Snews - Surrounding Best Content

Uploading the Theme

Method 1: To upload the theme you need to extract the downloaded zip file. Once extracted you'll see a file named snews.zip. Go to Appearances > Themes and click upload. Select the "snews.zip" file on your hard disk.

Also check out Wordpress Codex: http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes

Migration from another theme

If you are migrating from another theme, you need to resize all the images and thumbnails to the right size. Fastest way to do this is by using the Force Regenerate Thumbnails plugin, simply install, navigate to Settings → Force Regenerate Thumbnails and run it. Job done.

Customizations Tips

Before you attempt any customization please get familiar with one of the web inspectors. In the end you will save a huge amount of time. If you are on Chrome it is already installed, simply right-click on the element you want to change and select "Inspect Element" or press F12. If you are using Firefox you can install the Firebug addon.

When you open it you will see two panes. The markup is on the left with the css on the right. Once you target the element you want to change, you have access to all css right there in the browser. Once you change a css property you can see the results instantly.

Once you've figured out what elements you want to change, you can paste those changes into the "Custom CSS" box in Snews > Options Panel > Advanced tab. If you edit the actual css files then you might have some issues when you upgrade the theme. Keeping your css customizations in the theme options will keep them nice and safe.

Import Demo Data

Importing demo data (post, pages, images, theme options, widgets position and settings ...) is the easiest way to setup your theme as per ThemeForest Snews Preview.
 

This will allow you to quickly edit everything instead of creating content from scratch. When you import the data following things will happen:

• No existing posts, pages, categories, images, custom post types or any other data will be deleted or modified.
• No WordPress settings will be modified.
• Posts, pages, some images, some widgets and menus will get imported.
• Images will be downloaded from our server, these images are copyrighted and are for demo use only.

In order to import demo data, move in Snews > Import Demo Data

Please click Import only once and wait, it can take a couple of minutes. Once it's done you should see all Theme Options imported in your panel, as well as widgets position and settings in place, posts, pages, comments, and the menus also already assigned to the correct locations. Pretty awesome uh?
 

Creating The Widgetized Homepage

• From your Wordpress Dashboard, Move to Pages > Add new
• Name the page something like: Homepage (any other name will be fine)
• Select the Snews Widgetized Home template from the Page Attributes dropdown metabox
  
  

• Select a Columns Layout from the HomePage Layout metabox
  
  

• Leave the page content empty
• Publish the page
• Now move to Settings > Reading
• In Front page displays, select A static Page
• Set the page you just created as Front Page
• If you didn't setup a Blog page yet, or simply don't want to, leave the Posts Page dropdown untouched. We'll get to this later.
  
  
   
• Now move to Appearance > Widgets, the HomePage sidebars are your target.
  
  
   
• FIll the Homepage sidebars (Homepage Left, Homepage middle, Homepage Right) with the desired widgets. To show off your content, the main widget that fits best here is the Snews - Main Home Recent Posts, but no-one stops you from adding more such as Ads, Side Posts, Tag Based Carousel and so on, just like the example below:
  
  

• Check your front-end until you're satisfied and...Done!

Creating Classic Blogroll Homepage

If you simply wish to show latest news in chronological order on your homepage, displaying as a regular Blogroll, you pretty much don't have to do anything. In Settings > Reading just keep the default settings to display Your Latest Posts:
 

Creating a separate Blog Roll Homepage

If you're using the Widgetized Homepage, but still want to create a separate blog page, do the following:

• From your Wordpress Dashboard, Move to Pages > Add new
• Name the page something like: Blogroll (any other name will be fine)
• Save the page without doing anything
• In Settings > Reading, set it as Post Page:
   

Adding Menus and Coloring Nav Items

To add your menus you go to Appearances > Menus and you can create the menus there.

There are three menu locations: Primary (main navigation), Utilities and Footer. To learn more about creating menus please refer to the WordPress Codex.

To add a color to the bottom line on hover/active state of your menu item, you simply paste in the hexidecimal value into the description field (enable descriptions at the top right of the screen via "Screen Options").




For example if you wanted green you would paste in #1ee212, just like the example:

Adding Your Logo

Move to Snews > Options Panel > Basic Settings > Header Logo Upload. Click upload and navigate to the file on your hard disk.

You can add an additional logo at the bottom of the page by uploading it in  Snews > Options Panel > Basic Settings > Footer Logo Upload.

You have quite a few options for customizing the categories. All the options are accessible in Posts > Categories > *Your Category, let's loop through them:
 

Category Color: This is the main category skin color.
 

Background Color: If you want a solid color as page background, select it here
 

Background Image or Pattern: Add a background. Simply upload the file and save.

Background Position: Select wheather you want a full screen background (CSS3) or a tiled one. Usually the first one is suitable for big pictiures, while the tiled option is meant for patterns/textures.
 

Header Background Image: Optionally you can upload a background for the category header. This will override any header background you set globally through the Options Panel.
 

Custom CSS: Enter here any custom CSS you want to output only for the specific category.
 

Show Posts Preview in Main Menu: Check the box if you want to show post previews when you add a category to the menu.
 

How Many Posts to Display (4-8): Select wether to display one or two lines of posts previews. Note: If no sub items are found, one post is added to the above selection in order to fill the area.
 

Post Options

There are quite a few options Snews adds to the Single Post Editor. Let's go through them:
 

Feature this Post on the HomePage Slider?

If you're featuring posts manually in Snews > Options Panel > Slider/Carousel > HomePage Behavior (as shown in the picture below)
 

 

check the option Feature this Post on the HomePage Slider? to tell Snews to feature that specific post.

 

Note: If you're featuring Slider/Carousel posts by automatically pulling latest posts, this option has no effect.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5zFWVXr-LHY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Comment Type

Select wheather to use FaceBook Comment or Regular (Ajaxified) WP Comments for the post.

The advantage of using Facebook comments is that you will get more reach on social media networks. However, keep in mind that user anonymity is gone and that could stop people voicing their opinion if the subject matter elicits strong opinions or is controversial. There are plenty of well written articles on the web dealing with WP vs. FB comments so a little research may be in order to figure out what is most appropriate for your website.

Reviews

Through the Rating Options metabox you can set up your own review for the post

Enable Review?

Here you mark the post as a review so that the various loops in the theme will recognize it, look for a score and show the overall it was rated.

Enable User Rating?

Adds the possibility for your users to give a rate too on the subject.This will output on the front-end as that:

Criteria Name

Here you can break down the various parts of the review e.g., Graphics, Value, Sound and so on. Give each one a description and a score by dragging the sliders. Leave the name field empty if you don't need it.

Avarage

An avarage value will be automatically calculated from the criteria sliders, and this will be you final overall score. You can change it at the end and save the post if you don't want a mathematic avarage. Watch out not to drag the sliders after that or the value will be overridden with the mathematic average again.


Rating Tag

Some tag to describe in one or two words the overall rating (e.g: "Awesome!" or "Epic Fail" ). Lowercase or Uppercase is up to you.

Criteria Header/Rating Tag/Longer Summary

These options are used to control how the criteria headers and summaries will appear on the post.

Affiliate Link

Use this space to enter an affiliate link to some product or service you may sell or promote.

Affiliate Catch Phrase

Some catching words for the affiliate link. ( e.g. "Buy it here to have a 40% discount!" )

Affiliate Button Text

The text inside the button (e.g. "Buy Now!")

Position

Choose between top position (right after featured image), or bottom (after post content).





Pros and Cons

You can also add main Pros and Cons for your review, simply do as per the example, adding new rows when necessary.


 

Final Result:

Other Options
 

Full-width Layout

Disable the sidebar if you want this post to have a full-width layout.
 

Sidebars

If you previously created some extra sidebars through the Sidebar Generator in Options Panel > Sidebars, then you can select them here.

Small Featured Image

Select this option if you need to display a smaller featured image in front-end, useful when you have to deal with low quality images. Output:
 

Hide Featured Image

Select this option to completely hide the featured image inside the post, the thumbnail preview will still be visible throughout the site, but not on the single post.

Featured Background

Through this option you can set a specific background big stripe for this post only. For best results, it's best to upload big images, for example a 1920px wide will be a good compromise. Use the same featured image or a related background, is just up to your creativity!

To access the theme options move to Snews > Options Panel. There are plenty of options that will help you setting up your Magazine site without touching any code. Let's loop through most of them:

Basic Settings
 

Header Logo Upload

<img src="/images/my_image.png" />

"/images/my_image@2x.png"

Home page > Section page > Subsection page

Top Ad Code
Middle Ad Code
Bottom Ad Code

 Header 1

 Header 2:

Snews comes with several built-in custom widgets. To setup a widgetized area, navigate to Appearance -> Widgets and use the WordPress drag and drop interface to drop widgets into the desired widgetized areas.

Main Home Recent Posts

This widget lets you place in the main content a widget containing the latest posts and reviews for a specific category (or all categories). You can set a group title, that represents the content you are displaying, and set the maximum number of posts to show and a bunch of other options.

Side Posts

Displays posts filtered by Recent / Popular / Best Reviews. Great to show off posts in sidebars.

Ads Widget 

The Ads widget lets you place Ads in your pages. You can display ads through an Ad code, such as Google AdSense, or upload and link an image yourself.

Advice: best results come with: 2x125px, or 1x300px banners. In this last case just leave the second banner block empty.

Twitter feeds

This widget will show your latest tweets. Just enter a title, your Twitter ID, and the number of tweets to show.

Facebook Page 

This widget adds the official Facebook Like box in your sidebar. You only need to enter your Facebook page URL. (e.g. http://www.facebook.com/facebookuser)

Flickr

This widget grabs the latest pics from a Flickr account. Enter the User ID of the desired account, if you don't know it just hit the Find it here link and follow the instructions. You also need to set how many pics you want to display.

Video Embed

This widget lets you embed videos from YouTube, DailyMotion or Vimeo directly into your sidebar. Just enter the desired Video ID. 

Example link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxpWpv3_pNc

Enter: UxpWpv3_pNc

Snews supports several plugins, that means that they will look nice and integrated right after installation without further hassles. Let's have a more in-depth look on how to get started with main supported plugins.

When activating the theme, you should be prompted by a warning box that suggests recommended plugins, none of them is mandatory for Snews to work.

You can also reach the suggested plugins page from Appearance > Install Plugins

Social Count Plus
 

This is the official plugin Snews supports to display social counters. Install the plugin and set the various account details in Settings > Social Count Plus.

Instagram (footer)

To add the Instagram Footer widget to Snews, move to Appearance > Widgets. Drag the Instagram Slider widget into the "Instagram Footer" widget area on the right. Click the widget's top-bar to reveal its settings interface.

There are a number of ways to customize your Instagram Footer. Perhaps the main widget settings to point out would be: Title, Username, Template, Image Size, and Number of images to show. The best way to get acquainted with the options would be to simply play around. We personally prefer having 8 Large images set to display in the "Thumbnail" Template format option.
 

Envato Wordpress Toolkit

The Envato WordPress Toolkit plugin lets you view your ThemeForest purchases within the WordPress dashboard and select whether or not to receive updates.

Unlike most other free WordPress plugins, the toolkit isn’t available in the WordPress Plugin Repository. You’ll need to move to Appearance > Install Plugins in order to install it directly from the GitHub repository.

You will need to generate an API key to link your WordPress site to your Themeforest account.

Login to Themeforest, go to your dashboard and click on “My Settings”. The API Keys screen allows you to generate a free API key.
 

Install and activate the toolkit plugin. A new menu item, “Envato Toolkit”, will appear in the admin sidebar. Click on the sidebar link and enter your marketplace username and secret API key. Click “Save Settings”. All of your theme purchases will now appear on this page after it refreshes.

Click on “install automatically” beside each of Snews to automatically update it.

Thanks to:

• WordPress
• ThemeForest
• ThemeShaper
• jQuery
• jQuery Easing
• FlexSlider
• jCarousel Lite
• Google Fonts
• SuperBox
• Font-awesome
• Retina.js
• Sidebar Generator
• Twitter Bootstrap
• Revaxarts

Thank you for purchasing Snews! If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to open a ticket on the dedicated support site and we'll be glad to help you out!

Thank you.

djwd