How to set up and use BusinessOne theme

Setting up your theme

1) Creating basic pages

Let’s start by adding the first few basic pages you are going to need. Go to Pages > Add New and create the following pages:

1. “Home” this will serve as your homepage, assign to it the “Front page” template from the “Page attributes” panel and publish the page.
2. “Blog” this will be your posts page. Just create and publish a blank default page named “Blog” (or whatever you wish to name it) without adding any content, no further action needed for now.
3. “Contact” here you can place your contact form which you will create using the Contact Form 7 plugin.
4. “Products” in this page you will list your products, apply to it the Product Listing template. You can also create listing pages for a particular product category, by selecting it as your Base products category in the metabox below the page’s main text editor.
5. “Testimonials” in this page you will list your testimonials, apply to it the Testimonials template.

(TIP, all page titles serve as examples, you can name your pages according to your needs.)

Once the pages are created, navigate to Settings > Reading and set the “Home” page to be your static frontpage and the “Blog” page as your posts page, as demonstrated in the image below.

2) Populating your blog

To add new posts to your blog, go to Posts > add new, title your post, enter the content in the editor, upload a featured image by clicking “Set featured image” on the Featured Image panel, add a category and/or tag to the post, if you so desire, from the respective panels and publish the post by clicking “Publish”.

3) Adding products

To add a new product go to Products > New Product. Add a title for your product, any relevant text in the text editor, upload a featured image and finally add an image gallery by clicking the Add Images button in the Product Gallery metabox.

Once done, publish the product. The offer label and URL can be set under CSSIgniter Settings > Product Options, along with related products display and product slider options.

4) Adding Slideshow items

To add items to your homepage’s slider go to Slider Items > New Slider item, set a title for the slider item, add a bit of text in the text editor and upload a featured image (which will be the image displayed on the homepage, images for the slider should be at least 1140×500), then in the “Slider Details” panel you can optionally set a URL to which the user will be redirected when clicking on the slide. Slider speed and autoslide functionality can be adjusted under CSSIgniter settings > Homepage options.

5) Adding Testimonials

To add a testimonial go to Testimonials > New Testimonial, set a title for it (the author’s name), and the testimonial’s content in the text editor below.

6) Creating your menu

Now that your content is in place, you will need a menu. Go to Appearance > Menus, check the pages you want on your menu and add them, give your menu a name and save it. Finally you will need to set your menu as “Main” menu, this can be done either by checking the “Main menu” box in “Menu Settings” just below your menu items in Menu Structure, or by going to the “Manage Locations” tab and selecting the menu you just created. Similarly you can create and set the site’s Top Menu.

(TIP, for more info on creating and managing menus, please read the WordPress Menu User Guide here)

7) Setting up your homepage

The homepage on BusinessOne consists of the slideshow items and four widgetized areas to provide maximum flexibility on the content to be displayed. The widgetized areas can be accessed under Appearance > Widgets.

Duplicating the demo’s layout

The homepage on the demo consists of three slideshow items and a few widgets. These are: three CI Read More widgets in the Front page 1st row sidebar, three CI Product widgets in the Frontpage 2nd row sidebar, one CI Testimonials and a text widget in the Frontpage 3rd row sidebar and finally a CI Recent News, a CI Tweets and a CI Flickr widgets in the Emphasized Footer area.

8) Changing Footer text

The theme’s footer features an area for you to enter your copyright info, privacy policy etc. To change the text you need to go to CSSIgniter settings > Site options (5th box down).

9) Setting your business info

On each page’s header and footer your business’s info are displayed. These can be set under CSSIgniter Settings > Business Options.

10) Widgets

The theme features several custom widgets specially crafted to help you display your content. They can be found under Appearance > Widgets. Each widget features a small description regarding its functionality.

Additional Information

Creating Galleries

To create a gallery using our gallery management system follow these steps:

1. On the “Gallery Information” panel click the Add Images button.
   
2. To upload your images, drag & drop them in the Edit Gallery window which will pop-up, or select Add to Gallery in order to select already uploaded ones. Once you are done, click the Update Gallery button on the lower right.
   
3. Your “Gallery Information” panel will look like this
   
4. You can re-arrange the order of images by drag & drop.
   
5. If you wish to remove an image from the gallery, hover your mouse over it and click the X as shown below.
   
6. By checking the Randomize order box your gallery images will appear in random order which will change on every page refresh.
7. When done, publish the gallery item.

If you need to add images after the gallery’s creation just follow the same procedure.

Useful Plugins

• CSSIgniter Shortcodes you can use our custom made shortcode plugin to help you create a variety of layouts and elements on your site. Instructions can be found here.
• Socials Ignited use this plugin to create a widget that links to all your social profiles. You can also customize it with your icons and add new social networks, a guide can be found here.
• Contact Form 7 use this plugin to create a contact form, then copy the shortcode it gives you and paste it in an empty page.
• WP Instagram Widget: Use this plugin to help you display your Instagram feed in any of the theme’s sidebars.

Image Sizes

The recommended image sizes for the BusinessOne theme are:

• Post thumbnail: 550×444px
• Homepage slider: 1140×500px
• Large thumbnail: 750×400px