VT Grid Mag Documentation

created: June 15, 2017

GETTING STARTED

Support

All of our Free Themes are handled exclusively through the official WordPress.org Support Forum

Please follow the steps below before submitting a support request.

Make sure you are running the latest version of the theme and the latest version of WordPress.
Have a close look at theme documentation for the answer to your question.
Have a close look at the support forum whether the question has been asked before.
Disable all additional 3rd party plugins that you are using to check if it fixes the issue.

If the above steps didn’t fix your issue please create an account or login on the WordPress.org Support Forum.

Support includes:

Responding to questions or problems regarding the item and its features
Fixing bugs and reported issues
Providing updates to ensure compatibility with new software versions

Item support does not include:

Customization and installation services
Support for third party software and plug-ins

Installation

Installing Theme

Installation Requirements
To install your new theme you must have a working version of WordPress* already installed installed on your self-hosted site.

For information on how to install the WordPress software, please visit WordPress Codex – Installing WordPress.

This theme required WordPress at least 4.1+. It’s highly recommended that you have the latest version of your WordPress installed.

Theme Installation Process

You can install VT Grid Mag WordPress theme through your WordPress dashboard, like you would do with any other WordPress theme.

Log in to your WordPress site
Go to Appearance >> Themes
Click Add New Theme

Type “VT Grid Mag” into the search field on the right side
Click install to install the theme.

When the theme installation is finished you should see a message “Theme installed successfully”. Click Activate to activate the theme.

Go to Appearance > Customize: to get started customizing theme.

In case you are new to WordPress, you can find instructions regarding the theme installation in this tutorial: Using Themes in WordPress.

Menu Setup

1. Go to “Appearance > Menus”
2. Select “create a new menu” at the top of the page.
3. Enter a name for your new menu in the Menu Name box.
4. Select the “Pages” or “Categories” by clicking the check box next to each “Pages” or “Categories” that you want to include in the menu.
5. Click the “Add to Menu” button located at the bottom of tab to your menu.
6. Click the “Save Menu” button.

Note: if you want a new menu just click “create a new menu”, then you can move the items from the left side. At the bottom “Menu Settings > Theme locations”, checklist “Primary Menu” and “Save Menu”.

Add the Latest Post Widget

1. In the “Appearance > Widgets”
2. Move/ drag the “[VT] Latest Post” widget to the Sidebar
3. Enter Number of posts to show and Select a Category you want to display. You can also setting default “Orderby” options.
4. Click on “Save”

Add the Social Links widget

1. In the “Appearance > Widgets”
2. Move/ drag the “[VT] Social Links” widget to the Sidebar.
3. Enter the widget Title and save.
4. Go to Appearance > Customizer> Social Links.
5. Enter your social links. Only those filled will appear. use http://

Add Featured Image

Featured images also known as post thumbnails are a popular feature in WordPress themes.
Simply create a new post and scroll down a little to see if there is a meta box called featured images on the right hand side of the screen.

To add a featured image in a WordPress post, simply click on “Set Featured Image” link inside the featured image meta box shown in the screenshot above.

This will open the WordPress Media Uploader. You can use that to upload an image from your computer or use an existing image from your media library. Once you select the image, simply click on Set Featured Image button.

Customizer/ Theme Customizer

All of the options provided in VT Grid Mag theme are handled using the WordPress Theme Customizer, which was added in WordPress version 3.4. This provides numerous distinct advantages over 3rd party options panels, including:

Utilizing native WordPress features.
A simple, intuitive interface.
Live preview of options changes before committing them.
Cutting down on code bloat.

To get to the WordPress Theme Customizer, go to “Appearance Customize” in the WordPress Admin Panel. Once you are there, you will be presented with a screen consisting of the options panel on the left and the preview of your site on the right. It should be noted that nothing you change in the Theme Customizer will be committed until you select “Save & Publish.”

This is an incredibly handy feature as it lets you to view everything you’re changing on your site before any of your visitors see anything you’re updating, allowing you to get 4 things exactly the way you want them before making them live.

Color Settings

You can change the colors of sections: Background Color, Accent Color, Header Background, Site Title Color and Navigation Text Color.

Contact Page

The theme supports the popular plugin “Contact Form 7” to easily create working contact forms.

Please read this to learn more: How to create a working contact page in WordPress.

Image Sizes

If you are migrating to VT Grid Mag from another theme you may wish to resize your images first so that they fit better within the new theme.

To do this, install and run the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin. Get the plugin here

Additional Features/Options

If you have followed the above mentioned steps of this documentation, you have completed the basic theme setup of VT Grid Mag WordPress Theme. Now you can start creating amazing content.

Additional CSS

To add additional CSS go to “Appearance > Customize > Additional CSS” and simply put your CSS here.

Translation

Although Our themes are in English, you can easily translate your new theme you wish.
We recommend that you download and install POEdit to translate your theme. https://poedit.net
Once downloaded, open up the application.

Within the theme files, we have included a .pot file that you will need to use to translate the theme. To locate the .pot file, unzip and open the ‘vt-grid-mag’ folder and locate the Language folder. The .pot file will be inside this Language folder.

In POEdit, click on the ‘Create New Translation’ button and then open the .pot file.

Next select or type in the language of the translation.

Once you have selected the language, you can start performing the translation of the theme’s strings. Go through each line of readable text in your theme and enter in the translated text in the Translation field to the language that you have chosen. There may also be some translation suggestions that you can choose from in the panel on the right.

When you have translated each line, go to File > Save and save this .po file into the same folder as the original .po file.
Please note, POEdit automatically changes the file name to reflect the language selected, for example if you have chosen to translate the theme to French, the file name will be fr.pot. However you may need to adjust it to your selected language. POEdit will also automatically create a .mo file.

When this is all done, you can now change the language in your WordPress admin area. Go to Settings > General > Site Language and then choose the language you want to load for your website and click Save Changes. To get the theme strings to change language too you now need to upload your edited language files from POEdit to the /language/ folder on your live website.

Share your language files with others

If you’ve already translated a theme then many of our users would be delighted if you could share your translation files with the community. Just get in contact with us via our Support forum or send an email to support [at] volthemes.com and we will include the translation files in the next theme update if possible.

Upgrade to Pro Version

If you would like to have more features and options, you can upgrade to the Pro/Premium version and benefit from more awesome features and excellent theme support.

Configure your own news website or blog within a few minutes and benefit from endless possibilities to customize your website. Learn more about the premium version of VT Grid Mag WordPress Theme.