Agency

This post has our instructions on using the Agency Theme. If you need help installing it, there is a quick screencast in our video section that will walk you through installing a WordPress theme.

Once you have the theme installed, go to the Appearance section of your WordPress control panel and select “Theme Options” to get started.

Theme Options

The theme options page is where you define your primary settings for the Agency Theme on your site. It is divided up into four tabs that group similar options together.

General Options

The first tab is our General Options. First up is your logo. You can choose “Text” which will display your site’s title or an image. If you select image, you can upload the image you’d like to use in the next field. The next two options are uploaders for a favicon and an Apple iOS icon. The favicon is the small icon that appears next to the URL in your browser’s address bar (in most browsers). For best results, you’ll want to use a small PNG or GIF image. The Apple icon is the image that will be displayed if your visitors add a link to your site to the home screen on one of Apple’s devices.

Below that you can choose to include the site’s tagline above the navigation bar. The tagline text is set by going to the Settings section of your WordPress control panel and selecting “General.” The tagline and site title can be changed there. After that you can choose to use the built in SEO (search engine optimization). This will create your page titles and descriptions for use by search engines and also Facebook. If you select “yes” be sure to enter a home page description. This will appear below your site’s title when people search for your home page.

Next you can set the footer text for the left hand side of the footer. The right hand side of the footer contains social media links. To include a link to your profile on any of the included networks, just enter the URL to your profile in the field provided. Only networks with fields filled out will be displayed. All are optional. The last option is for a RSS feed icon.

Donation Bar

The theme includes a donation bar that can be displayed on your home page. To use it, select “yes” to include it. First you’ll want to give your donation bar a title so people know what the graph is about. You can also enter a description to further explain your cause. The percentage of the goal will determine how much of the donation bar is filled. Be sure NOT to use the % sign; just enter a number like 70 for 70%.

The donation start is the amount you started raising from and the donation goal is the amount you are hoping to raise. These are not tied to any currency and can really be anything that you’re collecting. The donation button is the text that will be displayed on your button.

You can select to have people sent to your PayPal account by select PayPal or you can send them to a custom URL with the next option. If you select PayPal, enter the email address for your PayPal account into the field for it. If you go with a custom link, then enter the URL you’d like people to go to when they click it in that field. With the PayPal option, you also can set the page people will be sent to once they’ve finished with their donation.

Slideshow

This tab sets the options for our slideshow. The slides themselves are added in the Media section, but here you can control the functionality of the actual slideshow. First up, the slideshow can begin automatically or it can be still. You can choose between slide or fade for your transition type. The slide duration is how long each slide lasts in milliseconds. The transition speed is how long in milliseconds it takes to change between slides.

Below the settings are optional image up loaders for categories. You can upload header images to be used in specific categories here. All are optional, but they provide a way to further customize the appearance of your site.

Styling

The last tab allows you to set the styling of the theme. At the top you can upload an image for your background and also set the color fallback. Below that are numerous color selectors so you can change the colors of specific elements in the theme. All are optional; only the ones that are filled out will be included.

Two unique elements in the list are “Logo Position: Top” and “Donation Bar Title Position.” We’ve added these two options so you can better position your logo inside the navigation bar and also the donation bar title. One line titles may need some space at the top where two line ones do not. You can use negative numbers to move an element higher on the page if necessary.

Slideshow

Adding a slide is very similar to adding a post. To create a new slide, go to the “Media” section of your WordPress control panel and select “Add New.” You can enter a description at the top which can be useful for helping you keep track of slides. The image for the slide is the “Feature Image” that you add. For best results, we suggest images that are 960 pixels wide by 448 pixels tall.

You can set a link for your slideshow image by entering the URL you’d like it to link to in the box provided. If you’d like to make the slide a video, that can be done too. Just enter the embed code for your video in the box provided.

It is also possible to set the order of your slides by using the order box in the right hand column. I generally count by 10’s so it’s easy to add a slide in between two others later on.

Here is a quick video showing how to add slides in our Progress theme. The method is the same across all our themes now:

Home page

Page TemplatesTo set up a home page like the demo, first go to pages and select “add new.” This new page will serve as your home page. You can give it any title you like, but “home” is a good starting point. In the right hand column, you’ll notice a box labeled “Page Attributes” with a drop-down menu in it. Choose “Home Page” from the list of available templates there (we’ll cover the other templates shortly). Now publish your page.

Next go to the Settings section of your WordPress control panel and select “Reading.” Here you can select a page to serve as your home page. Choose “Front page displays” a “Static page” and then select your home page from the drop down of available pages.
Reading Settings You can also specify another page on your site to serve as your blog. This page will display your site’s posts instead of that page’s content.

The content on the home page is added via widgets. See the widget section below for more details.

Page Templates

In addition to the Home page template, there are four additional page templates you can use. The “Default” template is the basic, standard page layout with a sidebar on the right. The “Full Width” template has no sidebar and instead has a content area that is the spans the whole width of the page. The “Sitemap” page allows you to create a page that will serve as a listing for your content. The “Staff” page will display all of your staff members. More on adding staff members in the next section.

Staff Members

You can use the “staff” section to create a directory of your staff. To add a new staff member, click on “Staff” and select “Add New.” At the top, you will enter the staff member’s name. In the right hand column at the top, there is a box where you can enter details about your staff members: title, Facebook URL, Twitter, Email, Phone and a custom link. All of these are optional.

The main content box is where you’d enter the staff member’s “bio.” You can add an image for your staff member using the “Featured Image” option. In the right hand column, you’ll find a box for “order” that you can use to establish the order your staff members will be displayed in.

You can also assign your staff members to “Staff Groups.” These work like categories do for posts. It’s possible to create more than one staff list by assigning your staff members to different groups. That would let you establish lists like “Founders” and “Trustees” for example using the staff section for both.

Once the staff members have been assigned to groups, you can then add these to your navigation. To add a group to your navigation, go to the Appearance section and select “Menu.” This will open up the menu builder. In the left hand column are items you can add to the navigation menu on your right.

Here’s a quick video about WordPress menus:

To add your staff group, look for the staff group section on your left. If you don’t see it, click “Screen Options” in the top right and make sure the box next to staff groups is checked. Then you can add a group like a page or category.

Widgets

You can add your widgets (small content blocks that can be placed in sidebar areas) by going to the Appearance section and selecting “widgets.” In the middle are your available widgets. On the right are the sidebar areas that are used in the theme. To add widgets to the home page, drag the widgets you’d like to include onto the “Home Sidebar.”

Formats

Agency includes support for four formats you can use: standard, video, image and gallery. The image format will display the featured image of the page/post at the top behind the site’s navigation. The gallery format will display a slideshow of all images used on that page/post as a header slideshow. The video format will show a video at the top of the page/post. With the video format, you will need to paste the embed code for the video of your choice into the box provided at the top right corner. Lastly the standard format will not display any images or video behind the navigation.


That wraps up our Agency Theme. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in our forum.

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