Setup Tutorials for Encounters

This video in this series provides an overview of how to setup a “Contact” page just like the Encounters theme demo website. We will need a couple of plugins to achieve this, which are the Contact Form 7 plugin, and WP Google Maps. This is what we will be making:  Contact Page Covered in this video: Introduction to the Contact Form 7 plugin. Introduction to the WP Google Maps plugin. Creating a contact page. Creating our contact form. Adding the form shortcode to our contact page. Previewing our contact page. Contact Form Code To help you out, here is the demo site’s contact form code: <div class=”en-contact”>Your Name (required)<br />[text* your-name class:en-textfield] </div><div class=”en-contact”>Your Email (required)<br />[email* your-email class:en-textfield] </div><div class=”en-contact”>Subject<br />[text your-subject class:en-textfield] </div><div class=”en-contact”>Your Message<br />[textarea your-message class:en-textarea] </div><div class=”en-contact”>[submit “Submit Comment”]</div> Video    

This video in this series provides an overview of how to create a custom gallery using a plugin called “WidgetKit“. WidgetKit comes in two flavours, a Lite version (which is what we will use) and a full version which is a paid plugin. This widgetkit is of course optional, but because I am displaying it in the live demo, you may want to use this instead of the WordPress Gallery. To see this custom gallery in action, you can check out the demo website here for Encounters:  Custom Gallery Code That we Need We will have some work to do here to get ourselves ready to build our special custom gallery. What I will do here is post a couple snippets of code that we will be using, although editing to our own needs, primarily the paths to our images. To Add a Spotlight to a Thumbnail – We need…    read more 

This video in this series provides an overview of how to create a WordPress Gallery which is part of the WordPress setup: Gallery Demo Covered in this video: Introduction to the main menu styling on the demo website. Changing and previewing the menu items and backgrounds. Applying the changes. Video  

This video in this series provides an overview of how to customize your theme’s main menu and submenu background colours. To see what the default menu looks like, visit the demo site and mouseover any of the menu items: Menu Demo Covered in this video: Introduction to the main menu styling on the demo website. Changing and previewing the menu items and backgrounds. Applying the changes. Video    

This video in this series provides an overview of how to setup a Recent Posts widget with thumbnails like the Encounters theme demo website displays on its blog page. The widget is a plugin called Recent Posts Plus and offers many features that you can customize how the widget looks. Here is a demo of it in action:  Recent Posts Update: The date format for this widget should be: F j, YI will update the txt file snippet, but you can use a different date format if you wish, as it doesn’t have to be what I use. Covered in this video: Introduction to the plugin. Getting the Recent Posts Plus plugin and setting it up. Using the widget to display recent (latest) posts with thumbnails. Widget Output Template You can change the template layout of your widget how you want it, but to make it easy for you, I’ve provide…    read more 

This video in this series provides an overview of how to customize your widgets with style and classes when using the Encounters theme. Normally with WordPress, you do not have the ability to customize how you want your widget to look on the front-end of your website. However, there is a plugin called Widget CSS Classes that helps you achieve this, and as long as a theme provides custom widget styles, you can get a different look to any widget. For example, you can check out the demo website here for Encounters to see what styles are available:  Widget Styles Covered in this video: Introduction about widget styling. Getting the Widget CSS Classes plugin and setting it up. Applying a class to a widget Video    

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 

This video in this series provides an overview of available page templates that comes with the Encounters theme. There are several templates that are setup to give you a variety of layouts, some are created for a website’s front page, but you can use these inside your site if you wish. Available templates are: Default (has a right column) Front Page with Left Column Front Page with Left and Right Columns Front page full width (has no left or right columns) Front Page Widgets Only (uses only widgets, no content from the editor) Page with Left and Right Columns Page with Left Column Page with Right Column Covered in this video: Introducing you to the available page templates. How to select a page template. Video    

This video in this series provides an overview of how to setup a footer menu when using the Encounters theme. A footer menu is usually found on most sites and contains links to page information relating to Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Support, and many others. Covered in this video: Familiarizing yourself with the WordPress menu manager. How to create a menu. How to add links to your new menu. Video  

This video in this series provides an overview of how to setup your social networking icon group when using the Encounters theme. When you set up your icons, it will depend on what social networks you belong to because you won’t need to show all the types that Encounters offers: Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn Pinterest Youtube Flickr RSS Covered in this video: Familiarizing yourself with the Social Networking Options. How to enable the social networking bar. How to add links to each social network field. Previewing and saving your changes. Video