Minelight

Server requirements are of extreme importance in order to provide an undisturbed theme upload and import the demo data. It is very important to choose a good hosting provider if you want your website to be fast, safe and undisturbed. Below are configuration parameters which you should check prior to WordPress theme installation:

• max_execution_time = 300 (900 if you are using GoDaddy)
• max_input_time = 120
• memory_limit = 128M
• post_max_size = 15M
• upload_max_filesize = 15M

There is a simple way to check these parameters:

1. The php.ini file on your server contains this information, which is where you check first. If need be, you can edit this file. If you do not know how to do this, ask your hosting server provider to perform the configuration of these files instead of you.
2. You can install and activate a plugin called Host PHP Info. After you activate it, you can find the PHP Info in Tools > PHP Info. After that, contact your server hosting provider to configure/modify this if need be.

WordPress is very simple to install and it will take you only a few minutes. You can install it via your hosting provider which provides you with simple installation tools.
We advise you dearly to do it by yourself, and here you can find a simple WordPress installation guide http://codex.WordPress.org/Installing_WordPress

There are two ways of installing the theme:

• Installation via WordPress
• Installation via FTP client (traditional)

Installing the theme via WordPress:

Step 1 – Download the theme package (all files and documentation) from ThemeForest and extract it.
Step 2 – Log into your WordPress admin panel
Step 3 – Go to Appearances >Themes
Step 4 – Click Upload Theme
Step 5 – Upload the theme file called minelight.zip. The Theme package that you downloaded from ThemeForest is the Master file which includes the Theme File, Child Theme file, Documentation, and Sample Content. You have to extract them and upload only the file called minelight.zip.
Step 6 – Install and activate the theme

Common Issues while uploading the theme

How to install the theme via FTP:

Step 1 – Log into your Hosting server using FTP service like Filezilla
Step 2 – Unzip the file called minelight.zip in your theme’s buyer’s package
Step 3 – Upload only the Extracted folder called ‘minelight’ to the folder wp-content/themes
Step 4 – Go to your WordPress Dashboard to activate the theme in Appearances >Themes
Step 5 – Click the ‘Activate’ button under the theme’s name

Mandatory plugins:

Minelight Custom Post Types

In order for your theme to work without obstructions, you are going to have to install the plugin called Minelight Custom Post Types. It will enable you to use the full potential of this wonderful portfolio theme.

Additional plugins:

Minelight Shortcodes

If you want to use the shortcodes we have created for you, you are going to have to install the Minelight Shortcodes plugin.

Please proceed to the forthcoming special instruction on how to install WooCommerce and the Revolution slider:

• WooCommerce
• Slider Revolution

There are two roads to go when you have installed the Minelight theme. First is to start building your site from scratch, and second is to import one of our demo sites which can serve as a starting point for your site. Of course, you can simply modify the Demo according to your liking.

We will now explain how to import Minelight Demo data.

Minelight comes with a one-click import module. You need to do the following so as to import one of our demo sites:

If you want to import media files as well (images, videos, sounds), you need to check the “Import attachments” checkbox.

Mind you that the images we have used are copyrighted, and if you want to publish them on your site as well, you are going to have to buy them separately. We have bought the majority of them on ShutterStock.

1. Click the “Import” button and wait for the import process to end.

Working in the Customizer is great because you can see the changes applied while making them.

Ever since the WordPress 3.4 version appeared, developers can use the Customizer to make changes and add controls in the Appearance > Customize admin screen. The Theme Customizer allow you to change the theme’s settings, such as color scheme, widgets, etc. and preview them in real time.

Minelight Customizer has two important settings: General Customizer settings and Minelight Settings for fine tuning of your theme.

 

GENERAL SETTINGS

1. Minelight Settings for fine tuning of your theme.

4. Widgets

There are no widget areas currently rendered in the preview. 

Minelight is integrated with WooCommerce, which means that you can easily create an online shop. For more information about installing and configuring WooCommerce, please visit this page:

http://docs.woothemes.com/documentation/plugins/woocommerce/getting-started/

In order to setup WooCommerce with the Minelight theme, please follow these steps:

Note: If you want to modify these sizes later, you may need to regenerate thumbnails in order for it to take effect. You can do this with the following plugin: http://wordpress.org/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails/

How to import the Slider Revolution:

In order to import the Revolution Slider, go to Revolution Slider > Import Slider and then select the slider’s demo files in the folder Example_Data:

How to use Slider Revolution?

This theme comes with a Revolution Slider premium license. In order to understand how the slider works and how to work with it, you should read its documentation http://revolution.themepunch.com/documentation/

Widgets serve the purpose of adding content and features to the sidebar and footer. Default WordPress widgets and custom widgets are combined with the theme. You can add/remove them easily. First, log into your WordPress admin panel and go to Appearance > Widgets.

1. Choose the preferred widget and drag it into the sidebar on the right. After you refresh the page, your widgets will be active.
2. Widget is an area in which you can place the preferred widgets.
3. Widgets in widget areas can be added, removed or customized by clicking on the arrow icon in the top right corner of the widget box to expand it. Drag the widgets up and down to change their order of appearance.

There are five different post formats in the Minelight theme: Standard, Image, Video, Quote and Link (see image below).

1. Post title: This field serves to type the name of your post which is displayed in the front end.
2. Post content: This is where you write/paste the content of your post – text, images, shortcodes, etc.
3. Publish: This option implies assigning a status to your post – draft, in review or published – with the additional option of customizing its date and time of publication. Visibility is also an option – your post can be visible only to you (private) until you decide to publish it.
4. Sidebar: You can choose left or right sidebar option or without sidebar.
5. Post formats: Different post formats will display content in a different way. There are five formats you can choose for your post:

• Standard
• Image
• Video
• Quote
• Link

Post formats:

Standard post format

This is the usual post format (most commonly used). Featured image will be displayed above the title and post content in this post format.

Video post format

This post format enables you to add video content into your post. When you select Video format, Additional Video options will appear in the editor area – so you can paste the URL of your video (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion) and your video will be shown above the post title and content.

Quote post format

As the name suggests, this post format allows you to display someone’s words as quotations. When you select the Quote post format, two fields will appear in the editor: one for the quoted text, and the other for the author of the quotation. After you publish the post (in the front end), featured image of the post will be shown above the quoted text and its author, on a black background so that the quotation and image look like a poster.

Link post format

Your posts can display links to other places on the Internet – in a cool way. When you select the Link post format, two fields will appear in the editor part: link text and URL. When you publish the linked post, featured image will be shown above the post title and the linked text on a white background.

6. Category: WordPress posts need to be categorized. Assigning categories means better navigation and grouping with other posts that fall under the same or similar content category.
7. Tags: Tags are words that allow you to organize posts by similarity of their content.
8. Set featured image: The image you set as featured will be displayed as a cover image in the front end of the page/post.
9. Excerpts: Excerpt is a summary of your content. It can be auto-generated or created by you. Learn more about summaries here http://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/excerpt/
10. Discussions: Your posts will probably drive engagement, i.e. people are going to post comments on them, which you can disable or enable by navigating to Settings > Discussions, and this setting will override with the global setting on the site.
11. Comments: There is also the option of adding comments to the post which you can assign to different authors as well.

Site Pages are different from Posts. Page content is more stable and is not chronological as in Posts.

By Pages we mean pages such as About Me or Contact.

How to create a new page:

Step 1: Go to Pages > Add new and enter your page information

You can add your page content to the WYSIWYG editor

Step 2: Choose template

When creating a new page, you need to choose an appropriate template for it. To do this, visit your page from the back end (or create a new page in Pages > Add new), and find the “Page Attributes” section on the right. Minelight offers a lot of page templates:

Once you choose a template, we can now head to custom fields for pages, which are the following:

1. Post title: This is the name of your post which is displayed in the front end.
2. Post content: This is the content of your post, be it text, image, shortcodes etc.
3. Publish: This option allows you to bring your content to the front, i.e. publish it and let it go live. This option implies assigning a status to your post – draft, in review or published – with the additional option of customizing its date and time of publication.
4. Sidebar: You can choose left or right sidebar option or without sidebar.
5. Page attributes: In this section, you choose the parent page and a preferred template.
6. Subtitle: This section holds the Title which is shown on the top of the page.
7. Header Image: If you want to decorate your Header with an image, you can upload it in this section.
8. You can select Custom height of your Header image.
9. Choose whether or not you want it with a parallax effect.
10. Choose the position of the image (e.g. image behind the Title)
11. Footer Image: If you want to decorate your Footer with an image, you can upload it in this section.
12. You can select Custom height of your Footer image.
13. Choose whether or not you want it with a parallax effect.
14. Choose the position of the image (e.g. image behind the Title)
15. Page Share: Choose whether or not you want to display your social media icons.

Even though all our themes are optimized for search engines (SEO) by having H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 tags, clean code, and are in HTML5, you are still going to need improve your website with a few SEO plugins and Google Pagespeed Service:

• Yoast SEO plugin
• Google Pagespeed Service
• Smush.it (image optimization)

Minelight theme can be translated into your preferred or native language (this is also called localization).

It contains a language file ending with .pot (in theme-name/languages/theme-name.pot ), and here you can translate the theme to your preferred language. This file basically enlists all the text lines in the theme in the English language.

Here is how you can translate your theme easily:

Via Poedit

One of the most commonly used programs for translation/localization of themes is Poedit. You can download it for free via http://poedit.net/ .

After you have installed it, start the program and select File > New Catalog from POT file. Next, go to /includes/lang/ or /languages/ folder in your theme and select the .pot file you want to translate.

Make sure that you translate each line of the code into your preferred language, and save the catalog with your language code (e.g. ed_ES.po). Poedit usually creates the .mo file automatically and saves it, too.

And finally, upload the translated files into your theme’s language folder via FTP.

Tell WordPress which language file to use

If you did not use a language other than English (default) in WordPress so far, you are going to have to inform WordPress about activating the theme translation and using it in a different language.

How? By editing the wp-config.php file (located in the main directory of your WordPress files) and defining the WPLANG constant. Now set your language code, e.g. es_ES for Spanish translation. You can do this by adding a line below wp-config.php or (if existing) edit it into:

define (‘WPLANG’, ‘es_ES’);

Method 1:

Having Minelight in any other version higher than 1.0 means that your update is just a few clicks away.

Step 1: Go to ThemeForest, click on the Downloads tab in your account and download the purchase code.

Step 2: When in Dashboard, go to Appearance > Themes and click on the Minelight thumbnail to update the theme.

Method 2:

If you have a version of MineLight which is lower than 1.0, one click update will not be available for you. You are going to have to update the theme manually, by following these two simple steps:

Step 1: Log into your ThemeForest account, go to Downloads section and download the newest version of the theme.

Step 2: Unzip the “minelight.zip” file and extract the theme package. After that, connect with your server via FTP and go to the wp-content/themes in the WordPress installation, and replace the existing folder called “Minelight” with the unzipped folder.

Piece of cake!

All images in your freshly bought Minelight theme need to have the following dimensions:
Blog – 800px by 800px,
Author thumb –  100px by 100px;
Portfolio-grid Thumbnail – 900px by 675px;
Portfolio-slide Thumbnail – 595px by 335px;
Single Portfolio – 826px wide;
Product image – 680px by 680px.
Shop – On your Dashboard, navigate to WooCommerce > Settings > Products > Product Image Sizes and set up the size for thumbnail and Single Product Images. Note that after you alter the Image sizes, be sure to Regenerate the thumbnails (using Plugin) so that the images get re-cropped to the right dimension.