Pure & Simple 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).
- Breadcrumb NavXT – This gives you a breadcrumb navigation above the content area in pages
- Hide Title – Allows you to hide the titles of posts or pages, individually.
- Remove Widget Titles – This gives you the ability to disable widget titles – perfect for sliders and banners
- Simply Exclude – This gives you the ability to exclude categories, posts, and more from different parts of your website. I used it to exclude special post formats from the main blog.
- WP Google Maps – This gives you an amazing map for your website with many options
Using Jetpack
Jetpack is a plugin that is made up of several plugins that you may find very useful because of what it has in it…a LOT of features. Since the release of version 3.0, I have to admit that Jetpack is actually quite the plugin because of what it can do. In fact, I built most of the demo site for Pure & Simple using Jetpack. I did not use all the features, so I kept those deactivated, but the ones I enabled allowed me to do the following:
- Use the Widget Visibility feature to publish widgets to select pages of my choice
- Used the Social Sharing feature to put in a very nice looking set of social sharing buttons at the bottom of each blog post (you can for pages too)
- I also used the Contact Form feature
- Used the Custom CSS to edit the theme’s stylesheet instead of using a child theme (check out the tutorial about child themes for more details)
- Jetpack Comments to replace the default WP comment form on posts
There are more that you can use depending on your own preferences.
If you are not using Jetpack already, I would recommend checking it out and try it because almost everything you need is in it, otherwise you will need to install several plugins to get what Jetpack offers. They did a very good job with this one…finally. If you install it, make sure you read up on their documentation and for support, you can refer to the Support tab on the plugin’s page at wordpress.org