WP-Terra

It doesn’t take a lot to install and set up your new WP-Terra WordPress theme and have it looking the demo site.

Step 1 - Unzip the File

The file you downloaded can be unzipped with any standard unzip program (if you don’t have one already installed on your computer, Stuffit Expander is a popular option for PC or MAC users). When you unzip the file, you’ll end up with a folder named either wp-terra-basic, wp-terra-prem or wp-terra-dev, depending upon which license you purchased. Within it are all the theme files along with the end user license agreement (please take a moment to read over the license agreement).

Step 2 - Upload the Theme Files to Your Wordpress Site

For this step, you’ll need an FTP (file transfer protocol) program. An FTP program allows you to transfer files between your computer and your web hosting account. There are several available, but I use FileZilla. You’ll want to upload your theme folder to the /wp-content/themes folder in your Wordpress installation.

Step 3 - Activate WP-Terra

Login into your WordPress control panel, and click the Appearance tab. On the next page you’ll see all your available themes. Simply click on the WP-Terra screenshot, then click the Activate link in the upper right-hand corner of the pop-up screen.

Step 4 - Set Up Your Main Page

The main page (static page) is broken down into three sections:

Left Section - Featured Products” gets posts from the “featured” category slug and is a slider. Images may be used and are encouraged.
Middle Section -”Testimonials” gets posts from a specific category ID.
Right Section - “Latest News” gets any recent post. This will not display featured or testimonial posts (you must modify main_page.php and insert the appropriate category ID for the “testimonials” category, which is covered below).

Select the Front Page and Posts Page

The following steps need to be taken in order to set up the front page and posts page to be used as the main page of the WP-Terra theme:

1. In WP Admin, go to Pages -> Add New
2. Enter “Main Page” as the title and choose the “Home Page” template from the “Template” dropdown in the “Attributes” section on the right
3. Click ‘Publish’ to save changes
4. Go to Pages -> Add New again
5. Enter “Blog” as the title and choose the “Posts Page” template from the “Template” dropdown in the “Attributes” area on the right
6. Click ‘Publish’ to save changes
7. Go to Settings -> Reading
8. Under “Front page displays” select “A static page (select below)”
   - For “Front page” choose the “Main Page” option
   - For “Posts page” choose the “Blog” option
9. Click ‘Save Changes’

The theme will now display the front page that is separated into the three sections.

Exclude the “Main Page” link

When the “Main Page” and “Blog” pages are created they will automatically be displayed in the navigation menu. The “Main Page” link should not appear as there is already a “Home” link there:

1. In WP Admin, go to Appearance -> Editor
2. Click the “header.php” template on the right
3. Look for this line near the bottom of the file:
   <?php wp_list_pages('exclude=ID&title_li='); ?>
4. Change ID to reflect the page ID of the “Main Page” you created. (To get the page ID, go to Pages -> Edit and hover over the page title. The URL in your status bar at the bottom of your browser has a number at the end — this is the page ID.)
5. Click ‘Update File’ to save changes

The Main Page will now not appear in the navigation menu.

Step 5 - Set Up Your Featured Products Section

If you don’t already have a “Featured” category, you’ll need to create one. Click the Post tab, then Categories on the sub-menu. Create a new category named “Featured”. Also, be sure the category slug is “featured”. For the Featured Products function to work correctly, you should modify your permalink structure. To do that, click the Settings tab, then Permalinks on the sub-menu. Just be sure that any option other than the default permalink structure is selected. Finally, the only thing left to do is to place some of your posts/articles in the Featured category. By default, the theme is set up to display your 5 most recent Featured Products in the featured product box on your home page.

Select an image and cut it to the proper size:
Make sure the images you are going to use for your Featured section are at most 280 pixels in width and 235 pixels in height.

Upload your image
You can either upload your image via FTP or via the standard WordPress “Add an Image” button on the Write Post page (to the right of “Upload/Insert”). Once your image is uploaded, you’ll need the file path for the image’s location. For example:

• If you upload your image to a subdirectory (of your WordPress site) named “images” the file path would be something like this:
  http://www.mysite.com/images/filename.jpg
• If you upload your image via the Write Post “Add an Image” button, the file path will be something like this:
  http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/filename.jpg

To get the actual file path, simply allow the image to be inserted into your post editor. When you do that, WordPress will produce an image tag that looks something like this:
<img src='http://mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/filename.jpg‘ alt=’feature1.gif’ />

In this case, the only part of that tag you need is this:
http://mysite.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/filename.jpg

Once you have the image path, just be sure to delete the image tag from your post editor box.

Create a custom field for your image

1. If you scroll to the bottom of your Write Post page, you’ll see an area near the bottom called “Custom Fields” (you may have to click the arrow to the far right to expand the custom fields area).
2. In the field marked “Name” enter “product”. In the field marked “Value” enter the file path to your image. Then just click the ‘Add Custom Field’ button. Finally, continue with your post, and when you’re ready, click the ‘Publish’ button.
3. Your image will appear in 2 places. First, it will appear in the “Featured Products” box (for that article) on your home page. Second, it will appear on the single post page for that article, aligned to the right of the content.

If you choose not to enter an image for one or more of your featured products, the theme will function properly without it.

Step 6 - Set Up Your Testimonials Section

In order to display posts from the “Testimonials” section, you will need to create a category called “testimonials” and take note of its category ID:

1. In WP Admin, go to Posts -> Categories
2. Enter “Testimonials” as the “Category Name” and click ‘Add Category’
3. Once this category is created, you need to open main_page.php and look for these lines near the top of the file:
   // Front page blog post module begins
query_posts('showposts=2&cat=ID'); ?>

   In the part that says showposts=2, change this number to reflect how many posts from the “Testimonials” category you want to display (2 or 3 is recommended).

   The second section that states “cat=ID” needs to be changed to reflect the ID of the “Testimonials” category. (To get the category ID, go to Posts -> Categories and hover over the category name. The URL in your status bar at the bottom of your browser has a number at the end — this is the category ID.)

Now that the Testimonial category has been set up and you have a few posts there, you need to exclude this category from being displayed in the right hand column “Latest News”. This is where any posts added to the site will be displayed, despite what category they are in.

1. Open up main_page.php and find the section that looks like this:
   <div id="right" class="clearfix">
<h2>Latest News</h2>
2. Right under that you will see this:
   <?php $my_query = "showposts=1&cat=-ID"; $my_query = new WP_Query($my_query); ?>
3. In the portion that says “showposts=1″ you need to change this number to reflect how many recent posts you want to display on the front page. 2 or 3 is recommended.The next portion “cat=-ID” is where you exclude the testimonials category. Simply change the 1 to the ID number of the testimonial category. Save your changes. Now any posts made to the testimonial category will only show in the middle section of the front page.

Step 7 - Add Some Content to Your Sidebars

Click the Appearance tab, then Widgets, and drag some content into your sidebars. Be sure to click the “Save Changes” button when you’re done.

Optional Step 8 - Make Your Featured Products Scroll Automatically

If you want to turn on auto-scroll, open the features.php file and find this code at the bottom:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
	var my_glider = new Glider('my-glider', {duration:0.5});
</script>

Then replace it with this:

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
	var my_glider = new Glider('my-glider', {duration:0.5, autoGlide:true, frequency:8});
</script>