Courage Documentation

Welcome to the Courage theme documentation. These instructions briefly explain how to setup and configure all theme features.

Table of Contents

Theme Installation

Since it is the same procedure for every theme, this tutorial does not explain how to install the theme. If you need help with the theme installation, please see the Install WordPress themes tutorial.

Install PRO Version Plugin

Please be aware that the PRO Version of Courage is an Add-on plugin for the Courage theme. Therefore you have to install and activate the Courage theme and install the Courage Pro plugin in addition. You can learn how to install Plugins on the Install WordPress plugins tutorial.

Configure Theme Options

Courage supports the awesome Theme Customizer. You can configure all theme settings on your WordPress admin panel → Appearance → Customize on the “Theme Options” section.

Courage adds a “Theme Options” section to the Customizer containing following sub sections:

  • General Settings
    Choose the sidebar layout and add your own footer text.
  • Header Settings
    Upload your own site logo, turn on social icons and search field on header area.
  • Post Settings
    Decide between full posts and post summary and configure featured images of posts.
  • Post Slider
    Activate and configure the Featured Post Slideshow.
  • Theme Colors (only in PRO version)
    This section let you choose the font and background colors of various theme elements.
  • Theme Fonts (only in PRO version)
    Change the text, navigation and title fonts easily in this section.

courage-theme-options

Social Icons

Social icons are easy to add with Courage. We simply use custom menus for social icons.

courage-social-icons

You can activate your social icons to be displayed on the header area on Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Header Settings.

Set up WordPress Features

The theme supports several WordPress core features you know:

Set up Featured Post Slideshow

If you’d like to display the featured post slideshow on your homepage like the demo website, follow these instructions.

To set up your post slider, go to Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Post Slider, and activate the Slider first. You can enable the slider on the Magazine Homepage template and / or the normal blog page.

courage-post-slider

Next, you have to configure which posts are highlighted in the post slideshow. Therefore add a tag under Tag Name in the Select Featured Posts section. The slideshow will display all posts which are tagged with that keyword.

You can also set the maximum number of posts and the slider animation effect within the slider settings.

courage-post-slider-featured-tag

Featured Images

The Featured Post Slider as well as the Magazine Homepage template make use of featured images as thumbnails. The slideshow and Category Post widgets will look as intended when your posts have featured images.

If your existing posts have already had featured images, they may look disformed because they do not match the new required sizes for the front page template. In order to fix that you have to regenerate your thumbnails.

Your uploaded featured images should have a minimum image size of 1320×380 pixels in order to look good at any screen size.

Configure Magazine Homepage template

If you’d like to have a home page with the magazine-style layout like the demo website, follow these detailed instructions:

courage-magazine-homepage

Create a new static page

Go to Pages → Add New to create a new static page, or edit an existing page. Change the page template of your selected page to the Magazine Homepage template from the Page Attributes box.

magazine-page-attributes

Set Magazine Homepage Template as Front Page

If you want to use the Magazine Homepage template as your front page, go to Settings → Reading and set “Front page displays” to “A static page”. From the dropdown menu, select the Magazine page you created earlier. You can learn more about setting up a front page here.

magazine-reading-settings

Add Category Posts Widgets

After you created your Magazine Homepage, go to Appearance → Widgets and set up your Magazine Homepage widget area.

Courage comes with four different Category Posts widgets geared to creating a magazine-style site, but you can also add any other widget you like.

Category Posts Columns

This widget displays the latest blog posts from two configured categories: Category Left and Category Right. The first post of each category can be highlighted in the widget settings and is then displayed with the excerpt, followed by the other posts with small thumbnails.

courage-category-posts-columns

courage-category-posts-columns-settings

Category Posts Boxed

This widget displays the latest four blog posts from a configured category in a boxed layout, like in the screenshot below. The latest post is highlighted on the left column and displayed with the excerpt, and the right column displays three additional posts.

courage-category-posts-boxed

Category Posts Grid

This widget creates a two-column grid layout, showing the latest blog posts from a category you select. You can also specify the number of posts to be displayed.

courage-category-posts-grid

courage-category-posts-grid-settings

Setup and Configure Pro Version Features

The Pro Version of Courage is an add-on plugin which you can purchase on the Courage theme page.

Install PRO Version Plugin

You can download Courage Pro on our downloads page. If you need help to install the plugin please visit our Install WordPress plugins tutorial.

Custom Colors and Custom Fonts

You can customize the theme colors and fonts on Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Theme Colors / Theme Fonts.

Footer Widgets

Courage Pro adds four widgetized footer areas. You can add your footer widgets on Appearance → Widgets.

Hide Credit Link

You can disable the credit link to themezee.com on Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → General Settings.

Theme Specifications

  1. The main content column width is 860.
  2. The Featured Images used on posts are 840x200.
  3. The Featured Images used on the Featured Post Slider are 1320x380.
  4. The Featured Images on the Category Posts Widgets are 540x180 (large) and 80x80 (small).
  5. The Custom Header image will display at a maximum width of 1340 and a flexible height (default height = 200).

All measurements in pixels.

 

Thank you so much for using the Courage WordPress theme.