Exhibit A theme setup

Exhibit A is extremely simple to set up.  If you have ever used a Hybrid theme, you know pretty much how it works. However, there are theme color options and a few custom widgets.

Custom accent colors

The theme allows the user to pick accent colors for things like the navigation menu, links, comment display, borders, etc… Essentially the two colors are for one accent, as they are used to create a gradient throughout the site.  You probably want to choose two shades of the same color for the best outcome.  “Color One” will typically look best as the darker of the two as it will show up as the bottom half of the gradient.

Disable color option: If you want to further customize your colors, you can do so through the traditional css editing technique.  You just want to comment out the appropriate part of your functions.php file. Comment out this line to remove functionality of custom colors:

add_action('wp_head','custom_style');

If you don’t comment out the header hook, the theme will use the default colors (#222, #444) or your custom colors that you enter and changes to the style sheet on these elements will be overridden by the defaults because they are hooked in the header after the original stylesheet is called.  Any elements not defined by the accent colors can be altered in the stylesheet normally.  The elements called out to use custom colors are as follows:

#menu-secondary div.wrap, .byline-comments, .pagination .current, .comment-navigation .current, .follow .me, #featured ul.ui-tabs-nav li.ui-tabs-selected a {
background: color_one for IE only
background-image: color_one / color_two gradient for all other browsers
border: 1px solid color_one}
#menu-secondary li a {
border-right: 1px solid color_one}
#menu-primary li li a:hover {
border-bottom: 2px solid color_one}
.menu-container .search-form input[type="text"] {
border: 1px solid color_one
background: color_one}
.menu-container .search-form input[type="text"]:focus {
background: color_two
border: 1px solid color_one}
#sidebar-secondary .widget-title, #sidebar-subsidiary .widget-title, a:hover, blockquote, blockquote blockquote blockquote {
border-color: color_two}
a, blockquote blockquote, .byline a:hover, .entry-meta a:hover {
border-color: color_one}
.sticky, .byline a, .entry-meta a {
border-color: color_two}
#menu-primary .menu-description {
color: color_one}

I only reference these elements so that you are not confused if you are trying to change one in your style.css but don’t see the change taking effect. It should be very unlikely you need to worry about them.

Feature Posts Slider Widget

The slider widget is extremely easy to use, and I created a custom widget area in the child theme just for it. Just go to Appearance > Widgets and drag the widget titled “Slider Widget” into the “Sidebar Open Content” widget area.

So that the widget area could be used for other things too if you choose, I did not limit the widget area to the home page. Therefore, if you want the slider to only show up on the home page (which is probably a good thing), you can download Widget Logic (a simple and wonderful plugin) and type

is_home()

into the input box in the widget settings.

The feature posts widget will automatically pull sticky posts and exclude those sticky posts from the normal loop on the home page. If you have no sticky posts, the widget will not show up.

Latest Tweet Widget

The Latest Tweet widget is a super simple widget that you just drag and drop into whatever widget area you want and enter the profile of the Twitter account you would like to grab from.  For instance, if you want to pull my latest tweet, you’d just enter “Krogsgard”.

Follow Widget

The follow widget is another simple widget that will automatically create social following buttons for accounts you specify for Twitter, Facebook and RSS.  Just drag and drop the “Follow Widget” into a widget area (it will probably look best in Primary) and enter your profile names for Twitter and Facebook.  For the RSS feed you need to enter the full url, and some people use different services for their feeds.  Any account where you make the input area blank will not show up.  So if you don’t have a Facebook account you want to share, just make that input area blank in the widget and you will not even see the Facebook icon.

Prototype parent theme options

Prototype is an incredibly flexible parent theme, which is why I chose it for the child theme.  The biggest features you have are SEO inputs and Post Layout options.  Both of these features are in the “Post Settings” meta box right below the post editor.  For SEO, just enter your Title, Description, and Keywords you want to use.  By default, Prototype will use your post title, excerpt, and tags for these fields.

You can also set a post thumbnail and custom stylesheet for this section.  The custom stylesheet is simply an additional stylesheet url that adds styles you only want to show up on that page / post.  The thumbnail box will set that image url as the thumbnail image anywhere appropriate.  If no thumbnail url is used, the WordPress standard Feature Post image will be used or Hybrid’s built in Get The Image script will grab the first image attached to a post if neither field has an image assigned.

I hope you enjoy your new theme, and please never hesitate to ask a question in the comments.