Imperial WordPress Theme

Back to Top ↑A) Installation & Initial Setup

Unpack the zip file you've downloaded from ThemeForest, and upload the /imperial directory to the /wp-content/themes directory on your server.

There are a few things you should do once you have Imperial installed:

For starters, things may look a little messed up until you save the theme settings. Head over to the Theme Settings panel found at the bottom of the nav in WP-Admin and hit the Save Changes button.

If you plan to use Post Thumbnails, it would be a good to regenerate your thumbnails. Thankfully, there's a plugin which automates the process, aptly named Regenerate Thumbnails. It will take all of the images uploaded to your /wp-content/uploads directory and produce new thumbnails and various sizes speficially for Imperial. This includes images for use in the featured posts slider, and through-out the rest of the theme.

Back to Top ↑B) Post Thumbnails

WordPress 2.9+ Post Thumbnails
If you're running version Imperial 1.3 or above and WordPress 2.9 or later, you can make use of the Post Thumbnails (or Featured Image) functionality. In this case, assigning an image to be the post thumbnail is very easy. Simply upload your image using the built-in media manager, then click the "Use as featured image" link.

Backwards Compatible Dynamic Image Resizing
For previous versions of WordPress to 2.9, Imperial uses Tim McDaniels' TimThumb script for resizing the images used in the featured posts sections and in archive listings. Simply upload your images using the built-in media manager or direct FTP, then copy/paste the original file's path into the Post Image field in the Additional Information box. This method can be used if you simply don't want to use the built-in Post Thumbnail functionality, for whatever reason.

When you enter image paths in WP-Admin, they can be relative or absolute. For example, if your image path is http://mydomain.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/image.jpg, you could use that full path, or one that is relative to the site root - /wp-content/uploads/2010/01/image.jpg. Either will work.

Incompatible Server Environment Workaround
In the case that your server is incompatible, you will have to resize images manually if you want them to look their best. Otherwise, images will be resized via CSS restrictions, which doesn't produce the best results. If you're manually resizing thumbnails, save thumbnails at 372x100 and feature images at 412x250.

Back to Top ↑C) Setting up the Nav

WordPress 3.0 has a new featured called Menus, which allow you to build a dynamic menu using a drag-and-drop interface from within WP-Admin. Imperial 1.3+ supports Menus out of the box. Simply create a menu and it will replace the wp_list_pages menu automatically.

As of Imperial 1.3, subpages are supported in the main navigation which can be nested 3 deep. For example, you could do something like this...

• Home
• Reviews
  • Video Games
    • PlayStation 3
      • Screenshots
      • Videos
    • Xbox 360
      • Screenshots
      • Videos
• About
• Contact

Back to Top ↑D) Widgetized Sidebars

The sidebars are widgetized, so you can drag and drop standard WP widgets and custom widgets designed specifically for Imperial. I didn't test every single widget I could get my hands on, but the most popular ones should display just fine.

Please refer to the WordPress Codex if you're unfamiliar with using widgets.

There is a known issue with the text widget, if it's used without a title. There is a container that's opened after the widget's title is closed. If the title isn't included, that container isn't opened, but the closing tag is still present. This results in the sidebar being closed early, which in turns break the remaining layout of the site. To get around this, make sure your widgets have titles.

Back to Top ↑E) Featured Posts

Adding posts to the featured posts section is very easy. On the Write -> Post screen you should notice a new box directly under the main text area titled Featured Post. The only thing that's required to make a post show up in the slider, is for the checkbox to be enabled. If you'd like the slider to have a custom title and description, you can enter them in the specific fields below. Otherwise, the post title and excerpt will be used.

Back to Top ↑F) Adding a Review to a Post

New in Imperial 1.6 is the ability to add a review to any post. There is no limitation as to what posts can contain reviews, or what the review criteria may be. You can review any type of product, service, or whatever you'd like. Review criteria is entered indenepently for each post, so you can even review different product/service types from post-to-post.

To add a review to a post, you should notice the Review Details meta box on the Write -> Post screen. First, tick the checkbox beside Review to officially make it a review. Now, you need to fill in the name of the product/service you're reviewing, followed by the criteria - this can be anything you'd like. For video games, the standard fields would likely be; Platforms, Publisher, Developers, Genre, Release Date, Rating. The criteria name goes in the smaller field on the left, while the value goes on the right. For example, if the first field is Platforms, and the supported platforms are PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. You would have Platforms on the left, and PC, PS3, Xbox 360 on the right.

Related Link Fields
There are two link fields which can be used to link off to official websites, affiliate stores, etc. The text you would like displayed for the link is the field on the left, while the URL itself is the field on the right. For example, to have link off to a product page on Amazon using your affiliate link, you would enter something like, "Buy this game from Amazon" on the left, and the affiliate URL on the right.

Setup Default Values for Review Criteria
If your review criteria is often the same, you could add default values for the criteria title fields fairly easily. It's a manually change, but it's not too scary. Open functions.php in the /wp-content/themes/imperial directory and skip down to line 222. The std value is the default value for the field. Enter your default value between the single quotes and repeat for any other fields you'd like to set a default value for. I've left comments in the template for the fields that you should edit.

Criteria Fields Are Optional
All of the criteria fields are conditional, and only show up in a post if there is a value entered. For example, if you only have 3 criteria fileds in your review, that's all that will show up in your post, provided there is nothing entered (in the value field - on the right) for the others.

Back to Top ↑G) Managing Ads

There are several built-in ad spots in Imperial. On the Theme Settings panel you will see a series of text areas after the basic settings which are for the ads. Once you have placed your code in the appropriate areas and saved, you will need to add the associated widgets to the sidebars.

Imperial has built-in support for the following ads...

• 728x90 Leaderboard Floats beside logo and description in the header.
• 125x125 Buttons (4x) Left or right sidebar widget.
• 300x250 Big Box Left sidebar widget.
• 160x600 Skyscraper Right sidebar widget.

Each ad box renders out the code you put it in as regular HTML. I'm assuming most people will be using an ad service like AdSense which provides code snippets you simply paste in. If you want to display your own buttons or ads, you'll need to use full HTML here. For example...

<a href=”http://themeforest.net?ref=mattbrett”><img src=”/wp-content/themes/imperial/images/TF_728x90.jpg” alt=”" /></a>

Back to Top ↑H) Miscellaneous Theme Settings

There are a few other options on the Theme Settings panel that haven’t been covered above.

Social Profiles – There’s a long list of links with corresponding icons for the sites that you take part in. Like just about everything else, these are completely optional. Put the URLs (starting with http://) to your profile in whichever services you use and save, leaving those you don’t use blank. Blank entries remain hidden.

Back to Top ↑I) Support & Feature Requests

Please send me an email via my ThemeForest profile if you’re having trouble with your theme, and I will do my best to get back to you as soon as possible. Please be patient, as I work freelance full time and do not have dedicated time for theme support. I rarely answer support requests left as comments on ThemeForest.

Also, it would be a good idea to a read through my Terms of Support document, which outlines the extent of support I offer, and information regarding updates, warranty, and compatibility.

Back to Top ↑J) TimThumb: Dynamic Image Resizer

If you're using the standard WordPress post thumbnails (featured images), you're not using TimThumb. So, you can disregard this section entirely.

TimThumb requires the GD library, which is available on any host sever with PHP 4.3+ installed. There shouldn't be a problem with most web hosts, but if images are broken, this could be why. Contact your host and see if they can help you out.

If you are certain your server is compatible, you may need to check that the /cache directory is writable on your web server – set the permissions to 755 or 777.

If you absolutely cannot get TimThumb to work, I can offer no further assistance. As such, I've included an option in Theme Settings to disable image resizing entirely. In this case, you will have to resize images manually.

Back to Top ↑K) Supported Plugins

Most plugins will work just fine with Imperial. But Imperial has been tailored to work with the following plugins out of the box...

Twitter Tools
For Twitter status updates to appear. Once this plugin is activated, it will appear in the right sidebar if there are no widgets present. If you have already place widgets here, you'll need to drop the Twitter (not Twitter Tools, simply named Twitter) widget in this sidebar. Looks best at the top.

FlickrRSS
For recent Flickr images in the header. Thumbnails will start to show up in the header as soon as you activate the plugin. For best results, set the options to 6 photos. And if you have cache enabled, make sure "square" is selected for image size.

Subscribe to Comments is supported out of the box, but not required. It simply adds some extra functionality that's nice to have.

Back to Top ↑L) Credits

Dynamic image resizing via Tim McDaniels' TimThumb.

Icons for social networking sites are part of Komodo Media's Social Network Icon Pack. Thanks Rogie!

RSS feed, email, Twitter, and placeholder sad smiley icons are courtesy of Function free icon set by Function Design & Development Studio.

Featured posts slider is powered by SlidesJS.

Lightbox for full-size images in gallieries by ColorBox.

Back to Top ↑Thank You

Once again, thank you so much for purchasing this theme! As I said at the beginning, I'd be glad to help you if you have any questions relating to this theme. No guarantees, but I'll do my best to assist.

Matt Brett
- http://mattbrett.com
- http://twitter.com/mattbrett
- http://themeforest.net/user/mattbrett