Documentation

A setup guide and general information to help you get the most out of your new theme.

This document covers the installation, setup, and use of this theme and provides answers and solutions to common problems and issues – we encourage you to read this document thoroughly if you are experiencing any difficulties.

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1. Getting Started #

To install this theme you must have a working version of WordPress already installed. For information in regard to installing the WordPress platform, please see the WordPress Codex – http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

When you are ready to install a theme, you must first upload the theme files and then activate the theme itself. The theme files can be uploaded in two ways:

• FTP Upload: Using your FTP program, upload the non-zipped theme folder into the /wp-content/themes/ folder on your server.
• WordPress Upload: Navigate to Appearance → Add New Themes → Upload. Go to browse, and select the zipped theme folder. Hit “Install Now” and the theme will be uploaded and installed.

Once the theme is uploaded, you need to activate it. Go to Appearance → Themes and activate your chosen theme.

2. Theme Features #

The theme comes packed with features that control the layout and extend the functionality of WordPress. This section will document those features and how to use them successfully.

2.1. Custom Menus

Chipmunk supports WordPress Menus, so you can easily create custom navigational menus directly in Appearance → Menus.

Custom menus may contain links to pages, categories, custom links or other content types. You can specify a different navigation label for a menu item as well as other attributes. To display menus on your website you need to assign them to specific menu location.

The theme allows you to create as many menus as you want. However these menus can be placed into predefined locations only. The theme defines these menu locations:

• Header nav – This is the main navigation area in the header of the website.
• Footer nav – This is the secondary navigation area in the footer of the website.

2.2. Custom Post Types

The theme comes with a very helpful custom post type included by default. It is very easy to use so you’ll be able to quickly add your content without any technical experience needed. If you’re an adventurous type you can always add more on your own.

2.2.1. Resource

This is the core functionality of every website that is using Chipmunk Theme. Resources Custom Post Type can be used by curators to showcase their content on the site.

For each resource you can adjust its title, content and featured image (often used for website screenshots or product logos). You can also assign resource for a specific category or include some tags (they’re used for pulling the related content so it’s good practice to always add some).

There’s also an option to feature the content. This will make it visible at the top of the homepage which will surely increase the views for this one. It’s great tool to showcase sponsored resources. You can always disable the ability to feature content by visiting Appearance → Customize → Resources and selecting the Disable featured panel option.

2.3. Custom Page Templates

The theme comes with a number of in built custom page templates. These templates can be used on individual pages to alter the display or functionality. We have plans for few more page templates in the near future so please expect Contact Form and Frequently Asked Questions templates to come out in future versions of the theme.

2.3.1. Resources Template

The theme includes a simple resource listing template. To create your listing, simply create a page using the “Resources” page template. The list will automatically display on your page in a nice 3-column layout.

2.3.2. Collections Template

You can also choose the “Collections” as your page template. It will list all of your resource collections added on the site. By default there will be up to 3 resource thumbnails in the cover that are associated with this collection. You can change that to display you theme’s primary color by visiting Appearance → Customize → Resources and selecting the Disable collection thumbs option.

2.3.3. Blog Template

“Blog” template can also be used as a page template. It will list all of your blog posts added on the site. You can change the appearance of this page by visiting Appearance → Customize → Blog and playing with available options there.

2.4. Front-end User Submission Form

Chipmunk theme allows your website users to submit their own content they think is valuable. After the submission you’ll be notified by email about new draft waiting for you to review in the WordPress Admin Panel.

You can add Google ReCaptcha to your submit form easily. All you need to do is to update your site key in the Customization panel. Simply go to Appearance → Customize and put the reCAPTCHA Site key placed in the Submissions tab.

2.5. Theme Customization

Inside Appearance → Customize path you can change almost everything on your site. All that with real-time website preview showing your changes without page reload. From font styles to the page layout. Easily change or adjust primary font and color, page layout, menus or disable unwanted theme functionalities.

The theme options are conveniently spread over a number of tabs and each tab contains the options that pertain to a particular area of the theme. We’re going to cover some of the most important options here.

2.5.1. Custom CSS

This section is intended for front end developers. Visuals → Custom CSS section enables you to customize your site beyond theme options. Learning CSS is easy as it is not an advanced programming language. Most of the style customization can be achieved with CSS.

Using tools like FireBug or browser native developer tools will help you to search for the CSS rulesets, which you can change to your liking and paste the CSS code to the custom CSS section of theme options. There are many resources for learning CSS on the web. You can start here: CSS | Mozilla Developer Network.

2.5.2. Resources

Resources are the main functionality of the Chipmunk theme as it lets you curate the content you want. That’s why we made sure that it can be highly customizable and adjusted to your needs. 

By default, the theme is counting the unique views for each resource so we can decide what’s popular among your users. There’s an option to disable that. You can also disable the “Featured” panel from the homepage if you don’t need that.

There’s a couple of options to customize the look of resource tiles as well. You can hide it’s descriptions or change how many of them are displayed per page.

2.5.3. Submissions

You can allow your users to submit quality content for your review. There’s a bunch of options to customize that functionality as well. You can find them by going to Submissions section in Customize panel.

2.5.4. Social Media Profiles

Link your social media profiles to icons on your pages so users can keep up to date with your other social platforms.

Go to Social Profiles section and input the your social media profile links to the corresponding name. Make sure you include https:// before the link. You can choose from various of profile but you can leave some of them empty and they won’t be displayed on the site.

2.5.5. Ads

Chipmunk comes with support for custom banner ads as well as third-party ad blocks like Google Adsense. You can customize your advertisement in the Ads section of WordPress Customization options.

There are 2 types of ads to choose from. You can either display standard banner image and link it to a website of your choice or input HTML code generated by third-party vendors. You can also disable ads totally or display them only on your site’s homepage.

2.5.6. Newsletter

Build your audience from day one with our Newsletter support. All you need to do to set things up is to find your form action URL. We support Mailchimp, ConvertKit, AWeber and Revue, but you can easily adjust the form for other providers as well.

2.6. Translating the Theme

Chipmunk theme is localized out of the box and include default .po and .mo files. These are the files that you can use to easily translate a theme using Poedit. You can also use any one of the translation plugins available from wordpress.org to help you in the translation process.

3. Shortcodes #

Chipmunk includes few very useful shortcodes you can use in any content area of your website. Here’s a short overview of the available shortcodes along with some examples. If you want to know more about Shortcodes in general, please read the following docs: Shortcode API.

Side note: All of Chipmunk shortcodes are prefixed with chipmunk- to avoid any problems with your other plugins and settings.

3.1. Submit form

Chipmunk displays submit form in a popup by default but you can change that by going to Appearance → Customizer → Submissions and setting Submit form page to one of your pages. To be able to display the form correctly, you’ll have to put the following shortcode somewhere on that page.

[chipmunk-submit title="Submit" align="center"]

3.2. Post counter

The Post counter shortcode lists the current count of your posts added in your dashboard. By default it counts published resources only, but you can change it via attributes.

[chipmunk-counter type="resource" status="publish"]

You can change the default status as well by setting status attribute to one of the values from Post Status API.

4. Filters #

WordPress allows theme developers to make their themes customizable through advanced PHP solution called hooks. There are 2 types of hooks: actions and filters. Chipmunk uses filter functionality to allow advanced users to modify some parts of the theme.

Check the full filter list

5. Snippets #

We created a growing list of code snippets that you can use to quickly alter the look and feel of your website. Some of them require installing a child theme but most are just simple CSS snippets to be placed in the WordPress Customizer.

Check the full snippets list

6. CSS Variables #

CSS Custom Properties (variables) are great for quickly changing certain parts of the styling without any complex coding. The whole theme has been rewritten recently to facilitate this functionality. They work great with WordPress Customizer as well, as you can just easily change things that are not accessible via standard options we provide you within Customizer.

To change any of the supported variables, go to Appearance → Customizer → Visuals and put this code into the Custom CSS field:

body {
    --chipmunk--typography--font-size: 1.8rem !important;
}

The “!important” part is, well, important as some of the variables are being modified by the Customizer itself so it assures that the value you set is being used on the site.

The complete list of supported CSS variable can be found below. The list will be updated continuously whenever the theme changes so make sure to check it every once in a while to keep yourself up to date.

Check the full CSS variables list

7. Support #

We are committed to helping you solve any problems you encounter along the way. Before contacting us, please make sure that you:

• read this documentation carefully
• browsed the Frequently Asked Questions on our website.

If you didn’t find answer to your problem, please contact us directly at support@chipmunktheme.com.

For the fast troubleshooting, please send us detailed informations about the issue and make sure to send us your site url where you are using (or want to use) the theme. Unfortunately, we cannot troubleshoot from screencast videos or screenshots.

We usually respond within 24-48 hours.