Creating a Non-Category-Style site:

A Non-Category-Style site is one where the main navigation menu doesn't display portfolio categories. Instead, all portfolio items are combined inside the "portfolio" menu item. See screenshot above.

Important First Steps

Step 1

To use Non-Category-Style mode, in Theme Options, make sure "Use Category Mode" is un-checked.

Step 2

You need to define what text will be used in the menu for your portfolio. The default is "portfolio".

Step 3

Full Path To Images. Edit: This is no longer needed, and this section has been removed from the Theme Options page.

Posting Portfolio Items

To post a portfolio item, simply create a new "Post". Type in your Title and body text. The body text will appear in the "detail" page, so you can add as much text as you want there. For the slider, you want to keep it short so it fits. So for the Slider text, enter text in the "excerpt" section.

Adding the portfolio image

If your image is in a 3:2 ratio (600x400, 900x600, etc) then you only need to add one image. The theme will take care of resizing it down to fit the detail page, slider, and slider thumbnails. The original image will be used for the large "lightbox" view.

To add the image, at the bottom of the Post window, add a Custom Field called "Image". For the value, type in the file name, without the FULL path. If you uploaded images through WordPress, then it probably put them in a subfolder structure based on year and month. So if you uploaded an image in May 0f 2009, then you would need to enter something like this for the file name: 2009/05/yourfilename.jpg. If you upload manually via FTP, then you MUST upload to your "uploads" folder. If you don't put it into a sub-folder off of the "uploads" folder, then you would enter something like this: filename.jpg

If your image is not in a 3:2 ratio (for example, a portrait oriented image), then you will want a cropped version of the image to show for the Slider and Slider thumbnails. If you don't then the image will get squished vertically and will look bad. So for images like this, you will need to specify a secondary image. In your image editor, crop your image to be in a 3:2 ratio, for example 300x200.

To add the secondary image, at the bottom of the Post window, add a Custom Field called "Image_Cropped". For the value, type in the image file name only, without the full path.

The Portfolio Details Page

Here is a sample Details page:

On the Slider, when you click the "Read More" link, the user is brought to the portfolio detail page (which uses the Wordpress "single.php" template file. Here, the full text for the post is shown next to a larger image. If the image is clicked, the full size image is shown in lightbox view.

Disabling Detail Page

Many people do not want a details page because they don't have much text to go with the image. They will just want text on the Slider, and nowhere else.

To disable the details page, you simply don't show the "Read More" link on the slider. You hide that link on a post-by-post basis. To hide the "Read More" link for a post, add a Custom Field called "No_Read_More" with a value of "true".

3 blocks under the Slider

Note: you can disable/hide the 3 column blocks under the slider. To do this, uncheck the "show 3 columns?" setting in the Theme Options page.

This content is controlled via the Theme Options page. This theme has special support for a small "About Me" block, and a "Testimonials" block. Plus there are 3 "miscellaneous" blocks where you can put whatever content you want.

In the Theme Options, you can place each block in any of the 3 columns, plus you can duplicate any of these blocks to be also in the sidebar. (The sidebar is shown on this theme's regular "pages")

For example in the screenshot the "about me" section is on the left. You can actually have it in the middle, or the right side. You can also disable it altogether, and also include a copy in the sidebar.

In the screenshot, the middle column is actually one of the 3 "miscellaneous" block sections. This text is set in the Theme Options under "Miscellaneous 1", "Miscellaneous 2", or "Miscellaneous 3".

Testimonials "Section"

In the Theme Options, you can include or exclude the Testimonials block. As mentioned above, you can locate it in any of the 3 columns under the slider, and you can also include a copy in the sidebar.

Before adding your first testimonial, you need to create a category called "Quotes". In the Theme Options, type in the Category ID number for the Quotes category.

You add testimonials by creating a regular "Post", but without a Title. If you want to add a source for the quote, in Custom Fields, add a Custom Field called "Quote_Source", with a value of the person's name that said the quote. Also add a Custom Field called "Quote_Website_Url", with a value of the website address from the quote author. For example (http://www.example.com).

The Contact Me "page":

The Contact Me page uses a small Wordpress contact form plugin. Download the plugin here:

http://green-beast.com/blog/?page_id=136

After installing, follow the instructions from the link. When you get to the part where it says to type in <!--gb_contact_form--> into a "Page", make sure you're in HTML editing mode, and not Visual: (it took me hours to figure this one out!)

The About Me "page"

The About Me page as shown in the live preview is just simply a WordPress "Page". Add whatever you want to it.

Changing the order of items in the Slider

By default, the portfolio items in the Slider are ordered according to Post ID, in Descending order. So the latest portfolio post will appear first in the slider. You can override this, and bring any of your items to the front of the line. Simply add a "Custom Field" called "Order". For the value, enter a number. The post with the highest number will be displayed first, followed by the next highest, and so on. Then posts with no Order number will trail behind.

Adding LOTS of categories

If you add too many categories, there won't be enough room in the menu bar to display them all in 1 row, and they will wrap. So you will need to decrease the font size and padding to accommodate more categories.

In style.css, to change the font size for the menu:

#slidermenu { fontsize: xxxx; top: xxxpx}

#slidermenu li {padding-left: xxxx;}

(notice you'll have to adjust the "top" value so the menu stays where you want it)

Sidebar

All "Pages" (as opposed to "posts") will have a sidebar. Examples of "Pages" are the "Contact Me" and "About Me" pages. The content in the sidebar is defined in the Theme Options. You can add 1-3 "miscellaneous" block sections. The heading and text can be anything you want. You can also duplicate any of the content from the 3 columns under the slider to be in the sidebar also. The screenshot below shows one of the "Misc" sections that you can add in the Theme Options. Note that if you want it to be in the sidebar, the "Also Show in Sidbar" must be checked.