Preferential includes a series of preset widget styles that you can use for almost all widgets. You get 7 widget styles included with Preferential, plus you get a preset of available colours, including one custom colour that you can set from the theme customizer. The current colours available are: Grey (default) Dark Blue Blue Light Blue Orange Green Red Brown Custom (your choice) Although the styles are coded in the theme’s stylesheet, you will need a plugin called “Widget CSS Classes” to apply the styles by using CSS classes in your widgets. When this plugin is installed, it puts an input field at the bottom of your widget where you type in the class for the style(s) you want for that particular widget. Available Widget Style Classes default (no class needed) halfbar bar box border header widget-shadow listlines (for bullet list style widgets) For example, if you want a widget… read more
Setup Tutorials for Preferential
Welcome to the Setup Tutorials for Preferential. 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.
Preferential comes with a LOT of widget positions, many offer dynamic sizing which means you can have 1, 2, 3, or 4 widgets side-by-side. If you have 1 widget in a group, such as the Bottom widget group, your widget will automatically go 100% in width. If you publish 2 widgets, each one will become 50% in width, or if you publish 3, each one will be 33%, and if you publish 4 side-by-side, each widget will be 25% in width. In total, you get 31 widget positions available to you. They are also available for every page template for more flexibility in layouts as each person will have different needs depending on the website they are building. For the blog sections of your website, you also get most of the widget positions available with the exception to the following positions which are NOT coded into the blog and category… read more
HTML Snippets are like mini-templates that you can use inside your page content and found in your theme package that you downloaded. Generally you have themes with shortcodes, but this theme uses HTML Snippets instead because they are true HTML compared to shortcodes; shortcodes can also be a bit confusing as well when you copy and paste them into your page (more on this in a moment). This theme currently offers the following snippets: Accordion panels Blockquotes Call-to-action Columns Content Boxes Action Boxes Image Boxes Promo Boxes Message Boxes Icon Boxes Tabs List Styles Page Dividers Tool Tips Pricing Columns Progress Bars Logo Bar Table Styles Widget styles Form Styles How you use these will be up to you, but for most of the snippets that relate to in-page elements like icon boxes, list styles, etc., these text files also contain some instructions which you may want to print off… read more
You will hear this often and this is something that WordPress recommends; but if you plan to make custom changes to your theme, whether mine or from someone else, the best way is to use a child theme. You can read more about child themes here: Child Themes The reason for using a child theme is because when updates are available for your theme, in this case the parent theme of Preferential, you won’t lose any custom changes because they were done in the child theme. How this works is that the child theme inherits the styles and functionality of the main theme (the Parent theme), so any updates that happen, it will inherit those. However, if you made any custom changes to the theme, these exist in the child theme and not the parent theme, which is why when you update, you don’t lose the changes. When to Use… read more
This theme uses the WordPress Customizer which is a feature WordPress offers you to make changes to your active theme. Every theme will load up within the customizer, but what will be different from theme-to-theme are the settings and options they offer. The customizer gives you a live preview window of your website, and within the left column, you will see a series of tabs, each labeled as to what they are for. Access Your Customizer There are a few ways of getting to the customizer: Go to Appearance >> Customize In your Dashboard home page, click on the big button labeled as “Customize Your Site” Go to Appearance >> Themes >> Customize Go to Appearance >> Themes >> Details >> Customize The two most common methods are from the dashboard home page and the menu under Appearance >> Customize Screencast Tutorial Video coming soon.
This should be considered as optional, but I will explain and show you why I like to remove my WordPress media settings which are preset when you first install WordPress. If you go to: Settings >> Media >> Media Settings …you will see the following media sizes and other settings: Now I will show you what it does by uploading 17 photos to my Media Library… With Media Settings As you can see, WordPress will automatically generate thumbnails based on the settings (sizes) whether you want them or not. In fact, my media library went from 17 photos to a whopping 56! Why would you want to remove the settings? Because your hosting package has a certain amount of diskspace given to you, so if you upload a lot of images on a regular basis, that diskspace is going to get filled up fast and you will be billed by… read more
Preferential offers several features, but some require plugins if you decide to use them and should be considered as optional. You will need to download and install these because they are not included in the download of this theme. I do this so that everyone can choose which plugins they want to install, but it also ensures the most recent version of each plugin is installed. To install plugins, you will go to: Appearance >> Plugins >> Add New Do a search for the name, click Install, and Activate. Plugins the Demo Site Uses Jetpack – Jetpack offers a library of plugins all within one package. The latest version includes features that you will find gives you most of the functionality that you will want (or need). Widget CSS Classes – This lets you assign styles (classes) to widgets Breadcrumb NavXT – This gives you a breadcrumb navigation above the… read more
If you are experienced with WordPress, or know how to install themes, you can skip this tutorial. However, if you are new or a beginner, this tutorial is for you. Before you install your theme, you will need to unzip the theme package first because inside that is your theme file you install: preferential.zip If you are starting off with the child theme, then you will need to install both the Preferential theme and the child theme, but activate the child theme. Getting Errors after Installation A common issue that can occur with users new to installing WordPress themes is a “Broken theme and/or stylesheets missing” error message being displayed when trying to upload or activate the theme. This error message does not mean that the theme you have purchased is broken, it simply means it has been uploaded incorrectly. Luckily, there is a very easy fix. Please follow the steps… read more
Before you install Preferential, it’s important to know a few things before you begin. With this theme, you get a lot of files and folders within the downloaded package that may seem confusing as to what each one is for. I recommend taking some time to explore the contents so that you will have an idea of what is included. We are also on the assumption that you have some basic understanding of how WordPress works. However, if you are new to WordPress, we recommend you check out wordpress.org for documentation for installing and using WordPress. You may also want to consider checking out www.wp101.com for video tutorials about how to use WordPress. If you need help with understnading the basics of HTML and CSS, you will want to bookmark www.w3schools.com as a reference. Plugins are NOT included with this theme. We do not include these because not everyone wants to use… read more
