Give your site the look of a newspaper front page, but with a modern day look. With Giornalismo, your readers will know about everything going on with a top story section and up to three columns full of stories right up front. Once inside, it will be easy for readers to know the important details, with story highlights, and navigate within the site, with related stories and latest posts. Giornalismo is completely responsive, allowing readers to take your stories wherever they go.
Giornalismo comes with up to two menus for your liking. The main menu is always displayed between the header section and the main body of each page. The top menu is optional and can be set to be shown in the WordPress Customizer under the "General Settings" tab.
While the suggested practice is to let the header be the site title and description, there is the option to upload a custom header image. To upload the image, go to Appearance->Header in the WordPress admin area. For the best display, header images should be 530px by 150px.
This theme relies a lot on featured photos and it is recommended that each post comes with a featured photo. The optimal size for featured photos is 735px by 440px.
Giornalismo leaves a number of options open to users, including the homepage. Users can completely customize what posts show up in the homepage and where they show up. Each column can either display posts from a category or the latest posts in order and each column can show a different number of posts. Users can also select which category shows up in the top story slot at the top. All of these options can be found in the WordPress Customizer under the "Homepage Options" tab.
There are a couple of different options when it comes to the sidebars. There's the generic right sidebar layout, then there's the left sidebar layout and finally there's the two sidebar layout. It is important to note that if the two sidebar layout is in use, the third column on the home page will not appear.
One of the best features your readers will enjoy is the story highlights feature. Shown at the top of the post right underneath the post meta, you can enter up to three key points for each story. This will highlight the most important parts of the story so the reader knows what's going on. To implement this feature, install the "Giornalismo Story Details" plugin (see the How To's section).
In addition to the story highlights, Giornalismo also has spots for a photo credit and caption for featured photos and a spot to place an embedded video in place of a featured photo. Like the story highlights, you will need to install the "Giornalismo Story Details" plugin. To make the YouTube embed work, on the YouTube video you want to embed, click share, embed and copy the source link. Make sure the url has the "/embed/" in the middle of it.
Want the readers to be able to dig deeper into your content without adding another plugin? Giornalismo has that covered. The theme has the ability to show related stories and latest stories from a category on the single post view. To implement these features, select the respective checkboxes in the "General Settings" tab of the WordPress Customizer.
Giornalismo also has a special staff page template to show off your staff of however many peope you have. To create this page, add a new page and select "Staff" in the template dropdown menu.
There is a spot in the upper right hand side of the header for a widget area. This spot is recommended for ads if you wish. To implement this feature, see the "Header Ads" How To section.
Giornalismo also comes with built-in support for the "JM Breaking News" plugin. Simply install the plugin (details in the How To's section), and create a new breaking news post and set a time limit. The banner will show up without having to add any code.
Let your readers know where they are on your site with breadcrumbs at the top of the page. Click the checkbox in the "General Settings" tab of the WordPress Customizer to implement this feature.
Social media is everything these days and Giornalismo makes it easy to display links to your social media pages. Just enter your links in the respective text boxes in the "Social Options" section in the WordPress Customizer and the links will automatically show in the header. The theme currently supports Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and RSS feed options with more social media sites to come down the road.
Also, with Giornalismo you'll know exactly how your theme is going to look from the font to the link color to blockquotes and tables. Everything will be styled in the editor exactly as it will be on the page.
Lastly, allow your writers to talk about and promote themselves. Giornalismo has support for author bios, photos and social media links at the bottom of each post as well as on the staff page template. Install the "Extra User Details" and follow the directions in the "Author Details" part of the How To's section.
Video tutorials are available on the theme page.
When customizing a theme, the best practice is to create a child theme. This way, when you update the parent theme, all of your changes will still remain intact. Creating a child theme is very simple if you use the steps below.
/*
Theme Name: Giornalimso Child
Description: Child theme for Giornalismo theme
Author: Giornalismo
Template: giornalismo
*/<?php function giornalismo_child_theme_styles() {
wp_enqueue_style( 'main_css', get_stylesheet_uri() );
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'giornalismo_child_theme_styles', 10 ); ?>This section is a complete guide to the CSS classes that you can use to customize the theme. All of these CSS classes center around individual categories and their slugs.
Obviously there are more ways to customize the theme and some digging around in the CSS and template files will turn those up. But these are the basic changes you might want to try to make your site unique.
If you have a question, need to report a bug to be fixed or have a feature request for a future version, email me at jacob.martella@att.net or fill out the form on the theme page.
GNU General Public License
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Except where otherwise noted, all photos in the screenshot are also licensed under the GNU General Public License. Copyright 2015 Jacob Martella