Authentic

Theme Options

Once you have the theme installed, you can visit the theme options page to get started. To find the theme options page, go to the Appearance section in your WordPress control panel and select “Theme Options.”

Identity

Here you can upload your logo. To do so click the “Upload Your Logo” button and then select the file from your computer and then upload it. To remove an image, click the red x below the image preview. After you make a change, don’t forget to save your changes by clicking “Save Changes.” If you don’t have a logo or don’t want to use one, click the red x and save your changes. That will use the site’s title dynamically instead of an image logo.

Below your logo there is an opportunity to add a favicon. That’s the small icon that appears by the URL in a browser’s navigation bar. You add it the same way you add a logo. You also have an option to add an shortcut icon for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch users. If they add a shortcut to their home screen, this is the icon that would be displayed.

You can use the built-in SEO titles and descriptions or a plugin. If you’d like to use a plugin, just say no to the built in version and then install the one of your choice. I use and recommend WordPress SEO by Yoast.

Next up is an option to disable the built in lightbox image gallery that is included with the theme. If you’ll be using a plugin based image gallery, you’ll want to disable this to reduce the likelihood of a conflict. You can also include PressTrends, which is a service that provides anonymous theme usage information. It doesn’t track your visitors or your content, but lets us know how many sites are running specific themes. We use that information to help us in creating new themes and adding updates to existing ones.

You can also enter footer text for the left hand side of the footer.

The rest of the Identity page deals with social media links. You can add links to various social media networks by simply adding the URL to your profile or page on those networks in the fields provided. If you leave the field blank, that network won’t be included in the footer.

Home Page

The home page tab provides a way for you to adjust the settings on the home page slider. You can choose to include directional arrows, bullets to indicate the current slide. It’s also possible to set the duration of each slide as well as the transition length. You can also disable autoplay so that your slideshow will only be manually advanced.

To add slides to your slideshow, go to the Media section of your control panel and select “Slides.” Here you can create a new slide by selecting the “Add New Slide” next to the page title. To add the slide image, select the “Set Featured Image” link in the right hand column. Here’s a quick video that will show you how the slideshow is set up:

WordPress will resize your images down for you. If you’d like to hand craft them, the size of the slideshow is 663 pixels wide by 371 pixels high.

Podcasting

This section of the theme options panel controls the details of your podcast feed. Fill in the appropriate blanks to create an iTunes compatible podcast feed. You can upload your own artwork as well. Apple suggests a 600 pixel square PNG or JPEG image. In some situations it will be scaled down quite small so try to make something that is eye catching in a small or large size.

To add your individual podcast episodes, select the podcast link in your control panel (it’s right below comments). There you can add your podcast episodes. They work basically like a post does. You can set a featured image for the podcast. You can add your media files. There is an uploader for both the message as well as notes if you provide them. If you’d like to have the duration appear in iTunes, then enter the time into the duration field. You can then publish it.

Setting up your podcast feed is simple. Create a new page and call it something like “Podcast Feed” or something similar. In the right hand column while creating this page, you’ll see a page attributes box. In that box choose the “Custom Feed” from the list of available page templates. Publish that page and view it in your browser. Copy the URL to the page. That is the URL that you can submit to the iTunes store so your podcast can be listed there.

Staff

The staff section is organized around “Staff Groups.” Basically these are like categories for your staff members. You can use them to create multiple lists of your staff which could be useful if you need to group them together by role or common ministries.

To add your staff members to your staff groups, create or edit a staff member. Look in the right hand column and you’ll see a section for staff groups. Any existing groups will be listed there and there will be a blank at the bottom of the box that you can use to create a new group. Add that staff member to a staff group and then save/publish them. Repeat that for all your other staff.

Next go to the Appearance section and select Menus. On the left hand side you may see “Staff Groups.” If you don’t, then click the “Screen Options” tab in the top right hand corner and make sure the box next to staff groups is checked.

Then go back to the left hand column and you should see a spot for staff groups. You can then add your groups directly to your navigation menu. That will create a “page” for each group.

If you only need one listing of your staff, you can use the staff page template. It displays all staff members from all groups in one list.

Styling

This tab lets you add a background image, and select colors for various elements in the theme. To add a custom background image, upload it by clicking the “Upload Image” button and find your file. You can also browse through files you’ve uploaded in the theme options page previously. You can also choose how to repeat the image and where to position it. To change a color, enter a hex code into the box or use the color selector to choose your colors.

If you have custom CSS you can enter it into the box at the bottom. That will override the styles in the stylesheet without requiring that you edit the file.

Page Templates

Staff: You can add your staff members by going to the pages section and selecting staff. Here you can add each individual staff member. In the title field, enter the person’s name and in the main content area, enter the details you’d like to use. If you’d like to hand craft what appears in the staff archive, you can enter that into the excerpt area. In the right hand column you can add contact details for your staff member and their title.

Below the contact details, you can add a featured image of your staff member and create a type category for your staff members. You can use these to separate your staff members into different lists if you need to (interns, leaders and so on).

Contact Page: you can use this page template to create a page with a small content area on your left and room for a large map on your right. Paste the embed code for your map into the box provided. You can place whatever content you think would be helpful into the main content box (directions, address, and so on).

Live Video: this page is there to make it simple for you to embed video from a video streaming service into your site. Just paste the code from your service into the box provided and save your changes. Your video will now be available for your visitors.

Menus

Here’s a quick video showing how the WordPress navigation menus work:

I hope you enjoy using Authentic. If you need assistance, let me know.

Organized Themes

As the owner of Organized Themes, I'm here to help you create a fantastic website. Let me know how I can help.