WordPress questions

1. How to install WordPress theme?
2. How to update WordPress?
   
3. How to update WordPress themes and plugins?
4. What is child theme and how to install child theme?
5. How to create backup of the theme?
6. How to set home page as static page?
7. How to create or edit Menu?

1. Once purchased the theme from Themeforest please navigate to your account page and download it.
2. After that extract the main archive file.
3. Then log in to your website, and once in the WordPress Dashboard navigate please to Appearance => Themes, click “Add New” button
4. Then “Upload Theme”.
5. Then select the archive folder containing only the theme actual files you have downloaded from the Themeforest and extracted.
6. After that install and activate the required and recommended plug-ins for the theme which you will see as hint message
7. Import demo content according to theme documentation

That’s it, as simple as that!

Every time when new version of WordPress released you need to update it in order to implement the latest changes / fixes.

For updating WordPress go to Dashboard=>Updates and click on update WordPress
Note: The update process implies overwriting the files of the WordPress / plugin / theme, which means that any changes made in core files ( which is not recommended, anyway ) will be lost.

It is recommended before updating WordPress to do a back up of the site, so in case of any issues you can easily restore your website. For details please see the WordPress official documentation

Themeforest provides tool – Envato Worpdress Toolkit plug-in to facilitate the update process of the themes [resources you have bought from Themeforest].

• All you have to do is to install and activate the plugin, navigate to Dashboard => Envato Toolkit and fill out fields “Marketplace Username” and “Secret API Key” from your account of Themeforest.

• After successfully connecting to the Themeforest API ( which can take a little while ), you can easily update the resource from the same page, right under the mentioned fields.

In case you are updating the resource manually, you should:

1. Download the resource archived folder;
2. Establish FTP / SFTP connection to your webhost;
3. Browse appropriate folder (wp-content/themes for the theme, wp-content/plugins for plug-ins);
4. Upload archived folder to your webhost by replacing the old one [delete the old resource, extract the archived folder, delete the archived folder]

And last but not least clear the site cache ( in case, of course, you are using caching plugin ).

You can update plugins easily from Dashboard => Plugins page.
Note: In case you are using premium plug-ins, you should provide license key in order to accomplish the update process about which you will normally get hint messages on the Dashboard page.

As mentioned in the “how to update WordPress ” section after the theme update all modifications you have made to the theme files will be lost. So the WordPress has functionality called Child Theme which provides a way to make changes on the theme and do not lose it during the update. It is quite simple to take advantage of the WordPress child theme functionality.

Most of the WordPress themes have installation package of the child theme which you need to install and activate after main theme installation. The installation process is the same as described in point 1. How to install the WordPress theme with only difference that in this case you need to select for upload child theme.

Child theme creates the child theme directory with two files: “style.css” and “functions.php”.

In the “style.css” file you provide information about the child theme ( for details please refer to the Documentation ), also the additional styles you would like to implement.

The “functions.php” file will be loaded along with the parent theme “functions.php” file, so there you will need to create only additional functions, using which you want to extend main theme functionality.

It’s important to understand, that any other file created/copied in the child theme directory will completely override the file in the parent theme having the same name and located in the same directory.

You can also extend the theme functionality by including files in the child theme that are not included in the parent theme. Again, all this is pretty well documented in the official WordPress Site, please refer to it for more details.

It is a good idea to back up your site periodically. This process includes backing up of files and database. Normally the most hosting providers provide service to back up the website. In case web hosting does not provide back up service, or for some reason you don’t want to utilize it, you can use plugins for that purpose or do it manually.

To back up your website manually you need to do two steps:

1. Log in to your web hosting account, click phpMyAdmin, select the website current database (in case there are more than one database you can find the current database taking a look on the “wp-config.php” file located at the root of your WordPress installation) and export it;
2. To back up files you click to the “file manager” in your web hosting account, navigate to the your website root directory (mostly “public_html”) select and compress all files / directories of your website (make sure you have selected all files, because in Unix-like operating systems (which is most likely the operating system installed on the server) filenames preceded by a `.` (e.g. .htaccess) are hidden and may not be visible).

For more information refer to WordPress official documentation.

We also recommend you to use following plugins for WordPress backup.

By default, WordPress shows your most recent posts in reverse chronological order on the front page of your site.

In order to set a static front page you need to:

1. Go to WordPress Dashboard => Settings => Reading
2. change the option “Front Page Displays” to “A static page”
3. afterward select Front Page the page you would like to be as Static Front Page.

Note: The same behavior applies to “Posts” Page.

For more details please refer to WordPress official documentation.

To create a menu you need to log in to the WordPress Dashboard=>Appearance => Menu, select “create a new menu” at the top of the page, enter the menu name in the field “Manu Name”, click the “Create Menu” button.

To edit the menu from the mentioned page select the menu you would like to edit from select box named “Select a menu to edit” and click the “select” button right next to the field.

Note: There may be menu properties which are disabled by default. To enable them click “Screen Options” button on the right-upper side of the screen, and afterward check the menu properties you would like to enable.

After making your changes click the “Save Menu” button in the menu editor.

The last things remains to do is to add the new menu to one of the “Menu Locations”, which you can do from the bottom of the menu editor by checking the check box you wish to appear the menu and click the “Save menu” button.

This topic is described very detailed in the WordPress official documentation.