First off meet Charlene. Charlene is a theme based on something that I had created in the past for a personal WordPress site on which received some good feedback and even requests for theme release. This revamped version is built on a theme framework I assembled for my own personal/business use. I contemplated whether it was necessary to include all of the features of that framework in a publicly released theme and after some thought decided to go ahead with it as they may be useful to some.
It wouldn’t be right if I did not mention credit to those I have learned from over my time working with WordPress so please check out some of the credits in the readme.html file.
Setting up the theme. Upon loading and activating the theme the head on over to the widgets panel, where you will notice that three widgets have been preloaded for you. These three widgets will get you set up similar to the demo you see here. You will see that one custom widget appears in in the main sidebar. This widget works very similar to the normal recent posts widget packaged with WordPress, all you need to do is select the number of entries you would like to display.
The second stop you will want to make is the theme options panel located under the Appearance tab. Here you will find a simple set of options that will allow you to do a few key things when setting up your theme. Such as adding your Feedburner Url or easily dropping your Analytics code in the footer. Check it out for the full list of options.
A few key points I should mention – While the majority of the theme options are self explanatory some of them may need extra mention, please see below.
You will notice under general options that there is a checkbox for SEO, should you use plugins such as All In One SEO Pack you will want to check this box to disable the built in functions for better SEO. If you decide not to use a plugin many of the same functions will be taken care of for you such as:
- Titles
- Descriptions – simply add a custom field named ‘description’ to your post or page, value of course being your custom description.
- Keywords
- Canonical Urls
- Meta Robots
You will also notice that you have the option to display the_content() instead of the the_excerpt() on the home page by simply checking a box. The default is the_excerpt().
More Reading:
That’s it, pretty simple set up and your theme should be ready to go, enjoy! Oh and if you love it or hate it please feel free to drop me a comment or an email, I am open to criticism and kudos.
You can download the theme hear and subscribe to the Feed to stay update on changes and new releases.