for Luminescence Lite. These are the standard guidelines to help you install, configure, and customize your newly downloaded theme. If you have any requests for additional tutorials relating to this theme, please contact me and I will review your suggestions. These tutorials are also based on the assumption you have a basic understanding of how WordPress works.
In most cases, themes from developers are often filled with a ton of plugins that are coded directly into the theme. Although great and convenient, there is a major caveat of doing this…several actually: The theme gets bloated with code Your theme might have plugins you will never use or want to use The plugins and scripts coded in the theme may not play nice with other third party plugins The plugins and scripts may not be compatible with upcoming versions of WordPress The more scripts and code, the more chances bugs and other problems will show up Benefits of Keeping Plugins out of Themes The user can choose what they want to use You get a much lighter theme (less code) More stable theme Much easier to update plugins than if they were coded into the theme Updates are left to the developers of the plugins If you change… read more
The most annoying thing with WordPress is that they have a set group of dimensions for images already in place when you install WordPress. What happens when you upload a photo, you will get several thumbnail sizes created automatically – whether you want them or not. This is a major problem for many because eventually your host server will get filled with unused images which take up a lot of server disk space. You don’t see all your thumbnails except just one in the Media Library of your site’s admin. But, if you were to go to your “uploads” folder through your FTP, you will get a shock of your life when you see how many images are there. So…before we continue on with setting up Luminescence Lite, we will change the default settings of WordPress so that this does not happen to us, although changing these settings is optional…. read more
With Luminescence Lite, 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 since WordPress 3.4+). To see what the customizer looks like, you can check out the screenshots below: Luminescence 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… read more
If you plan to customize your theme by making changes to any of the core theme files, even the style.css file, WordPress and Styled Themes recommends you use the Child Theme method instead of directly modifying the actual theme files. If you update a theme and you made modifications, guess what will happen? Your modifications will be totally lost and you will have to do it all over again. However, if you make your modifications using a Child Theme, then your changes will not be affected whenever you update the original theme (often called the Parent Theme). When to Use a Child Theme? When you need to make a colour change to any element that is not part of the customizer or theme option settings 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… read more
There are at least two popular methods of installing a theme into WordPress: Using the built-in Installer Manually uploading the theme Using the Installer If you downloaded this theme, 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 Search and type in “Luminescence Lite” then install. However, if you downloaded the theme first, then Click on the text link “Upload“, browse for the luminescence-lite.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 luminescence-lite.zip file to your desktop Open your FTP program Find the unzipped folder “luminescence-lite” and make sure the theme files are inside that and not a double folder… read more
Welcome to the new Luminescence Lite blogging theme. I’ve gone back to an original concept of old school blogging design, but with a modern twist that brings more to just a standard blog theme. Luminescence offers some unique features whether it’s a personal or business based blog, you will definitely rise to the level of great looks! It’s scalable, compatible, and definitely gives you stability by focusing on WordPress standards. Going Pro! If you decide you want MORE features, you also have the option to get the professional version of Luminescence from www.styledthemes.com plus support of course. But, the Lite version should work very well for the needs of active bloggers. Here are a few of many for the Luminescence Lite theme: Built on WordPress 3.6 Built on a 12-column grid layout Built with Twitter’s Bootstrap Equal Height Columns Responsive Design (Bootstrap) Retina Display Ready Unlimited Colours Left or Right Sidebar Layouts Dynamic… read more
