How to set up and use Noozbeat theme

Setting up your theme

1) Populating your blog

To add new posts to your blog, go to Posts > Add New and proceed to:

1. add a title to your post,
2. enter the content in the editor section,
3. upload a featured image by clicking Set featured image on the Featured Image panel,
4. add a category and/or tag to the post

When finished with the above, proceed to the Article Information panel, below the main text editor.

In the Feature tab you can select whether the post will appear on the front page or not.

In the Source tab you can provide information regarding the article’s original source, in case you are reposting it.

Finally, if you are writing a review, you can use the Review tab to fill in the reviewed attributes along with your score.

Once you are done click the Publish button to publish your post.

2) Customizing the appearance

All theme customization is done via the WordPress’s built in customizer. If you haven’t used it or want to learn more about it, please read this article.

Go to Appearance > Customize and you will see this:

TIP: Any changes you make in the tabs above will be previewed live on the website that appears in right side of the screen. However to save these changes you need to click the Save & Publish button on the top of the bar. If you have made a change but see the button grayed out (for example changed the font size of a heading), move the cursor outside the input box, to the next input box. Then the button should be clickable again.

Let’s take a look at the options each tab gives you.

Header

You can toggle the appearance of the header bar, social icons and top navigation. Additionally you can modify the colors of various header elements.

Menus

Under Menus, you can create and assing menus to the theme. The theme features two menu locations, the main menu and one on the header. The header bar menu does not support sub menu items. To learn more about menu creation check out the Codex’s menu user guide.

Site Identity

In this tab you can modify the site’s title, tagline, logo and site icon.

Layout Options

You can toggle breadcrumbs (a plugin is required, please read the description on the menu item), modify the homepage featured article section layout, the blog layout and the category/tag layout. Additionally you can configure the length, the small article title, the automatic excerpt and choose between numbered and older/newer pagination.

Typography Options

You have various options regarding the theme’s typography. You can change heading, body text, widget title sizes and toggle the capitalization of various elements.

Content Colors

Are you looking to create your own unique color scheme? This tab will help you do it by allowing you to modify the colors of multiple content elements. Click the Select Color button and either use a hex color value in the box or use the palette to select a color.

Sidebar Colors

This tab allows you to modify the colors of various sidebar elements to complete your custom color scheme.

Widgets

You can add widgets to the theme’s sidebars. The theme features six sidebars, the blog, the homepage, three footer sidebars and the header ad sidebar.

Social Networks

You can fill in the URLs to your various social network profiles supported by the theme. These will appear on the header and the footer automatically. You can also display them in the post/page sidebar by adding the Theme – Social Icons widget in the blog or page sidebar.

Posts Options

Toggle multiple aspects of the single post, like the appearance of categories, tags, date, comments, social sharing etc.

Footer Options

Customize the theme’s footer by changing its color scheme and modify the copy text.

Static Front Page

Use this tab to make the Home page your static front page, so you can take advantage of the homepage template we created for you.

Other

In this tab you can find the Custom CSS panel which helps you to insert styles for elements not covered by the rest of the tabs.

Theme pages

The Home page

You will need to create a page named Home and apply to it the Homepage Template from the Page Attributes panel on the right. Next set this page to be your static front page under Customize > Static Front Page.

The Contact page

To create a contact page similar to the one found on the theme’s demo, you can create a new page, name it Contact and use the Contact Form 7 plugin to help you create a contact form. Then paste the shortcode it provides in the page’s text editor, publish and you are done.

Widgets

Along with WordPress’s widgets, Noozbeat features a few custom ones. They are really simple and they let you display various important info around the website.

You will find a small description in each widget detailing its usage.

Recreating the demo homepage layout

If you chose not to import the default widgets, but still want to recreate the homepage layout of the theme’s demo, you can do that too. The homepage consists the Featured area and the Homepage sidebar.

The Featured area

The layout of the featured area can be selected from the respective drop down menu under Customize > Layout Options. Select the preferred one and save your changes.

The Homepage sidebar

Under Customize > Widgets you can access the homepage sidebar. Let’s take a look at the widgets used on the theme’s demo:

• We start with a Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a selected category using Layout #1
• Next we have another Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a category using Layout #2
• Following is a standard WordPress Text widget with an ad banner inside it
• After that we have another Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a category using Layout #3
• Below we have another Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a category using Layout #4
• Next is another Text widget with another ad banner,
• One more Theme – Homepage Content widget is used, displaying four posts from a category using Layout #5
• Another Theme – Homepage Content widget is used, displaying four posts from a category using Layout #6
• One more Text widget with another ad banner,
• Another Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a category using Layout #7
• Another Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying five posts from a category using Layout #8
• Following is a Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a category using Layout #9
• And finally a Theme – Homepage Content widget displaying four posts from a category using Layout #10

Additional Information

Useful Plugins

• Contact Form 7: Use this plugin to create a contact form. Then copy the shortcode it gives you and paste it in a page which will serve as your contact page.
• WP Instagram Widget: Use this plugin to help you display your Instagram feed in any of the theme’s sidebars.
• WordPress Jetpack: You can use this to create a contact form instead of Contact Form 7, insert sharing buttons etc.

Image Sizes

The minimum recommended image sizes for Noozbeat are:

• Post thumbnail: 750x440px
• Slider images – Fullwidth featured image: 1140x500px