Thank you for purchasing our theme, we hope you'll build an awesome website with it. If you have any questions about the theme, please submit a support request via the contact form on our profile page. Support requests will be answered within 24 hours on weekdays ( Monday - Friday ).

Installation

In this first section of the documentation we'll be going over installing the theme on WordPress and installing the required and recommended plugins.

Theme

In the package you downloaded from Themeforest you will find a folder called WP, inside of that folder is a ZIP file called the-stockford, that is the file you install the theme with.

  • Log in to your WordPress Admin Panel
  • Go to Appearance → Themes
  • Click Add New ( you'll see it at the top, on the right side of the page title )
  • Click Upload Theme
  • Click Choose file (or "Browse", depending on your browser) and choose the the-stockford.zip
  • Click Install Now
  • After WordPress finishes installing click Activate

Plugins

After you active the theme you will be prompted to install some required and recommended plugins the theme uses, as seen in the screenshot below.

CMB2 - CMB2 is a metabox, custom fields, and forms library for WordPress that the theme uses for it's page and post options. It is required.

ATSStyler - ATSStyler is a feature that makes it easy to make styling ( CSS ) changes without the need to write any CSS code. More info on the feature in the styling options section of the documentation.

General

In this section of the documentation we'll be covering the general features of the theme. Those are features like navigation menu locations, sidebar locations, custom widgets and theme options.

Navigation Menus

There are 3 navigation menu locations in the theme. You can manage menus in WP admin → Appearance → Menus. The names of the menu locations are:

  • Primary
  • Top Bar
  • Footer

Primary is located in the header, on the right side of the logo. Top Bar is located at the very top on the left side. Footer is located at the bottom right of the footer.

Creating menus and applying them to the locations is standard WordPress usage and if you've used WordPress before you won't run into any issues. But if you're not quite familiar with WordPress and how navigation menus work, here are some resources to help you out:

Sidebars & Widgets

There are 2 sidebar/widget locations in this theme. You can add widgets to those locations in WP admin → Appearance → Widgets. The names of the locations are pretty much self explanatory:

  • Sidebar
  • Footer

Like with the navigation menus, adding widgets to sidebars is also general WordPress usage, and if you've used WordPress before you won't have any troubles here. But in case you haven't used it before, here's some resources to help out:

The theme comes with a few widgets custom made for the theme. You can recognize them by their names, they start with ATS. Below you can see some examples of how those widgets look like and what options do they have.

ATS - Social

ATS - Instagram

ATS - Posts

Theme Options

The theme uses the WordPress Customizer feature for it's global/theme options. Customizer is a native WordPress feature which was added in WordPress back in 2012, so if you've ever used WordPress you won't have any problems.

You can access the customizer at WP Admin → Appearance → Customize. In there you will see these sections:

  • Social
  • Footer
  • Other

Logo / Identity

To change the text on the logo or set an image logo go to the Identity section of Customizer. If setting an image logo make sure to uncheck the checkbox "Display Site Title and Tagline".

Social

In the social URLs section of the theme options you can set the URLs to your social website profiles. They will be used for the social elements/icons in the side panel and in the social widget.

Footer

In the footer section of the theme options you can change the copyright text.

Styling Options

The theme comes with an easy to use tool for changing the styling of elements without the need to write any CSS code, it is called ATS Styler.

When you're logged in as the administrator you will see this in the top right corner ( image below ) on any page.

To activate it simply click on it and it will go into active mode ( image below ).

While Styler is in active mode, when you hover elements that can be changed you will see a border around them ( image below ).

Clicking on any of those elements will show the options available for that element in the panel ( image below ).

As you can see the options are separated into different sections:

  • Typography ( font size, family, color... )
  • Spacing ( margins and paddings )
  • Background ( bg color )
  • Border ( border radius )

Clicking on any of the sections will show options for those section.

As you change options you will see the changes you make immediately. Below is a video demonstration of the feature.

At any time you can click on a different element to change it's styling properties.

Once done with changes simply press the Publish Changes button and that's it.

Or you can discard the changes by clicking the Discard Changes button. You will be given 2 options, to discard what you made this session or all changes you've made with it.

Posts and Pages

In this section of the documentation we'll be going over the creation of pages and blog posts. Mostly it's all regular usage, there are a few theme specific options which we will be covering.

Homepage

By default the theme will show the same layout for the homepage as you've seen on the demo. You can keep that or create a new page and choose the layout you want. Here's how to do that:

  • Go to WP admin → Pages → Add New ( and set a title for the page )
  • Choose Home as the Page Template ( right sidebar under "Page Attributes" )
  • Choose the Featured Layout ( below the main content editor under "Homepage options" ) if you want a featured section in the header, if not leave it disabled.
  • Choose the Listing Layout and set the Posts Per Page ( below the main content editor under "Homepage options" )
  • Publish the page

After you've published the page you need to set that page to be the front page ( homepage ), to do that:

  • Go to WP admin → Settings → Reading
  • You will see a select dropdown called Front Page, choose the page you just created
  • Save changes and that's it
Homepage - Featured Posts

At the very top of the homepage ( just below the logo and nav ) is the featured posts section. To add posts to that section simply add the tag featured to the posts you want to display there.

Blog Posts

Posts can be managed in WP Admin → Posts. It's all regular posts management like with any other theme. If you are new to WordPress check out the official documentation on writing posts at https://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Posts.

Final Words

That covers the documentation for the theme. If you have any questions about the theme, please submit a support request via the contact form on our profile page. Support request will be answered within 24 hours on weekdays ( Monday - Friday ).