EZIO WordPress Theme

Contents

1. Server Settings

2. Importing EZIO Demos

3. Setting up the Portfolio

4. Setting up the Blog

5. Video Backgrounds

6. How to Improve Page Load Speeds

7. Theme Installation

8. How to update your theme

9. Fixing a limit on menu items

10. Additional Recommended Plugins

11. Setting up the Navigation Menus

12. Updating Premium Plugins (Slider and Visual Composer)

1. Server Settings

To ensure that you will have no problems during the set-up and during the use of the theme, proper server configuration is critical. If you do not know how to adjust the settings below, please contact your webhost.

max_execution_time 120
memory_limit 64M
post_max_size 32M
upload_max_filesize 32M
max_input_vars 3000

2. Importing EZIO Demos

If you would like to easily set up a website with one of our pre-existing demos, you can use the QUBE+ Demo Import plugin. Please note that the imported demos will not include any of the images, video or audio files displayed on the demos due to copyright and are replaced by placeholder images and content.

It is critically important to enable all of the associated theme plugins in order to prevent any import errors. For example, if you are trying to import a shop demo with products, please ensure that the WooCommerce plugin has been installed and activated.

To use the demo import plugin, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Import Demo Data.

2. Select the demo of your choice and click on the checkboxes to import specific content (sliders, widgets, demo content and theme options).

3. Click on the Import button, please be patient and leave the import page open so that the content can be downloaded which can take up to 45 minutes in some cases depending on the size of the import and server settings. If you run into any demo import issues such as ‘Internal 500 Server Error’, please contact your webhost to increase server memory and other settings as noted below.

If your import does not complete, you will need to delete the menus under Navigation > Menu's. After that, you can import the demo content again. You can do this multiple times until you get the completed message and demo content.

Please note that both the main EZIO demo and Classic demo are quite large in content size and require a longer importing time.

3. Setting up the Portfolio

To set up the portfolio section, you must create a new page which you can do by navigating to Pages > Add New. You can give this page any title that you might find relevant which in this case will simply be called Portfolio. Before you will have a functional portfolio gallery, you must first add portfolio items.

Creating Portfolio Items

To create a new portfolio item, navigate to Dashboard > Portfolio > Add New. Each portfolio post requires a ‘Featured Image’ which is used throughout the theme to display as the main thumbnail for each portfolio post. For accurate display, the recommended width for the featured image has a minimum width of 800px so that it displays properly across all portfolio layout options. If you wish to create custom single portfolio pages, you can use Visual Composer. To enable this feature, mark the checkbox that says ‘Hide Post Content Elements ‘ shown in the top right of the Post Settings tab and then you will be able to add your content otherwise it will not be displayed on the frontend. The Post Settings tab is located below the single post editor.

Portfolio Categories

If you wish to categorise your portfolio items, you can assign portfolio categories. Assigning posts to categories will make the main portfolio section filterable by the user. You can create new portfolio categories directly from the portfolio item creation page.

Portfolio Layouts

To build a portfolio layout, you must use the QUBE+ Portfolio element provided in the Visual Composer page builder. There are several layouts available which you can use to style your portfolio. Each of these layouts also include options to control background overlays, colorpickers, font sizes and more.

4. Setting up the Blog

To set up the blog, you must create a new page which you can do by navigating to Pages > Add New. You can give this page a title of “blog” yet you do not have to include any content. Click “Publish”. Once you have created your new page, navigate to Settings > Reading and configure the “Front Page Displays” setting.

Choose the static page option and select the page that you have just created as your ‘Posts’ page. Your blog index is now created and can be viewed by visiting the page that was just published. In addition, you can use the QUBE+ Blog element and place it on any page. Even though the QUBE+ element has its own set of options, you can also control this by using the Customizer.

Blog Post Formats

The EZIO theme has built-in support for custom blog post formats which allows you to adjust the way a blog post is displayed on your blog.

- Standard
The Standard Blog Post Format is the classic blog post layout which displays an image and post excerpt.

- Image
The Image Blog Post Format is used when you simply want to post an image without any other post content except the date of publication.

- Gallery
Display multiple images in a small blog post slider with the use of the Gallery Post Format.

- Video
Display embedded videos from Youtube or Vimeo as a blog post.

- Audio
Share a self-hosted audio file with a built-in audio player.

- Aside
Asides are used for short and straight-to-the-point messages to your visitors.

- Quote
If you would like to post an interesting quote, simply add the quote in the Post Settings tab underneath the Post Editor whenever you wish to create a post.

- Link
If you have seen an interesting article or other web content that you would like to share, you can do so with the Link post format. The blog post will link to content you want to share. As with the Quote post format, you must add the URL in the Post Settings tab underneath the Post Editor.

5. Video Backgrounds

Use this option if you wish to add a background video to a section. You can link to a specific URL so you can either upload the video files to your own installation or link to an external source.

To ensure full browser compatibility, you will need to have 3 versions of the same video file; .MP4, .Webm and .OGG which can all be created using an open-source video converter called Miro Video Converter or another free service such as Video Online Convert.

Keep in mind to click on the Enable Video Background checkbox otherwise this option will not be activated.

NOTE: To ensure that your webpage loads fairly fast, keep the video file size to a limit of 3-7MB which in most cases means a short but visually impressive video. Background videos are not supported by iOS devices so these will display a background image.

6. How to Improve Page Load Speeds

For the EZIO demos, we have used a variety of free WordPress plugins to enhance the demos. Shown below is a list of known compatible plugins:

Better WordPress Minify
You can install this optional plugin and will help reduce the code to improve page loading times: https://wordpress.org/plugins/bwp-minify/

W3 Total Cache
We highly recommend using this plugin as not only it will greatly improve serving content to your website’s visitors by creating a cache of the content, it will also help make your website lightning fast. https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

WP Smush
To optimize your website image and improve page load speeds, you can use this plugin and it will automatically optimize the image for you. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/

7. Theme Installation

You can install Themes directly to WordPress by using the Add New Themes option in the Appearance sub-menu.

  1. Log in to the WordPress Administration Panels.
  2. Select the Appearance panel, then Themes.
  3. Select Add New.
  4. Then Select Upload Theme.
  5. You can then Install your Theme and Activate it.


Adding New Themes Manually (FTP)

To add a new Theme to your WordPress installation, follow these basic steps:

  1. Download the Theme archive and extract the files it contains. You may need to preserve the directory structure in the archive when extracting these files. Follow the guidelines provided by your Theme author.
  2. Using an FTP client to access your host web server, create a directory to save your Theme in the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress. For example, a Theme named Test should be in wp-content/themes/test. Your Theme may provide this directory as part of the archive.
  3. Upload the Theme files to the new directory on your host server.

8. How to update your theme

Step 1)  Get Your Envato API Key

You will start by requesitng your Envato API key. All you have to do is login to Themeforest and visit your user profile page. Click on Settings. You Should see an API Keys tab below. Just click the button to generate your API key.

Envato will create a random 32 character API key for you to use. You can create multiple keys if you need to (some users prefer to do this if they are installing each theme purchase on a different domain).


Step 2)  Setting Up The Envato WordPress Toolkit

Setting up the plugin is super easy since you already have your Envato API key. Simply click on the Envato Toolkit menu item in your dashboard and enter in your Envato username and API key. Then Save your settings.


Once saved, the toolkit should recognize your API key and display all of your Themeforest purchases. If the plugin doesn’t recognize your API key it’s possible your key is still too new. Try clearing your cache or refreshing your browser, and if that doesn’t work then wait a little and try again.

All you have to do to update a theme is click on the Update Automatically link for that theme in your toolkit. The plugin will prompt you to confirm your update. This is to remind you that if you’ve edited your stylesheet or other core files without using a child theme you will lose your changes. Don’t worry about the styling options you’ve set in the WordPress Theme Customizer or in the Theme Options Panel – those options will not be effected by updating your theme.

Link to Envato WordPress Toolkit:  https://github.com/envato/envato-wordpress-toolkit

9. Fixing a limit on menu items

If you have an issue adding additional menu items, then it is likely you have reached the limit for menu items.  Thankfully this is an easy fix.

To fix the issue, you need to edit your PHP.ini file. If you are on a dedicated server or on a VPS with root access, then you should already know what we are talking about. If you are on a shared hosting or don’t know where PHP.ini file is, then ask your web hosting provider to do this for you.

You need to ask them to set the following values in the PHP.ini configuration:

suhosin.post.max_vars = 5000
suhosin.request.max_vars = 5000

10. Additional Recommended Plugins

In the live preview we are using a few additional plugins.  These are for various things like Flickr E-mail Newsletter sign-ups.  Here is a list of these plugins if you want to use the same functionality:

Multiple Sidebars:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/multiple-sidebars/

Twitter Widget Pro:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/twitter-widget-pro/

Flickr Badges Widget
https://wordpress.org/plugins/flickr-badges-widget/

Instagram Feed:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/instagram-feed/

MailChimp for WordPress (Newsletter Sign-up):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/mailchimp-for-wp/

WP Retina-WP (Adds Retina image functionality to site):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-retina-2x/

11. Setting up the Navigation Menus

If you want to display your submenu in multiple columns, you can do so with the Mega Menu feature which allows you to display menu items with an optional icon in 3, 4 or 5 columns.

To implement this, all you need to do is navigate to Dashboard > Appearance > Menus and select the menu that you want to edit. For this feature to function, you must first enable the parent menu item by clicking on the Enable Mega Menu option to determine that this menu item will be the base of the megamenu. Once in the menus page, add another menu item and assign the layout column.

Then you will need to start adding the actual menu items that are going to be displayed within the mega menu. You can easily do this by dragging and dropping these items in the desired order.

If you wish to add icons in front of the titles, you can reference the Fontello website as mentioned on page 9 in the ‘Icons’ section to see the names of the icons which you can then place in the CSS Classes field.




12. Updating Premium Plugins (Slider and Visual Composer)

Please note that we include updates for our Premium Plugins (Revolution Slider, Visual Composer, Ultimate Visual Composer Addons, Layer Slider), however, this does not mean that you will receive an individual license for these Premium Sliders. Due to Envato’s licensing rules, we can only issue updates for these plugins when we issue a theme update. Please continue reading below for further information on the process of how these updates are given.

Premium Plugins Update Process
To get the latest version of the plugins, you can download the latest files: http://themeforest.net/downloads  After downloading "All Files & Documentation", unzip the file.  Inside the /plugins/ folder you will fine the latest versions of all our plugins.  You can then de-activate and delete the old plugins and then upload the new ones from the /plugins/ folder.   

Visual Composer Update:  If you plan on updating the Visual Composer plugin, make sure to de-activate the Qube+ Elements before updating.  If not, you will get a blank white page when removing the Visual Composer plugin.  After you have de-activated the Qube+ Elements plugin, you can then update your Visual Composer Plugin.  Once it's updated, re-activate your Qube+ Elements Plugin.

Updates are always free, you will never have to pay additional fees for updates.