HighTide 1.1 Documentation by Tomas Toman

HighTide

Created: 05/05/2014
By: Tomas Toman
Web: www.tomastoman.cz

First of all, I would like to thank you for choosing HighTide! I firmly believe that you will be satisfied with this theme. In case of any problems or doubts, you can use the HighTide Official Support (in English, German or Czech).
Thanks so much!

Navigation

  1. About HighTide
  2. Theme installation
    1. Update to Premium Version
  3. Theme options
    1. General settings
    2. Header settings
    3. Posts/Pages settings
    4. Homepage settings
    5. Colors (only in Premium Version available)
    6. Fonts
    7. Social networking (only in Premium Version available)
    8. Other settings
  4. Background and Header settings
    1. Main Background settings
    2. Header Image settings
    3. Homepage Header Slideshow settings (only in Premium Version available)
  5. Widget areas
    1. Right Sidebar widget area
    2. Footer widget areas
    3. Footer notices
    4. Latest Posts Homepage widget area
    5. Homepage slideshow (only in Premium Version available)
  6. Custom widgets
    1. HighTide Posts Widgets
    2. HighTide Social Widget (only in Premium Version available)
    3. HighTide Facebook Like Box Widget (only in Premium Version available)
    4. HighTide Twitter Widget (only in Premium Version available)
    5. HighTide Info-Box Widget (only in Premium Version available)
    6. HighTide Tab Widget (only in Premium Version available)
  7. Menu areas
  8. Page templates
    1. Sitemap page (only in Premium Version available)
    2. Full-width page
    3. Full-width page without Share Buttons (only in Premium Version available)
    4. Page without Share Buttons (only in Premium Version available)
    5. Page without Title
    6. Landing page
    7. Logged In page
  9. Drag-and-drop Page Builder (only in Premium Version available)
  10. Plugins
    1. Breadcrumb Navigation plugin
  11. Custom Shortcodes (only in Premium Version available)
  12. Translations
  13. FAQs about WordPress

A) About HighTide - top

HighTide is an easy customizable WordPress multipurpose theme. It is a fully responsive theme that allows for easy viewing on any device. Using Theme Options panel, you can customize this theme directly to your needs. HighTide is fully compatible with the popular WooCommerce plugin.

HighTide Free Version features

HighTide Premium Version additional features

Compatible Browsers: Internet Explorer 8+, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari
Compatible WordPress Versions: 3.6+

B) Theme installation - top

For HighTide installation, you must follow these basic steps:

  1. Extract the folder "hightide.zip".
  2. Using FTP client (for example Total Commander) upload the extracted folder "hightide" to "wp-content/themes" directory on your host web server.
  3. Log in to your WordPress administration.
  4. Select the "Appearance > Themes" panel.
  5. Click on the link "Activate" at the HighTide theme.

Alternatively, you can install this theme via your WordPress administration. Go to "Appearance > Themes" panel and using "Add New" tool upload the original ZIP file. After uploading, activate the theme.

1. Update to Premium Version

Once you have purchased HighTide Premium Version, simply upload the extracted folder that you have got by purchasing HighTide Premium Version via FTP to "wp-content/themes" directory on your host web server.

Or, if the previous described procedure will not be comfortable for you, go to "Appearance > Themes" panel in your WordPress administration and using "Add New" tool upload the ZIP file which you got by purchasing HighTide Premium Version. Then activate the HighTide Premium theme.

C) Theme options - top

The options framework is available through the panel "Appearance > Theme Options".

1. General settings

This tab is used for choosing one of the basic color schemes and setting some parts of your website (right sidebar, breadcrumb navigation, favicon).
You can find here the options for selecting between Excerpt/Content displaying on your archive pages and transparency settings for the main background Pattern, too.

2. Header settings

This tab is used for uploading the Header Logo (which will be displayed instead of the default Site Title). If you want to display your custom Logo instead of the Site Title, simply upload or choose your logo image in "Theme Options > Header settings > Logo URL". For removing the Logo and setting the Site Title again, simply delete the URL address of your Logo in "Theme Options > Header settings > Logo URL".
You also can find here the option for hiding the Site Description.

3. Posts/Pages settings

Under this tab, you can set displaying of the related posts, featured images and meta data on the individual single posts. You also can disable here displaying of featured images on the static pages.

4. Homepage settings

There are 2 basic options for displaying your homepage. You can set them in "Settings > Reading" panel in your WordPress administration:
1. Your latest posts
2. A static page

By default, the latest posts from all the categories are displayed on your homepage. HighTide theme allows to display the latest posts from the specific categories. This is done by the HighTide Posts Widgets. You can choose from 6 different HighTide Posts Widgets:
1. HighTide Posts-Column
2. HighTide Posts-Default
3. HighTide Posts-Grid
4. HighTide Posts-List
5. HighTide Posts-Slider
6. HighTide Posts-Thumbnail

The individual widgets differ in the way how the latest posts are displayed. In the Free version is available only the HighTide Posts-Default widget.
For displaying boxes with the latest posts from a specific category, go to "Appearance > Widgets" settings. Insert as many HighTide Posts Widgets as you like into "Latest Posts Homepage widget area".
Note: If you does not want to display the default Latest Posts section on your homepage, simply hide it in "Theme Options > Homepage Settings > Display Latest Posts".

5. Colors (only in Premium Version available)

This tab is used for setting your own color scheme. You can choose here the colors of individual parts of layout, headlines and texts. Using color pickers, you can easily choose exactly that color you want. You also can directly enter the hexadecimal code of your favorite color.

Tip: If you want to use the same color for more items, simply copy and paste its hexadecimal code instead of setting it using color pickers on each item.

Color Options

Color settings panel

6. Fonts

This tab is used for selecting Google fonts for the individual headlines and text areas. HighTide theme offers more than 200 fonts for choosing. The default fonts are specified in the main stylesheet file (style.css in the main theme folder).
In the Premium Version, you also can set the font-size of the individual headlines and text areas.

7. Social networking (only in Premium Version available)

On this tab, you can choose wheter to display or not the Facebook, Twitter and Google +1 sharing buttons which may appear below your single posts/pages content and on the post entries.

Social Networking

Social networks sharing panel

8. Other settings

On this tab, you can fill your own cascading style sheet information (CSS) for modifying the layout. So you do not have to write your custom CSS straight into the file style.css in the main theme folder. The CSS information defined on this tab appears in the "head" section of source code.

Above the Custom CSS field, there are links for editing widgets, header image, main background and menu.

D) Background and Header settings - top

1. Main Background settings

For setting your own main background image or color, go to "Appearance > Background" panel. Upload your own photography and set here all the background-image settings (position, repeating, attachment). For setting one-color background, use the color picker at the bottom of this page. To make the selected color visible, there should not be set any background image.

Note: If you would like to hide the main background pattern (hatching), you can do so in "Theme Options > General Settings > Background Pattern". You also can set here the opacity of the background pattern.

2. Header Image settings

For setting your custom header image, go to "Appearance > Header" panel and upload or select your own image. The minimal width of your header image should be at least 1000 pixels.

In "Theme Options > Header Settings > Display Header Image", you can set the header image to be visible on all pages or only on the homepage.

The option for Logo/Site Title displaying is located in "Theme Options > Header settings". If you want to display your custom Logo instead of the Site Title, simply upload or choose your logo image in "Theme Options > Header settings > Logo URL". For removing the Logo and setting the Site Title again, simply delete the URL address of your Logo in "Theme Options > Header settings > Logo URL".

3. Homepage Header Slideshow (only in Premium Version available)

For making this feature available, the Cyclone Slider 2 plugin has to be installed. For creating a new Slideshow, go to the "Cyclone Slider" panel in your WordPress administration. After creating a slideshow, go to the Widgets settings and follow the steps described in the following paragraph:

The widget area for displaying Homepage slideshow is reserved for one "Cyclone Slider Widget". Its name in "Appearance > Widgets" panel is "Homepage slideshow". Put here one "Cyclone Slider Widget" and choose the slideshow you want to display on your homepage. After doing it, your slideshow will automatically replace the header image on your homepage.

E) Widget areas - top

There are several areas for displaying widgets in HighTide Theme:

  1. Right Sidebar widget area
  2. Footer widget areas
  3. Footer notices
  4. Latest Posts Homepage widget area
  5. Homepage slideshow (only in Premium Version available)

The Widget panel is located in "Appearance > Widgets" panel. If you want to place a widget in some of these areas, simply drag its panel and drop it to the area where you want to display the widget.

Right Sidebar widget area is displayed in the right sidebar on all your pages and posts. Its name in "Appearance > Widgets" panel is "Right Sidebar". You can put here as many widgets as you like.
If you do not want to display the Right Sidebar, you can hide it in "Theme Options > General Settings > Display Sidebar".

Footer widget area is displayed in the footer as the 3 columns of widgets. In "Appearance > Widgets" panel, you can see 3 areas for the individual columns: "Footer left widget area", "Footer middle widget area" and "Footer right widget area". This boxes represent those 3 columns. You can put as many widgets as you want into each column.

The widget area for copyright and other notices is displayed in the footer, below the main Footer widget area (described above). Its name in "Appearance > Widgets" panel is "Footer notices". Put here one "Text" widget. Into the content field of this widget fill the text (or HTML code) you want to display here. The "Title" field of this Text widget should stay empty.
Note: To display the Footer notices in the middle of the line, please check the option "Automatically add paragraphs" at the Text widget inserted into this area.

4. Latest Posts Homepage widget area

HighTide theme allows to display the latest posts from the specific categories. This is done by the HighTide Posts Widgets. You can choose from 6 different HighTide Posts Widgets to insert into "Latest Posts Homepage widget area" (in the Free version, there is only 1 widget). The individual widgets differ in the way how the latest posts are displayed (described in detail in Custom widgets paragraph).

5. Homepage slideshow (only in Premium Version available)

The widget area for displaying Homepage slideshow is reserved for one "Cyclone Slider Widget". Its name in "Appearance > Widgets" panel is "Homepage slideshow". Put here one "Cyclone Slider Widget" and choose the slideshow you want to display on your homepage.

For making this feature available, the Cyclone Slider 2 plugin has to be installed. For creating a new Slideshow, go to the "Cyclone Slider" settings in your WordPress administration. After creating the Slideshow, go to the Widgets settings and follow the steps described above.

F) Custom widgets - top

HighTide theme offers 11 custom widgets altogether (only 1 in the Free version):

  1. 6 HighTide Posts Widgets
  2. HighTide Social Widget (only in Premium Version available)
  3. HighTide Facebook Like Box Widget (only in Premium Version available)
  4. HighTide Twitter Widget (only in Premium Version available)
  5. HighTide Info-Box Widget (only in Premium Version available)
  6. HighTide Tab Widget (only in Premium Version available)

1. HighTide Posts Widgets

HighTide Posts Widgets allow to display the latest posts from the specific categories on your homepage (or on other pages using the Page Builder). You can choose from 6 different HighTide Posts Widgets:

  1. HighTide Posts-Column (displays the latest posts from the selected category as a column with highlighted first post) (only in Premium Version available)
  2. HighTide Posts-Default (displays the latest posts from the selected category in the default manner as you can see on archive pages)
  3. HighTide Posts-Grid (displays the latest posts from the selected category as a grid) (only in Premium Version available)
  4. HighTide Posts-List (displays the latest posts from the selected category as an unordered list with highlighted first post) (only in Premium Version available)
  5. HighTide Posts-Slider (displays the latest posts from the selected category as a horizontal slider) (only in Premium Version available)
  6. HighTide Posts-Thumbnail (displays the latest posts from the selected category as the thumbnails of featured images) (only in Premium Version available)

For using these widgets, go to "Appearance > Widgets" settings. Insert as many HighTide Posts Widgets as you like into "Latest Posts Homepage widget area".
Note: HighTide Homepage Widgets are designed ONLY for putting into "Latest Posts Homepage widget area", not for the other widget areas. Alternatively, you can use all the HighTide custom widgets with the Drag-and-drop Page Builder for displaying on a static page/post.

2. HighTide Social Widget (only in Premium Version available)

This widget is ready to use for displaying icons with links to your profiles on social networks and RSS feed. Put HighTide Social Widget into the Sidebar or one of the Footer widget areas in "Appearance > Widgets" panel and fill requested URL addresses. These social networks and services are supported:

3. HighTide Facebook Like Box Widget (only in Premium Version available)

This widget is ready to use for displaying Facebook Like Box. The Like Box is a special version of the Like Button designed only for Facebook Pages. Using this widget, you can easily promote your Facebook page on your website.
Put HighTide Facebook Like Box Widget into Sidebar or Footer widget area in "Appearance > Widgets" panel and fill the full URL of your Facebook Page that will be liked. Then set a height of Like Box and specify whether to display the profile photos of people who like the Page and a stream of the latest posts by the Page.

4. HighTide Twitter Widget (only in Premium Version available)

This widget is ready to use for displaying Twitter Follow button. Put HighTide Twitter Widget into Sidebar or Footer widget area in "Appearance > Widgets" panel and fill the Twitter username you want to display via Twitter Follow button.

5. HighTide Info-Box Widget (only in Premium Version available)

This widget is ready for displaying a text box with a header icon (you can choose from 14 pre-defined icons). You can insert this widget into the Right Sidebar or into the content of a static page using Drag-and-drop Page Builder.

6. HighTide Tab Widget (only in Premium Version available)

This widget is ready for displaying the popular posts, recent posts, comments and tags in tabbed format in your sidebar.

In HighTide theme, there is one menu area called "Header Menu". It is displayed just below the Site Title and Description.

Menu settings panel is located in "Appearance > Menus". At first, create a new menu and assign it to the "Header Menu" location. Then, in the left panels choose required pages/categories or custom links and add them to your new Menu. Then save all changes.

If you want to create a submenu, just drag required menu item and move it more to the right against its parent item. When you drop your sub-item, it should stay with indentation against the parent item. This way you can create unlimited levels of submenus.

Menu

Example of three-levels menu

H) Page templates - top

Beside Default Template, HighTide offers 7 other custom Page templates (only 4 in the Free version). If you create a new page or edit some existing page, you can choose the Page template in "Page Attributes > Template" right panel.

1. Sitemap page (only in Premium Version available)

"Sitemap" Page template is ready for displaying your sitemap page. If you want to use it, the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin must be activated. The sitemap options can be specified in "Settings > DDSitemapGen" panel.

2. Full-width page (without right sidebar)

If you want to display only some pages without the main right sidebar, simply use this template for these pages.

3. Full-width page without Share Buttons (only in Premium Version available)

This template displays the page in the same way as the "Full-width" template, but it will not display the Facebook, Twitter and Google + sharing buttons. It could be useful for creating pages using Drag-and-drop Page Builder.

4. Page without Share Buttons (only in Premium Version available)

This template displays the page in the same way as the "Default" template, but it will not display the Facebook, Twitter and Google + sharing buttons. It could be useful for creating pages using Drag-and-drop Page Builder.

5. Page without Title

This template displays only the page Content without the page Title.

6. Landing Page

This template displays only the page content without menu, right sidebar, comments area and footer widget areas. You can use it for creating a temporary home page before your website will be ready for the public launch.

7. Logged In

This template displays the page content only for logged-in users (otherwise it displays only the Log-in form).

I) Drag-and-drop Page Builder (only in Premium Version available) - top

Using Drag-and-drop Page Builder, you can simply create your own page templates. Working with Page Builder is as easy as managing widgets in "Appearance > Widgets" panel. By default (if all the HighTide theme features are active), the Page Builder contains 37 widgets altogether:

If you have installed some plugins offering their own custom widgets, they will be probably also included into the Page Builder widgets offer.

Here is a guide how to create a custom page template:

  1. Create a new page in "Pages > Add New" panel.
  2. Page Builder adds an extra tab called "Page Builder" to the standard WordPress editor - click on this tab for displaying the Page Builder interface (it is located beside the standard "Visual" and "Text" tabs).
  3. You will see the left toolbar with 3 icons: Add Widget, Add Row and Prebuilt Layouts.
  4. The rows de facto represent individual widget areas. If you are creating a new row, you can specify the number of columns (widget areas) in this row. In the upper right corner of each row, you will see 3 icons. Clicking on the middle icon called "Visual Style", select the option "HighTide" for widgets-layout pre-defined in this theme. If you select the "Default" visual style, the widgets will be displayed by the default way, which might not always fit into the page layout.
  5. Click on the add widget button (plus icon) in the toolbar to bring up the widget selection interface. Click on the widget that you want to add to the selected column.
  6. Now you can see the selected widget interface. Fill out the offered fields and then click on "Done" for saving the widget.
  7. For editing the content of a widget, click on the title. If you want to move the widget to another column, just pick it up and drag it to the another column.
  8. Publish or update the page.
Page Builder

Page layout created by the Drag-and-drop Page Builder

J) Plugins - top

Some functions of HighTide theme are conditioned by installing some plugins. If some of the recommended plugins are inactive, you can see them in "Appearance > Install Plugins" panel.

List of recommended plugins for the Free version:

  1. Breadcrumb Navigation plugin - Breadcrumb NavXT by John Havlik

If you want to display the breadcrumb navigation beside the main content headlines, the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin has to be installed and activated. This plugin provides many advanced options for displaying breadcrumb navigation. You can set them in "Settings > Breadcrumb NavXT" panel.
Tip: If your Breadcrumb Navigation is too long, so it takes 2 or more lines, you can short the Title Length in "Settings > Breadcrumb NavXT > General" panel.

K) Custom Shortcodes (only in Premium Version available) - top

HighTide offers several custom shortcodes for easy displaying of some HTML objects on pages/posts or widgets:

1.) [image src="Image URL"]
Shortcode for displaying images. It is especially useful for inserting images into Text widgets.

2.) [table cols="headline1,headline2" data="row 1 value 1,row 1 value 2,row 2 value 1,row 2 value 2"]
Shortcode for displaying tables. The parameter "cols" is used for inserting headlines of individual columns. The parameter "data" is used for inserting own data in rows of your table.

3.) [button link="URL address"]TEXT OF YOUR BUTTON[/button]
Shortcode for displaying left-aligned buttons.

4.) [highlight]HIGHLIGHTED TEXT[/highlight]
Shortcode for displaying color-highlighted text (the color is editable in "Theme Options > Colors").

5.) [google-map address="Address of any place in the world" width="100%" height="200px"]
Shortcode for displaying Google maps. The "width" and "height" parameters are optional. You can set the dimensions in percentages or pixels, but for responzive displaying is recommended to input percentage dimensions.

6.) <!-- ddsitemapgen -->
Shortcode for displaying Sitemap in the content of any page/post.

7.) [display-posts category="category-slug" include_excerpt="true"]
Shortcode for displaying a listing of posts in post/page content or in a Text widget.

Arguments for [display-posts] shortcode:
author
Specify the post author
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts author="bill"]

category
Specify the category slug (or comma separated list of category slugs)
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts category="fishing,hiking"]

date_format
Specify the date format used when include_date is true. See Formatting Date and Time on the Codex for more information.
Default: '(n/j/Y)'
Example: [display-posts include_date="true" date_format="F j, Y"]

id
Specify a specific post ID (or multiple post IDs) to display.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts id="9, 10"]

image_size
Specify an image size for displaying the featured image, if the post has one. The image_size can be set to thumbnail, medium, large (all controlled from Settings > Reading), or a custom image size.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts image_size="thumbnail"]

include_date
Include the post's date after the post title. The default format is (7/30/12), but this can be customized using the 'date_format' parameter.
Default: empty
Example [display-posts include_date="true"]

include_excerpt
Include the post's excerpt after the title (and date if provided).
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts include_excerpt="true"]

offset
The number of posts to pass over
Default: 0
Example: [display-posts offset="3"]

order
Specify whether posts are ordered in descending order (DESC) or ascending order (ASC).
Default: DESC
Example: [display-posts order="ASC"]

orderby
Specify what the posts are ordered by. See the available parameters here.
Default: date
Example: [display-posts orderby="title"]

post_parent
Display the pages that are a child of a certain page. You can either specify an ID or 'current', which displays the children of the current page.
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts post_type="page" post_parent="8"]

post_status
Show posts associated with a certain post status
Default: publish
Example: [display-posts post_status="publish, future"]

post_type
Specify which post type to use. You can use a default one (post or page), or a custom post type you've created.
Default: post
Example: [display-posts post_type="event"]

posts_per_page
How many posts to display.
Default: 10
Example: [display-posts posts_per_page="5"]

tag
Display posts from a specific tag, or tags
Default: empty
Example: [display-posts tag="tag1, tag2"]

taxonomy, tax_term, and tax_operator
Use these parameters to do advanced taxonomy queries. Use 'taxonomy' for the taxonomy you'd like to query, 'tax_term' for the term slug (or terms) you'd like to include, and 'operator' to change how the query uses those terms (most likely this field will not be needed).
Default: 'taxonomy' = empty , 'tax_term' = empty , 'tax_operator' = 'IN'
Example: [display-posts taxonomy="color" tax_term="blue, green"]

wrapper
What type of HTML should be used to display the listings. It can be an unordered list (ul), ordered list (ol), or divs (div) which you can then style yourself.
Default: ul
Example: [display-posts wrapper="ol"]

L) Translations - top

HighTide theme is ready for translation into any language. The .pot file (hightide.pot) is located in "languages" theme folder. HighTide contains integrated Czech (cs_CZ), French (fr_FR), German (de_DE), Greek (el), Italian (it_IT), Russian (ru_RU), Slovak (sk_SK) and Spanish (es_ES) language localizations. The best way how to make the language localization is by creating your own .po and .mo files and adding them in "languages" theme folder. If you create them, please let me know, I will add your language localization into the official theme distribution.

If you don't know how to create the .po and .mo files, never mind! Simply install CodeStyling Localization plugin and create your language localization on "Tools > Localization" panel.

M) FAQs about WordPress - top

1.) Where could I edit my website title and description?

Go to the "Settings > General" panel and rewrite here the fields "Site Title" and "Tagline".

2.) Where could I allow/disallow comments adding?

Go to the "Settings > Discussion" panel and set the options according to your needs. If you want to disallow adding comments only for one specific page/post, you can do so using "Quick Edit" link at this page/post in "Posts > All Posts" or "Pages > All Pages".

3.) What are the "Tags"?

Tags are similar to Categories. They are used for better description of posts. We can say that Tags are the keywords which specify the posts in great detail.

4.) How could I set title, description and keywords meta tags for each page and post?

The easiest way is to install some SEO plugin, for example All In One SEO Pack.

5.) Where could I set the number of posts, which display on index/categories/archives/search pages?

Go to the "Settings > Reading" panel and set the options according to your needs.

6.) I do not want to display the latest posts on my home page. Could I set a static page as my home page?

Yes, go to the "Settings > Reading" panel and choose the option "A static page" instead of "Your latest posts".

7.) How could I set the URL addresses of my pages and posts into user-friendly form, instead of "?p=123" displaying?

Go to the "Settings > Permalinks" panel and choose the option "Post name" in section "Common Settings".

8.) Where could I set my time zone and date/time format?

Go to the "Settings > General" panel and set the options according to your needs.

9.) Where could I set the header image?

Go to the "Appearance > Header" panel and upload here your own header image or select one of the already uploaded images.

Once again, thank you so much for choosing this theme. As I said at the beginning, I'd be glad to help you if you have any questions relating to this theme. No guarantees, but I'll do my best to assist. Best regards and have fun with HighTide!

Tomas Toman

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