Lighting Essentials Wordpress Theme Guide

This document contains instructions for installing and customizing your LE Wordpress Theme. If you need help installing and setting up Wordpress please go to http://www.wordpress.org for further information, or contact us.

Section 1: Install the Theme

Install Wordpress
You must install Wordpress, version 2.8 or higher. You can download Wordpress and find installation instructions by going to http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

Once Wordpress is installed, please verify that the it is working on your website before continuing.
Upload the Theme
Unzip your theme. You have two folders: themes and plugins. Upload the contents of themes to wp-content/themes and upload the contents of plugins to wp-content/plugins.

If you're having trouble locating you Wordpress folders, please refer to Wordpress's documentation which can be found at http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes
Activate the Theme
Log in to your Wordpress admin. Normally, you can access Wordpress' admin by going to your-domain.com/wp-admin. Once you are logged in:
- Click on the Appearance menu on the left-hand side
- Locate your theme and click Activate
- You will receive a message that your theme is now activated!
Your Done!
That's all that is needed to install your new LE Wordpress theme.

Section 2: Customize and Setup the Theme

Set up your static home page
Our themes are setup to be used with the Static Home Page feature of Wordpress. There are two steps to this process.
- In your Wordpress admin, click on Pages. Underneath Pages, click Add New. This will load a screen where you can create a new page for your theme. Type in a title for the page (this will be how the link appears on your website) and also type in some text for the page. Now for the important part: On the right-hand side of the screen you'll see an Attributes area. In this area, locate Template, which has a drop down box. Click the drop down underneath Template and select +Home Page Once you select the +Home Page template, click the Publish button to save your page.
- Now, click Settings -> Reading. You'll see Front Page Displays on the top right. Select the A static page option. Immediately below this you'll see the Front page drop down where you can choose the page you just created using the +Home Page page template. You're home page is now set up!
Default Images
In your theme folder you'll find the images folder which contains, all images for the entire theme. You may go into this folder and replace those image files with your own. You MUST make sure your images match the names of the default images EXACTLY. For default image dimensions, please see the ReadMe file which was packaged with your theme.

The images folder contains the main images on each page, the home page mini portfolio images, and the logo. Example: the image about.jpg will appear as the main image on the About page. The image 01.jpg will appear as one of the mini portfolio images on the home page.

default_thumbnail.jpg: this is the default thumbnail which appears next to posts, if no image was added to the post.

logo.png: this image is for your logo. Replace it with your own logo. By default, this image is a PNG file.
Portfolio Images
The pictures folder (located in your theme folder) contains all the images and thumbnails for your portfolio page (please see the ReadMe file for image sizes).

By default there are 30 images labeled 1.jpg through 30.jpg. These are the full-sized versions of the images. Replace them with your own images. Then, inside the pictures folder, you'll also find a thumbs folder. Replace the images in the thumbs folder.

You can easily increase or decrease the number of images in your portfolio by modifying the file pictures.xml. Open this file in a plain-text editor to make adjustments. In this file you'll find 30 lines which look like <pic thumb="path-to-thumb" src="path-to-picture">. You can duplicate one of these lines to add additional images to your portfolio, taking care to rename the image, on both the thumb="" and the src="". Or you can remove lines which you are not going to use. So, if you only use 20 images in your portfolio, then delete the last 10 lines which begin with <pic.
Creating Pages
Please be sure to ONLY use page Templates which begin with a +. These page templates will be at the top of the drop-down list, for your convenience.

Each page template is named according to its intended use. The following page templates should only be used as their name suggests: +Home Page, +Portfolio, and +Portfolio2.

The +New Page template is for creating pages which do not fall under one of the predefined templates. You may use this template repeatedly to create as many pages as you wish, each with their own name, content, and main photo. See step 4 for more details.
+New Page template
The +New Page page template is used just like all other page templates, with one exception: you have to upload an image using the Wordpress image uploader. Create a new page (Pages -> Add New), select +New Page in the Template drop-down, enter a title and content. Then, follow these steps for adding the main image:
- Click on the Image Upload icon, which is to the right of "Upload/Insert", directly above where you enter your content for the page.
- Following the on-screen instructions, upload the image which you want to appear as the main image for the page.
- Once the image uploads, you'll see a screen to set various options and details for the image - none of this is necessary. You may just click "Save all changes" at the bottom of the window.
- You will then be brought to a window which will list the image. On the right hand side, you'll see an "Order" column. Set the order number to 1 and then click "Save all changes".
- That's it! This image will now show up as the main image for this page only.
You may repeat this process to create as many pages as you wish.
Contact form
The plugin Easy Contact is bundled with your theme. Easy Contact is a simple, easy to use, Wordpress plugin for installing a contact form on your site. Here's how to use it:
- Activate the plugin by clicking on the Plugins menu, then click Activate underneath where it says Easy Contact.
- Once activated, go to Settings -> Contact. This is the admin menu for the Easy Contact plugin.
- We reccommend turning off Carbon Copying. Other than that, the settings are up to you!
- Finally, to get the contact form onto one of your pages, you simply put [easy-contact] where you want the form to appear.

Section 3: Advanced Setup and Customization

Search Engine Optimization
LE Wordpress Themes come ready-to-go for SEO. No plugins required, you can fully manage your SEO on a per post and per page basis.

Home Page the home page is handled slightly differently than other pages/posts.
- Title - go to Settings -> General. The Blog Title is where you enter your Title text.
- Description - go to Settings -> General. The Tagline is where you enter your Description text.
  *Note that the Tageline text appears as part of the Title and as the Description.
- Keywords - go to Pages -> edit your home page. Scroll down, under Hybrid Settings you'll see "Keywords". This is where you enter your Keywords text.
- Be sure to click the blue "Update Page" button when you're finished!
Pages and Posts all other pages and posts are SEO'd in the same manner.
- Title, Description, Keywords - Go to the edit screen for the page or post you want to SEO. Once on the editing screen, scroll down to the Hybrid Settings box. In this box you'll find the Title, Description, and Keywords boxes, where you can enter the text.
- Be sure to click the blue "Update Page" button when you're finished!
Custom Portfolio
On pages where you are using a +Portfolio page template, you can drop in your own code for embedding a custom gallery of your own. This will replace the default portfolio.
- Go to Pages. Select a page which is using a +Portfolio page template.
- Scroll down to the Custom Fields box.
- Click the blue "Enter new" to add a new custom field.
- You'll get two blank boxes, one under Name and one under Value.
- In the Name box, enter portfolio.
- In the Value box, enter your embed code (html and/or javascript)
- Once you're done, click the "Add Custom Field" button, below.
Adding this custom field will replace the default portfolio. It'll be up to you to ensure you enter the proper embed code (html and/or javascript) and to upload your custom gallery. If you decide you no longer want to use this feature and wish to return to the default portfolio, simply go back to the custom field area and delete the custom field you added. The theme will go back to the default portfolio.
Footer
Your footer (where the copyright information appears) can be easily modified.
- Go to Appearance -> Hybrid Settings. Scroll to the bottom where the Footer settings box is.
- We reccommend using this copyright: Copyright © [the-year] [site-link].
- Alternatively, you may enter whatever you'd like into this area, as your copyright, or whatever else you may want.
Google Analytics
You can easily add Google Analytics for tracking usage statistics on your website.
- Go to Appearance -> Hybrid Settings. Scroll to the bottom where the Footer settings box is.
- Enter your Google Analytics code in the box, at the bottom.
CSS
For those who are not familiar with what CSS is, please refer to http://www.w3schools.com/css/ to learn about what it is and how you can use it.

You can locate the master CSS in wp-content/themes/yourtheme/styles.css.
While we do not offer official support for modifying the CSS of LE Wordpress Themes, it is fairly straight forward for those who have at least a little experience with HTML and CSS. As a starting point, download and install Firefox (http://www.firefox.com), then install the Firebug plugin (http://getfirebug.com/). Firebug will help you look at and locate CSS classes for your site. Then, you can go into the actuall CSS and edit it accordingly.

Of course, the alternative to this is contacting us for customization work. You can use the form at the end of this guide to get a hold of us.

Section 4: Special Modifications

This Section is Empty
For the time being, this section will remain empty. At some point in the future, we may add a "most requested modifications" section.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to contact us using the form at the end of this guide.

Contact Us

Thank you for purchasing Lighting Essentials Wordpress themes!

We welcome your feedback, comments, opinions, and suggestions (or anything else for that matter!) on your LE Wordpress theme, on this theme guide, or on anything else that comes to mind. We're constantly working on new themes and theme features, and would love to hear what you think! Visit http://www.lighting-essentials.com/wordpress-themes-for-photographers for more info.

*feedback

{