Tutorial Archives - PurposeThemes

Posted on January 20, 2017

The Only WordPress Theme Development Book You’ll Ever Need to Begin and It’s Free

WordPress theme market is huge and the demand for new theme designs and features keep coming. Currently over 50,000 free and premium WordPress themes are available in market and more than 40 new themes get added in different portals on daily basis. Premium themes are priced between $29 – $300 and major clubs and even some developers are making millions by selling themes. These all figures states that the WordPress theme development is a good career option and one can make a good amount of income by building feature rich and good WordPress themes. If you are a beginner and planning to choose WordPress theme development as a career or like to make a theme as hobby, this is the right time to do.

State of WordPress Themes

As mentioned earlier, there are more than 50K free and premium WordPress theme available in market. The major marketplace Themeforest hosts more than 5,000 premium WordPress themes and similarly, the free WordPress theme portal on WordPress.org hosts more than 3,000 free themes. Out of these 50K themes, about 75% themes are outdated, so you can say around 10K – 12K up to date WordPress themes are available. More than 100 popular theme clubs are active with on average 40 themes per club. Few theme clubs are having more than 100 themes too.

Now a days, theme clubs are focusing on their popular themes only and trying to make that the best in their category. For example, Elegant Themes became more Divi centric company and focusing on making Divi theme and Divi Builder the best in the market. Similarly, other theme clubs are also going for a niche and try to provide the best value for money for a theme.

There are many multipurpose WordPress themes available in market. Some popular names are Avada, Divi, X Theme, Enfold etc. and each of these themes saw good amount of success. I think now it is time to be more focused and release niche based themes with good features. Niche themes like Megalith for construction website and Hotelia for Hotels are good examples. In coming days, we will see more niche based themes releasing and targeting users.

Self Made Themes using Free Tools

People are using free tools like Underscrore.me to start building their own theme. Underscore.me allows you to create a theme folder with essential files to start a theme but it’s not that everyone will love. Design is an important part of a website and now a days, WordPress is being used for different purposes like making a Fitness Website, Corporate Website, Portfolio and Photography Website and even Banks Website. It is not possible for non-designers to Design and build a theme for such websites using Underscore.me. This free tool is good for those developers who like to have a starter kit or people who like to have a light-weight theme for their blog but so is Twenty Sixteen and other default themes of WordPress.

With the above explanation, I like to make this point that starter theme kits are not going to reduce the demand for premium or good WordPress themes. Even Page Builder are helpful for creating good pages and websites but that also can’t make WordPress theme go away. People need premium and feature rich WordPress themes and that is going to be there for a long long time.

How to Become a Professional WordPress Theme Developer?

Self hosted WordPress is a community run platform and here you find lot many people to help you on different level. If you are planning to become a good WordPress theme developer and like to start theme development from scratch, here is the only book you need to read and it’s free – WordPress Theme Handbook. This is a free resource released by WordPress community to help you become a WordPress theme developer. Theme Handbook was already available on WordPress.org but now it has been officially released with detailed instructions and tutorials.

What’s there in Theme Handbook?

Purpose of this WordPress Theme Handbook is to help you learn the basics of WordPress theme development. To understand the instructions and tutorials, you should have the basic knowledge of PHP and MySQL.

Here is the list of sections well written in WordPress Theme Handbook:

Getting Started – What is there in the handbook and whom should read this.
Theme Basics – Basic idea about Template Tags, Loops and Conditional Tags
Template Files Selection – Page and Post Templates and other files like archive, index and taxonomy files
Theme Functionality – Sidebar and Widget Registration and Use of Media Files
Theme Options – The Customizer API : Provide Theme Customization from Customizer Panel
Theme Security – Make WordPress Theme Secured
Advanced Theme Topics – Make Child Theme, Testing and Validations
Releasing Your Theme – Submit Theme for Review and Release on WordPress.org

This handbook is designed to give you an idea about how to develop a WordPress theme. To know about any functions of WordPress, you can always go through the Code Reference.

The last section i.e. Releasing Your Theme is all about how to submit your theme on WordPress.org as a free theme, but you can also release your theme on your own website or some third-party marketplace. You may need to make certain changes as per the guidelines of the marketplace but the basic of the theme will remain same.

Free WordPress theme hosted on WordPress.org are not suppose to have an feature apart from the design because they think feature should come from Plugins. Well, premium themes hosted on clubs and marketplaces come with lot many features and to know how to add features, you may read the following resources,

Udemy Course
Treehouse WordPress Development
Free resources available on blogs like WPMU DEV, ET Blog and many more

Hopefully by reading the above resources, you will become a good WordPress Theme developer and I will you all the best. In case of any query and questions, feel free to comment on this article or drop us an email.

Posted on January 8, 2017 January 8, 2017

How to Add VR Content like 360° Video, Photo Sphere and Street View in WordPress

We are living in the era of Virtual Reality (VR) where you can share the experience in a visual way. You can record your scuba diving or being inside a zoo and share the video with others. Those videos will make them feel that they are also present at that place. WordPress is the most used platform to share stories, how-tos, tutorial, photographs, videos and more. Sharing a VR content along with the article will be great inside WordPress. Recently, WordPress.com announced about introduction of VR Content in .com sites. And along with that, the news is also in round that the same VR shortcode will be available for self hosted WordPress with JetPack. Well, you don’t need to wait for the next JetPack release.

What is VR Content?

VR (Virtual Reality) is like feeling if you are at that place only. Imagine of being at that place where all the characters of the story that you are reading are present. Or reading some how-tos while seeing it happening around you at that time. These things are very much possible using VR Gear and Smartphone. You can make DIY VR Gear using Google Cardboard Project and experience this amazing piece of technology using your Smartphone.

Demo showing VR Content inside WordPress

VR Content and WordPress

If you like to include VR content like 360° videos, Photo Sphere, Panorama View, Street View etc. in your article, there are free WordPress plugins to do that.

WP VR View

WP VR View is a free plugin to embed VR Content inside the post or page. With the help of shortcode, you can insert the VR content like video, image and preview it on the front-end.

It uses Google’s VR View library to embed the content and show it on the post or page. A simple shortcode like [vrview video=”URL for 360 video .mp4 file”] will embed the video with 360° view.

Download WP VR View

VR Views

Another free WordPress plugin you can use to embed 360° videos inside the content area. Once you embed the VR content, a link will appear on the screen to make it full screen. You can use Android App like Google Cardboard Camera to see the VR content on device.

With the help of shortcode, the VR files can be embedded anywhere on the site, specially inside the editor.

Download VR Views

Go to top

Note that the VR content can be visible on the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge etc.

VR Content Shortcode in Jetpack

After WordPress.com VR announcement, Toni Schneider from Automattic said that the next update of JetPack will make this feature available for self hosted WordPress too. So like other media embed options, you can embed VR content inside the post or page using JetPack plugin. Note that the one embedded file using JetPack will have a button as “Click to Explore 360°” at the top-right corner.

Posted on November 30, 2016 November 29, 2016

9 Steps to Make New WordPress Theme Go Viral in a Week

WordPress Themes market is flooded with theme clubs, authors and marketers. If you just create a new premium or free theme and expect people to use, it’s not easy to get noticed in the community. That’s why I always mentioned that making a product (in this case a WordPress theme) is just 25% effort, you need to get users and that’s where the 75% effort goes. In this article, I will explain few must-to-take steps to make the chances of your new WordPress theme going viral within a week.

At PurposeThemes, we released a free theme named Yugo few weeks ago, and started receiving 45+ downloads per day in just a week time. It’s easy to get such downloads if you release a free theme at WordPress.org themes repository, but if releasing on your own website, it’s not that easy to get early downloads.

Yugo WordPress theme released on PurposeThemes started seeing 85+ downloads everyday in just 3 weeks without releasing on WordPress.org. It’s a free theme!

Well, you must have put good amount of effort in building the theme. Here are few important steps to market it and get new users.

Before starting with the marketing tips for your WordPress theme, I like to make an assumption. I assume that the theme is good and it serves a purpose. it means the theme is designed for targeted users with demo and design focused on a niche else in case of Multipurpose themes, it really is multipurpose. Also don’t just release a theme but have a good support system in place else you may face support issues and negative feedback later. Let’s start the to-do list to make your WordPress theme viral.

#1 Not Just Launch but run a Campaign

Marketing of the newly launched theme should start at least 30 – 45 days before the release date. Start blogging about the expected features, share sneak-peak of the design and try to cover almost everything about the theme through different blog posts. You can also guest blog about the launch on other websites.

Divi 100 days Marathon campaign before Divi 3.0 release was a great example. Elegant Themes club team did a great job in releasing helpful content related to Divi for 100 days and then finally, they release Divi 3.0.

Divi 100 Days Marathon by @elegantthemes was the best theme launch campaign on web Click To Tweet

A campaign will make people aware about your theme and create curiosity before the release. In this process, create a good email list and send the notification on release date. You will see good number of orders even on the first day of release.

#2 Pre-order

Like other products e.g. books on popular eCommerce websites, you can enable people to pre-order your premium WordPress theme too. Start the Pre-order process at-least before 14 days of the final release. You can give a Pre-order discount of 30 to 50% on the order and that will again help in getting new users as soon as you release it.

Don’t forget that new users will bring more users, if the product is good. There are WooCommerce plugins available for Pre-order functionality, so you can use the same. Try to collect the email ID of the Pre-ordering customers.

Pre-order is win-win situation for author as well as customers. Well, customers get exclusive offer on pre-order and authors get customers even before the actual release.

#3 Freebies and Giveaways

On the release date, you can run a giveaway and ask people to follow certain steps to get some freebies. Ask people to share your release post on Twitter and Facebook and post a comment to become eligible for freebies. That will help in spreading the word about the new theme.

You can directly run the giveaway on your site by writing certain steps or rules. Ask visitors to share the article on Facebook, tweet about the same, comment on the post etc. You can also use platforms like Gleam to run the giveaway in measurable way.

#4 Send a Copy to Reviewers

On the release date or even few days before the release, send few copies to theme review sites or Industry Influencers. Sites like WP Mayor, PurposeThemes will help you in getting early theme reviews and feedback. You can create a testimonial page and showcase the review and testimonials that you received from those reviewers. That kind of testimonials page or review archive page will help in creating early buzz about the theme.

#5 Lite Version

If you release a free version along with the premium one and upload on WordPress.org, that will also help in getting leads. The review process on WordPress.org may take 4 – 8 weeks, so you may also release the lite version on your site along with the premium one. Zeriff Lite is a very popular free WordPress theme available on WordPress.org. And the Zeriff Pro is available as the premium theme on Themeisle.

Last month, WordPress theme review team removed Zeriff Lite from the repository and because of that, the traffic on Zeriff Pro got a huge hit. Revenue from the Zeriff Pro dropped by 50%. That’s the power of a lite version.

This is how important it is to release lite version of a theme. If you are planning to start a club with multiple themes, keep lite version of few themes on WordPress.org and that will always help in getting more visitors to the site and finally few customers too.

#6 Affiliates will help

There are many bloggers and YouTubers who make money online via affiliate marketing. If you get some good affiliates on-board, they can help in promoting the theme in their network. They will send newsletter, write blog post, create videos to get more visitors and customers for your theme. Average affiliate payment is approx. 50% for WordPress themes but think about extra customers and back-links that your site will get because of those.

You can run self hosted affiliate program like Elegant Themes using tools like iDevAffiliate or aMember. If you don’t want the extra work on accounting and processing the payment from your side, use third-party service like ShareASale. It is used by big WordPress theme clubs like StudioPress, Tesla etc.

#7 Upload Video Tutorials on Launch Day

Release note or blog post is the general practice that theme authors do after launching their new theme. As product documentation is one the major source of traffic, it is important to release video tutorials and vlogs related to the theme. That will bring more visitors from YouTube and other video hosting sites.

#8 Podcast

Now everybody is starting a podcast. It is said that Podcast is more effective than videos as you get more attention on the topic as compared to visuals. Try to do a podcast on your new theme or participate in one already hosted by your friend or a popular podcaster. Some of the popular podcasters related to WordPress are,

A podcast connects you with different kin of people who prefer to listen. And imagine when you have full attention of someone for more than 30 minutes, you can convince anything about your product. That’s the power of a podcast.

#9 Comment and Contact

You have spread the words about the new theme as people don’t know about it. Try to find a discussion going on about topics related to your theme or something relevant to you theme, post a helpful comment theme and see if you can post a link there. Quora, WordPress.org forums, Stack overflow are few places where you can find discussions on related topics.

Try to find out theme review sites or sites related to WordPress and see if the admin is interested in writing a review about it. You can offer a licensed copy to the reviewer and also ask if you can run a giveaway on his or her blog. Communication is the key in getting such reviews done. It’s not like you need to pay all the time. You will find many reviewers agreeing to post a review after receiving the giveaway licenses.

Conclusion

There are more than 50,000 WordPress themes available on Internet. If a new theme comes, it’s not easy to get users. You need to have a USP (Unique Selling Point) for the theme so that people will engage with it. And even if the product is good, you need to market it and keep telling people to use it. On average, 10 – 20 new themes get added on Themeforest marketplace daily and someday the number goes up to 35. Similarly, WordPress.org gets around 6 – 10 new themes released everyday. If you are a theme author and planning to go big with your theme, don’t just release it but market it too.

Read this: Are Themeforest Theme Authors Making More Money with New Pricing?

Follow the above steps and see the difference. Like every other product, a WordPress theme is of no use without it’s users.

Posted on July 22, 2016

How To Create WordPress Theme using Underscores.me and Bootstrap

If you are new to WordPress and you are just a beginner than building a WordPress Theme is definitely not an easy task. It is always good to gather the information and to have the idea in the mind about the theme that is to be built. One of the most complex thing is to deal with all the files and to know the purpose of them. It might be difficult for you if you are not much familiar to them. So instead of building everything right from the scratch Automattic team developed the Underscore starter theme for the WordPress developers to design and develop an amazing theme for WordPress.

Creating a WordPress Theme using Underscores and Twitter Bootstrap 3:

There are times when the Web developers have to rely on the designers to complete a particular project which is indeed very time consuming task. To avoid such situations, Twitter Bootstrap play a very vital or key role. Twitter Bootstrap can be considered as a CSS framework in order to design web applications. Twitter Bootstrap has already have the CSS style sheet written and also has an inbuilt jQuery support along with some JavaScript tools. This is indeed time saving and a helping tool.

Steps to create WordPress Theme using Underscores and Twitter Bootstrap 3:

Step 1] Go to Underscores.me and generate your base theme.

The downloaded folder will contain all the files that are needed to build a WordPress Theme.

Step 2] Now go to http://getbootstrap.com/ and you can get the copy of the source code from the download section.

The downloaded folder is with the name bootstrap-3.1.1-dist so rename the folder to bootstrap.

Step 3] Now copy the bootstrap folder into the underscores starter theme.

Step 4] From the functions.php, search function Enqueue scripts and styles and add the following script below it:

function wpmice_scripts() {
wp_enqueue_style( ‘bootstrap’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css’);
wp_enqueue_script( ‘bootstrap-js’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.min.js’, array(‘jquery’), ”, true );
wp_enqueue_style( ‘wpmice-style’, get_stylesheet_uri() );
wp_enqueue_script( ‘wpmice-navigation’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/js/navigation.js’, array(), ‘20120206’, true );
wp_enqueue_script( ‘wpmice-skip-link-focus-fix’, get_template_directory_uri() . ‘/js/skip-link-focus-fix.js’, array(), ‘20130115’, true );
if ( is_singular() && comments_open() && get_option( ‘thread_comments’ ) ) {
wp_enqueue_script( ‘comment-reply’ );
}
}
add_action( ‘wp_enqueue_scripts’, ‘wpmice_scripts’ );

Also make sure that style.css is called after the bootstrap.min.css in order to allow overwriting bootstrap 3 CSS presentation styles.

Step 5] Now open the style.css and remove everything below the stylesheet header. Using the CSS presentation styles the theme can be customized as per the requirements.

“/*
Theme Name: test
Theme URI: http://underscores.me/
Author: Underscores.me
Author URI: http://underscores.me/
Description: Description
Version: 1.0.0
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Text Domain: test
Tags:
This theme, like WordPress, is licensed under the GPL.
Use it to make something cool, have fun, and share what you’ve learned with others.
test is based on Underscores http://underscores.me/, (C) 2012-2015 Automattic, Inc.
Underscores is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL v2 or later.
Normalizing styles have been helped along thanks to the fine work of
Nicolas Gallagher and Jonathan Neal http://necolas.github.com/normalize.css/
*/
/*CSS Presentation Style*/

Amazing! The WordPress Theme is not ready to use and easily customize it as per the requirements. Hope this post was useful for the beginners who wish to design their own themes. You can also share your ideas about this post.

Posted on February 5, 2016 February 5, 2016

What Makes Visual Composer or Page Builder WordPress plugins Helpful

WordPress has indeed been very useful to the users to manage their content in a better way. It gives freedom to them to customize it as per their requirements with very less technical knowledge. If you are familiar with the HTML/CSS or you have the coding knowledge then it is indeed very advantageous for you as it allows you to customize the WordPress Theme as the way you want. But what if you are not familiar with any of the coding part and still you are planning to make the changes in the layout of the content. So by keeping this in mind WordPress Page Builder Plugins were introduced.

What is a WordPress Page Builder Plugin?

WordPress allows to present the content in an attractive manner for the visitors without using the code for it. There is no need to make any of the changes in the HTML or CSS, Page Builder plugins allows to style the area of the theme very easily. It gives you the chance to add rows as well as columns for the content and it can be dragged and dropped very easily.

Advantages of WordPress Page Builder Plugin:

Very simple to use and allows the user to simply drag and drop the elements.
There is no coding or technical knowledge required to use a page builder plugin.
Makes your content look appealing and attract more visitors to the site.
Gives you the full control to customize the look of the site

There are free Page Builder plugins available also there are premium themes that comes with Visual Composer plugin.

Free WordPress Page Builder- Site Origin Page Builder:

One of the free theme available for the Page Builder is the Site Origin Page Builder which is a very responsive theme.It is bundled with many good features in order to give a fresh look to your site and they are:
It allows to change the order of rows and also to change the size of the columns.
Visual composer comes packed with 40+ elements like Text Block, Row, Separator, Text Separator, Message Box, Facebook Like, Google+, Pinterest, FAQ, Single Image, Image Gallery, Tabs, Accordion, Icon Element, Posts Slider, widgetized Sidebar, Button, Call to Action, etc.
If you want to change the position of the element there is a simple drag and drop available for it.
It keeps the track on the history of the Page Builder.
Through the Live editor it gives the exact preview of the content and that can be easily edited.

Page Builder

Drag and Drop

Widgets

History

Visual Composer Plugin:

Visual Composer is one of the premium plugin with almost more than 1,000,000+ Downloads that allows to give a full control on the site. This plugin allows to create an attractive layout for the site without touching any piece of code. It is one of the best drag and drop page builder bundled with so many great features.

NOTE: Most of the themes from themeforest and many other themes comes with Visual Composer plugin, there is no need to purchase it separately. I have downloaded one of the theme from themeforest and I got this plugin. You also get Revolution Slider plugin along with it which is to be activated.

Visual Composer Settings:

When the plugin is activated then there will be different options related to the settings on the admin panel and they are:

1) General Settings:

All the settings related to the responsiveness of the mobiles and tablets and subsets of the Google fonts for the content elements can be selected from here.

2) Role Manager:

It allows to give a control on different options and settings for the particular user group from here. There can be different access and rights that can be set for Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Shop Manager.

3) Design options:

When this option is enabled then custom CSS file is used for it. It will allow you to change the color of different elements such as the accent color, hover color, Google maps background etc. One can also set the width of the mobile screen and bottom margin of the elements from here.

4) Custom CSS:

The CSS code for the plugin can be added from here without actually modifying the files for it.

5) Shortcode Mapper:

It allows to add the shortcodes of the third party vendors to the content elements by adding the shortcode string for it.

6) Grid Builder:

Grid Builder allows to represent the posts and other posts types in an elegant way to attract more visitors. There are different grid elements that can be used. It allows to add the grid from this option.

General Settings

Role Manager

Design Options

Custom CSS

Shortcode Mapper

Working of Visual Composer:

Ones this plugin is activated, you will find the Backend editor as well as the Frontend editor button in order to access the builder. This will allow you to add different elements and save different settings on the particular page.

Page Elements:

When you click on the Backend editor then different page elements can be added for it. They are categorized into different categories such as Content, Social, Structure, New Elements, WordPress Widgets, Navigation and Deprecated. There are about 40+ predefined elements that can be added. In order to rearrange the elements this can be simply done by the drag and drop method. There are also many options that are present for it such as the Social Sharing, Carousels, Sliders, different widgets, maps and many more.

On the admin panel one will also find the option Team as well as Works (portfolios) where the details can be filled and can be used for the elements.

Templates:

This option allows saving the current layout as a template and lists them all towards the bottom. It allows to use the previously saved template with the current layout. There are also some of the default templates that are provided that can be easily appended to the current layout.

Backend and Frontend Editor

Adding Elements and Templates

Elements

Templates

Frontend Editor:

Visual Composer also provides with front end editor that allows the user to make the changes for the particular page from the front end. It consists of all the options such as Add Element, Add TextBlock and Add Template that are similar to the back end editor. It also allows to change the title of the page and also add the Custom CSS settings for it.

Frontend Editor

Page Settings

Apart from the above 2 Page builders, If you purchase Developers Membership of Elegant Themes, you get Divi Page Builder along with that. Tesla Themes Club also offers Visual Composer along with their few themes.

This WordPress Plugins have indeed ease the task of the users who love WordPress and the thing that is pulling them back is the lack of technical knowledge. Such Page Builder WordPress Plugin gives you the control to present the content of the page in an attractive manner and it is indeed an icing on the cake for them!

Do you think Page Builders are great help in creating a nice layout without much effort? Which is your favorite Page builder plugin? Share your thoughts in comments.

Posted on November 2, 2015

7 Benefits of Comparing WordPress Themes before Purchase

Designing your website, Features listed for the Products, Plugins to be used etc. is not an easy job. It requires a lot of determination of the team to bring up their product so that there are more visitors visiting their website. And the most difficult job among these is to select the WordPress theme that will go well with your website. It is not wise to realize that the theme selected by you is not going well with your website. It is always good to follow the steps and then select the theme that will go very well with your website.

It is indeed great achievement for the team to have the right WordPress theme that is well suited for the website after evaluating and analyzing it. Also if the right theme is selected then you will be benefited. Comparison of the themes is the best way and that will definitely benefit your business.

Benefits of Comparing WordPress Themes:

1) Way to discover new themes:

When you are comparing different themes that will be best suited for your website then you get a chance to explore. During the comparison of the themes you come across various themes offering different features. This will help you to make the right choice for the theme that is best suited.

2) Pricing as per features:

Comparison of themes lets you know the features that are offered and based on this you get to know the pricing. Depending upon the features that are offered by the themes and its pricing, it will help you to decide the theme that is well suited for you.

3) Secure and Safer Themes:

There are themes that contains links to other sites that is embedded in the code. These links can be malicious which will effect the security of your site. Comparison between the themes will help to find the one which will provide safety and security for your website.

4) Improves Experience:

When one evaluates different themes then he gets to know about the features of different themes that is offered. Also it improves the experience and helps to find the right theme.

5) Latest Version of Themes:

It keeps him aware about the latest releases and versions of the themes. Also he gets to know about the previous bug fixes and the additional features that are offered by the particular theme.

6) Support and Update:

People can easily contact the support team and put forth their queries if there are any. They can also ask for any advice for the theme that will be best suited for them.

7) Awareness:

Evaluating and comparing with the different themes helps them to understand about the requirement of the website in a better way. Depending upon this, they can make a good decision for the same.

Thus if one will compare between different themes before actually purchasing it then surely they will be benefited in the above ways!

Posted on October 30, 2015

How to Find the Release Date of WordPress.org Hosted Themes

The design and the functionality of the WordPress site depends upon WordPress Themes. There are so many themes that are available. They are very useful in giving the site a unique look. Free WordPress Themes are mostly hosted on WordPress.org to download and use. Each theme in WordPress.org consists of the information of the particular theme along with its description, ratings and other details.

It will also show the stats of download per day and the total download. Towards the right it will show the details regarding the last update of the particular theme. One can also find the option to preview and download the particular theme.

Release Date of the Theme:

Knowing release date of a WordPress theme is important as it may help you in deciding whether the theme will work with older version of WordPress (in case you are using the same). Release date is also important as it states that since how may months or years, the developer is providing support for the theme. You will find the Last updated date of the theme easily on the theme page, but the release date is not directly mentioned. Here is how you can see the release date of the WordPress theme. At the bottom of the theme page, one will find the option of Browse the Code Option. It is divided into three categories such as Development Log, Subversion Repository and Browse in Trac. Click on the Development Log that will lists the release date of the particular theme. It will display the Age, Author and Log Message for the particular theme. When one hovers at the Age of the particular theme then it will show the date along with the time for the particular version release.

To make it simpler to understand there will be a color indication that will be given for each of the version of the theme. The colors for the particular theme will indicate whether the particular version is added, modified or renamed. By selecting the particular theme one can easily view the changes for the theme.

One can easily check the last updated towards the right and the release date of the particular theme from the Development Log with all the details.

Posted on October 30, 2015

How to Add Site Logo in WordPress Theme using Jetpack Plugin

The look and feel of blogs is well defined by the WordPress Themes. The main idea to have a theme is to have a website that will attract more and more visitors. There are various things that are to be considered while choosing a particular theme for the website. One can also add or change the logo to match the business. One of the important thing that should be kept in mind while searching for the theme is that, make sure you are able to customize the theme and upload the logo for your business.

This can be well achieved by Site Logo feature of the Jetpack. Below are the simple steps to add site Logo in WordPress Theme using Jetpack:

Step 1] In order to add site logo in WordPress Theme using Jetpack one needs to activate the Jetpack plugin. After you have downloaded the zip file and added to the plugins folder go to:

Admin Panel >> Installed Plugins >> Jetpack >> Activate

Step 2] For Site Logo

In the dashboard, go to:

Appearance >> Customize and then click on Site Title and Tagline section

Step 3] Towards the bottom there will be Add Logo button that will open the Media Manager. One can either upload the image or select the one that is already in the Media Library.

Step 4] After you are done with the changes click on Save and Publish in order to activate the logo on the site.

Steps to be followed by Theme developers to add support for the Site Logo:

Step 1] Declare support in a function hooked to after_setup_theme

add_theme_support( 'site-logo' );

It is also possible to pass the arguments to site logos for customization.

$args = array(
    'header-text' => array(
        'site-title',
        'site-description',
    ),
    'size' => 'medium',
);
add_theme_support( 'site-logo', $args )

Step 2] To output the logo in header.php use the template tag. Also make sure to include function_exists() check to avoid fatal errors if Jetpack isn’t activated.

Following these simple steps you are done with adding site logo in WordPress Theme using Jetpack. With this feature you can set the logo once and it will be displayed for most themes. The theme that will support it will display the logo in its own unique way which is consistent with that theme design.