Thank you and congratulations for using Receptar theme by WebMan Design!
This user manual will teach you how to set up and use the theme. In case you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this documentation, please join WebMan Design support forum.
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WordPress is free open source CMS software for creating websites. It can scale with your needs when you're ready to grow and is easy to learn with many free and low-cost tutorials. You can learn more about WordPress at wordpress.org.
What is a theme?
A WordPress theme changes the way your site looks and affects the style of the content displayed on it. WordPress themes are built so you can change your site's design without losing content. As you are reading a user manual for a WordPress theme and it requires WordPress to run, let's install it first.
WordPress itself will notify you about a new theme update. The only thing you need to do now is to proceed with update procedure suggested in your WordPress dashboard.
Tip:Automatic update failed?
If automatic update fails for whatever reason, please update the theme manually → see below.
Download the theme ZIP package from where you've obtained it originally. Then follow the steps below:
Updating via WordPress dashboard
A simple way of doing a manual theme update is deleting and reinstalling the theme directly via WordPress dashboard. You can read an article or watch a video on how to do this.
Updating via FTP
This is more advanced manual update procedure and you will need an FTP client (such as FileZilla) to connect to your server:
Download the newest theme ZIP file from where you've obtained it and unpack the ZIP file on your computer.
Now you will need an FTP client to connect to your server.
On your server navigate to WORDPRESS_FOLDER/wp-content/themes/ folder.
Delete the existing receptar folder (or create a backup just in case - you can do this simply by renaming the folder name by appending .backup to its name so it becomes receptar.backup, for example).
Copy the unpacked theme receptar folder from your computer (from step 1 above) into WORDPRESS_FOLDER/wp-content/themes/ folder on your server.
Log into your WordPress admin area and check the version of the theme in Appearance → Themes. Your theme should be updated now. (And you can delete the receptar.backup folder from step 4 above.)
The theme allows you to import a demo content, which matches theme demo website. Then you can simply change the imported demo content to your needs and build your website faster that way.
Before you import the theme demo content, please check these important notes:
Tip:Delete leftovers
Theme demo contains a lot of pages. You will certainly end up not using most of them. In that case it is strongly recommended to delete the leftover demo content you no longer need from your website. It improves your website performance and relevance.
Important:Install on fresh WordPress
It is recommended to install demo content on empty, fresh WordPress site. (If you are testing the theme on a computer and not your live website, you can always reset WordPress to a fresh state.
Warning:Images and media quality
Please understand that demo images, audio and video files are of low quality. This is to prevent any copyright infringement. You should replace them with your own, properly licensed media that fit your website project.
Recommended:Classic widgets interface
WordPress 5.8 introduced a new block-based interface to widgets and sidebars management screen. Theme demo content was built using the classic widgets interface, so it is highly recommended to install and activate Classic Widgets plugin to retrieve the classic WordPress widgets interface again.
Warning:Page builder compatibility
If you want to use a page builder, please understand that if the theme demo content was not built with your page builder, you will not be able to edit the imported demo pages.
By default WordPress displays a caption in the archive page title (such as "Category:" in front of a category name). Use Archive Title plugin to hide these labels.
Featured images are displayed in posts list and as a background in section on the right side of single post page. To set up featured image follow the instructions in WordPress codex.
If there is no featured image set for post or page, a fallback image is used. The fallback image is generated from the header image automatically. You can set up the header image in Appearance → Header.
These posts will populate the front page (and blog page) banner slideshow area. To set up featured posts, please install and activate the NS Featured Posts plugin and easily mark selected posts as featured.
Table of Contents on Parted Post
If you are setting up a multipage post (using a "Page break" button in visual editor, or <!–nextpage–> tag in "Text" tab of visual editor), the automatic table of contents will be generated for the post/page for you.
All you need to do is to set up a post parts titles at the top of each post part (so, immediately after <!–nextpage–> tag) with H2 heading.
Navigational menus for your website can be created at Appearance → Menus. They may contain links to pages, categories, custom links or other content. You can specify a custom menu item label, as well as other attributes.
Display menus on your website by assigning them to a predefined theme menu location. The theme defines these menu locations for you:
Primary Menu
The main navigation area is hidden in the left sidebar. Click the menu hamburger icon on top of the left sidebar area control buttons to reveal the sidebar (and menu) content. The menu in this menu location can be nested and hierarchically organised.
Social icons linked to your social network profiles can be displayed anywhere on the website. But beforehand you must create and set up a social links menu:
Go to Appearance → Menus in the WordPress admin.
Click create a new menu link.
Give the menu a name, such as "Social Menu".
Click Create Menu button.
Click the Custom Links header on the left side of the page.
Type a link (such as https://www.facebook.com/webmandesigneu/) in the URL field.
Give the link a label by typing in the Link Text field. (This label text will be accessibly hidden.)
Click Add to Menu.
Repeat the above steps for additional social links.
In the Menu Settings section at the bottom, check the "Social Links" box for Theme locations.
Click Save Menu button.
Adding your social links as a custom menu allows you to sort your profiles and add as many as you want. Once you assign a social links menu this way, feel free to use a Navigation Menu widget to display it in sidebars of your website.
The theme displays icons as SVG images. For full list of supported icons please refer to assets/images/svg folder of your theme.
For links starting with mailto: an envelope icon is applied. For unrecognized links a link chain icon is used.
Social sharing buttons
If you want to add a social sharing buttons to your website to allow your visitors to share your content, please consider enabling the Sharing module of Jetpack plugin, or use different dedicated plugin.
WordPress 5.8 introduced a new block-based interface to widgets and sidebars management screen. As this may be confusing and possibly even cause incompatibility issues in some cases, you can consider reverting back the interface with Classic Widgets plugin.
Predefined Widget Areas
The content of widget areas (sidebars) can be customized in Appearance → Widgets or Appearance → Customize → Widgets. The theme predefines these widget areas:
Sidebar
This is the hidden area on the left of your website. To display the are you need to click the menu hamburger button on top of the left sidebar control buttons area.
Receptar seamlessly integrates its options into live preview customizer. You can set up your site's title, tagline and logo, home and blog page, manage menus and widgets, customize colors, layout, typography and others.
Customizer can be accessed at Appearance → Customize. All the changes you make in Customizer will be immediately displayed in the preview, but they will be made live only after you press the Publish button.
At Appearance → Customize → Theme Options panel you'll find theme-specific options. Check them out to get familiar with theme customization capabilities.
Every WordPress theme contains some texts that need to be translated into your language if you are building a non-English website. This theme if fully translation ready.
Make a copy of the original receptar/languages/receptar.pot file.
Rename the copied file now: add hyphen followed with your language code locale, and change the file extension to "po". For example, the British English file would be named receptar-en_GB.po.
Use Poedit to translate the file and export (save) translation in "mo" file format.
Upload translated receptar-en_GB.mo and receptar-en_GB.po file into your WordPress languages directory, into themes folder (such as /wp-content/languages/themes/receptar-en_GB.mo (if the themes folder does not exist in your WordPress languages directory, create it).
Warning:Don't lose your files!
When you update the theme, all custom translation files will be deleted from /wp-content/themes/receptar/languages folder. Do not put your custom translation files into that folder! Basically, you should never modify the actual theme files and folders.
Methos 2: Translating in WordPress admin
If you would like to translate the theme directly in your WordPress dashboard you need to use a specialized plugin. Check out Loco Translate plugin and instructions on how to use it at beginner's guide and technical overview.
Translate Plugins Too!
Your website is built with WordPress system itself, a theme and some plugins.
There is a high chance that WordPress itself is already translated into your language. So, you don't have to translate it on your own. You have also learned how to translate the theme above. But what about plugins and their texts?
If you are lucky, your plugin contains your language translations already and you don't have to do anything. But if you need to translate a plugin, the best advice is to check the plugin's documentation for the best approach.
Alternatively you can also use Loco Translate plugin (again) to translate your plugins directly in your WordPress admin area.
Once you set correct image sizes, all your newly uploaded images will get processed with new settings. But for the images already uploaded to your website you need to use additional plugin to refresh their sizes. Regenerate Thumbnails plugin (or similar) will do the trick.
Having a performant website is a must. It makes your website more SEO friendly and most importantly pleasing for your visitors, more accessible. This theme was coded with performance in mind but we can always take things even further:
Use a good host
A good hosting for your website is very important choice you can make towards a speedy website. Depending on your location it is also advised to use a host that has servers in your country or at least on the same continent.
You should always keep the file size of your website media as low as possible. Prepare images before you upload them to your website: compress them, reduce their dimensions, maybe even crop them. Use plugins to optimize further more.
In case of video and audio files set the optimal compression and formats before uploading them to your site. Consider also using services such as Vimeo, YouTube or SoundCloud to host your files off your servers.
But you will get better results using a dedicated solutions such as WP Rocket or WP Super Cache or SiteGround Optimizer. Or maybe your hosting provider applies some sort of caching already? Check with them.
Warning:Minify & combine
Your caching solution may provide CSS and JS files minification and combination. Be cautious though: these are complex processes which may cause errors on your website. Test thoroughly!
Tip:Measure performance
For measuring your website performance and tips on how to improve it use services such as GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools and WebPageTest.
If you need to make coding changes to the theme or WordPress itself, use child theming functionality, or even more flexible"child theme" plugin solution.
This way you can update the parent (original) Receptar theme without worrying about your custom code getting overwritten and lost. Your code is kept safe in your child theme/plugin.
For more flexible approach that works with any type of theme (classic or FSE block theme), or for cases when you can't use a child theme, we have created a free "Child Theme" Plugin for you.
Info:Is using a "child theme" plugin better?
Using "child theme" plugin is mostly beneficial when you use a block theme (full site editing theme) for some time already and then you decide you need to modify something with code.
If you plan to provide means for future code modifications right from the start use a child theme, even with a block parent theme.
More technical details
Full site editing block theme compatibility with WordPress child themes concept is limited. This is due to Site Editor user-modifications being stored in WordPress database. It causes issues when you decide to use a child theme afterwards, because all of these database records are bound to a specific (parent) theme name.
Copying modified Site Editor options and layouts so they work with a child theme is more complicated process. Though, this complication is solved elegantly using a "child theme" plugin.
The plugin works the same way as classic child theme would - you can use it anytime, even after you've already made custom changes in Site Editor, and it involves less code in comparison to a child theme.
A downside of the plugin may be overriding parent theme templates with code:
With WebMan Design themes this should not be an issue as they are very flexible and contain useful action and filter hooks you can use instead.
Download a free child theme or plugin from WebMan Design GitHub repository. Don't forget to check the information in the repository for how to set them up.
The theme provides multiple useful action and filter hooks, which can alter its functionality. Check the theme's source code for hook references: simply search for do_action and/or apply_filters. Or contact support for help.
Receptar theme uses Theme Hook Alliance (THA) hooks too. This is useful to rebuild theme structure or add your custom sections anywhere.
