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Ink Drop: Quick Setup Guide

Introduction to Ink Drop

Ink Drop is a theme specifically designed for designers, artists and content creators. Our intention was to create a text-driven theme without a lot of extra stuff, but still allow it to be visually stunning. Our theme demo shows you what can be done with the theme, but should not be taken literally – how you configure and build your website is up to you and the outcome will depend on the content you create.

In a nutshell, setup follows a flow of Add Content→ Place Content→Refine Content.

This guide will help you through the following:

  • Optimal WordPress Settings
  • Theme Installation
  • How to use the theme’s various post options to create your content
  • How featured images and videos work in this theme
  • Setting a custom logo and configuring the theme
  • Using widgets
  • Setting up menus
  • Customization options

Below, we provide an overview of how the theme interacts with WordPress. If you are new to WordPress, these overviews will prepare you for managing your site and creating optimal content. If you are a veteran user or know your way around Obox Themes, you may skip straight to Quick Setup for the recommended setup order

 

How the Theme Handles Images

Post Thumbnails (the background fill on your list pages post boxes)

Inkdrop2 uses WordPress featured images in the home layout, archives, blog and category pages, and treats them separately from header images. This is to allow easier transition for existing content and support for featured video. These images do not need to be any larger than 410px for the 3 column layout, or 660px for the two column layout. For any full-width content, use images at least 980px wide.

Header Images (the HD “cover” image)

As described in detail later under the Posts article, Post Headers should be as high-resolution as possible while being under 2MB in file size. You can see from our demo that these images will scale and snap to fill your entire browser viewport, so for visitors on large monitors, this means your image should be at least 1920px wide by 1050px tall for the default full-screen look on desktop monitors. For smaller images, there is an image zoom option which can help adjust the image to fit the screen, no matter what size. Some images will look fine when blown up larger and some won’t, so you will need to experiment when designing each of your posts. You may optionally set custom colors instead of header images if you don’t want the full-screen images to appear on your posts. Essentially, if the header image option is not used, the post will just show a title banner across the top.

Recommended Image Sizes

Inkdrop2 uses two primary images in the templates: Featured Images/Video and Post Background images.

Featured Images or Video appear at the top of the content on the post or page, but below the title area.

  • For best results, upload images at least 980 pixels wide for full-width display in posts and pages.

Header images will fill the colored space behind the post title appear full-screen at the top of posts.

  • For best results, upload high-resolution images at least 1920 pixels wide and 1050 pixels tall for full-width backgrounds. For tiled backgrounds, any image size will do, but you will need to ensure the position and repeat options are set in the post options!

If you have existing content in WordPress, download and run the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin

Post Types, Page Templates & content Structure

Inkdrop2 focuses on the standard content types in WordPress, Posts and Pages.

Page templates in this theme allow you to create a Blog page, condensed Archives page
Before your site will look like our demo at all, you must add some content, and one of each of these page templates. Once you’ve populated the post types with text and a featured image or video, you can then add them to your homepage via the Appearance → Widgets section in your WordPress administration area, which is explained in detail later.

Detailed instructions on adding each content type are covered on the following articles, or you may use our Demo Content file below.

Quick Setup

Setup time for the your theme should be extremely quick compared to the majority of our themes as it has no custom post types or homepage widgets. For average WordPress users, setup should take less than 30 minutes.

This guide provides detailed instructions for setup and configuration of WordPress and the theme. You may also access quick tips and links to documentation from within WordPress under Theme Options → Help, and inline from each WordPress screen under the Help link in the upper-right. At a minimum, you must do the following:

  1. Ensure SettingsReading is set to Your Latest Posts.
  2. Ensure Settings Permalinks is set to Post Name and Saved
  3. Follow the core setup articles:

Demo Content

If you prefer to pre-load our demo content into your theme to get a head start, you may use our demo content file below.
The demo file cannot setup the theme or widgets for you, so please continue with the setup documentation to learn how to master your theme. For best results, do not edit existing demo product posts with your own data- create your own from scratch! Your products need to be configured with your own tax, SKU, slugs and other specific data you do not want carried over from our shop!
To use this file:
  1. Right-click the below link and choose Save File As or your browser equivalent
  2. Unzip the downloaded file to find the ink-drop_demo-content.xml file
  3. Go to Tools Import and click WordPress
  4. If prompted to install the plugin, follow the steps to install and activate.
  5. Browse to the ink-drop_demo-content.xml file and click Upload and Import.
  6. You will be prompted to import authors and users from our demo site. Select your name from each drop-down to assign posts to yourself so these users are not creted on your setup.
  7. Click the "Download and import file attachments" box to attempt to import our demo images.
Please note that your server may not allow uploads from remote servers and the image imports will fail, in which case you will need to upload your own featured images to the posts. Photos in our demo content cannot be reused in a design for sale or any commercial purpose and may not be included in your theme license. The demo content available for download may vary from what you see on our sales demo.

Download Demo XML

Customization

Post Content

To enable some level of art direction, Inkdrop2 includes a custom feature in our Post Options panel that allows WordPress users with CSS knowledge to take individual post customization further than the built-in options allow. With Post Custom CSS, you can set specific fonts for copy or titles, background colors, and change individual element colors. We provide a help article at the end of this documentation series with some tips for using Custom Post CSS. Please note that our support for your theme does not extend to helping you customize individual posts beyond what this article already outlines.

Post Custom CSS

We also provide pre-formatted elements for your post content such as dividers, drop-caps and columns. Learn more about this here:

Obox Editor Styles

Colors

And for customization of the theme’s overall color scheme, you may use the WordPress customizer:

Customize Colors

Portfolio Drop

The “inkdrop” color drop feature of the portfolio images is determined automatically by selecting the most prominent color of the image. This feature cannot be turned off, removed or changed without extensive JS modification of the theme, which we do not support.

Support

For help with common issues you may encounter, check out our Knowledgebase first. If you can’t find the answer there, click Contact Support below. You should receive a response within 24 hours on weekdays.

For help with modifying templates or changing functionality in Inkdrop2, feel free to post the question on our forums, but be advised you may be referred to hire a modifier if your request requires testing/development to figure out or is beyond your skill level to implement.

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