Documentation

Revolution Magazine is clean, modern, premium WordPress magazine, which also doubles as a community blog, personal blog, or whatever you shall use it for. Premium features, dozens of custom functions, several custom widgets, solid, intuitive look and feel, along with dozens of theme options, shortcodes and so much more make this theme a must-have in your collection! If you have been looking for the spark to ignite your plain old blog into a popular magazine, you have found it.

Installing Revolution Magazine

Revolution Magazine comes ready out of the box with no additional plug-ins required making the installation process quick and easy, allowing you to add content and customize it the way you want it right away!

  1. Extract everything from the revolution.zip ZIP file to your desktop.
  2. Go into the Theme Files folder, and then again into the version folder (e.g. v1.0).
  3. Copy the revolution folder directly into the themes folder in the WordPress installation on your server.
  4. (Optional) Copy the wp-pagenavi folder directly into the plugins folder in the WordPress installation on your server.
  5. Activate the theme in Themes under the Appearance tab.
  6. (Optional) Activate the plugin in Plugins under the Appearance tab.
  7. Add widgets to the sidebar and footer. You can try adding custom Revolution Magazine widgets, although they will be explained later on.
  8. Add categories to upload posts into.
  9. Go into Media under the Settings tab, and change the default media sizes to fit the post container.
    • Large size – set the width to 580px or lower, and the height to whatever you would like
    • Medium size – set the width to less than the large size (e.g. 300px) and the height to whatever you would like
    • Thumbnail size – set the width and height to whatever you would like (e.g. 180px by 180px)
  10. Add any necessary pages, links, and upload media files such as images and videos.
  11. Go into Discussion under the Settings tab, and tick the check box that says Enable threaded (nested) comments. You may also change the number of levels of threading allowed, but for best results, keep it around 5.
  12. Go into Permalinks under the Settings tab, select Custom Structure and type in /%category%/%postname%/.
  13. Customize your personal profile by adding your first and last name, nicknames, adjust any social information and add a bio description, as this will be displayed on single post pages.
  14. Enjoy the theme and remember to stay connected by following me on Theme Forest and Twitter.

Managing the Navigation

Since the release of WordPress 3.0, a new menu system has been implemented which can be found in Menus under the Appearance tab. Revolution Magazine takes full advantage of this feature, allowing you to display anything you want. From categories to pages to links to posts, and even descriptions and drop-down menus for those items — you can have it all, displayed stylishly.

  1. Add categories, pages and posts and make sure to add posts to those categories.
  2. Go into Menus under the Appearance tab.
  3. In the right-hand corner of your screen, click on Screen Options and check the boxes next to CSS Classes and Description. This will display additional options in the menu items you will add next.
  4. Add a new menu called “Navigation” (without the quotes).
  5. From the left-hand column, add any items you would like to the container on the right.
    • To add a description to one of the items, simply click on the drop-down arrow and add a short phrase to the description box. This description will appear under the menu item in the actual navigation on your site.
    • To add a link to home, simply add a custom link pointing to your home page. You can then add “home” (without the quotes) to the CSS classes box to give the link a special Home icon.
  6. Select “Primary Navigation” from the left-hand column’s Theme Location box and click Save Menu.
  7. Congratulations! You have set up your new theme’s navigation. Now wasn’t that easy?

Plugins

Revolution Magazine is ready to go right out of the box, but as a demand in the past, the popular WP-PageNavi plugin has been included with the download for your convenience. It is fully styled and functional — you just need to make some tiny changes to the output to take advantage of the theme’s styling.

  1. Activate the WP-PageNavi plug-in in the Plug-ins page.
  2. Go to PageNavi under the Settings tab.
  3. Wrap each output (except the first one) in span tags. This is important — otherwise the output will look broken.
  4. Un-check the box saying “Use wp-pagenavi.css file”. This is important — otherwise the output will look broken.

Widgets

Revolution Magazine offers several custom widgets such as the Feed and Twitter Counter, Navigation Tabbed Widget, Community Tabbed Widget and even a simplified advertisement space. All custom widgets are prefixed with “RM” allowing you to easily distinguish them from other widgets that may have similar names.

Feed and Twitter Counter Widget

This widget will display the number of RSS subscribers and Twitter followers in a neat and stylish way in your sidebar. All you have to do is input the name of your feed (your Feedburner “name”, not the full address) and your Twitter username.

Navigation Tabbed Widget

This widget is very straightforward. It allows you to choose which tabs you would like to display, and inside each tab you will get a full list of either categories, archives (by month) and pages.

Community Tabbed Widget

This widget allows you to display recent posts (you can enter how many posts you would like to be displayed) and a Flickr feed. For the Flickr feed to work, you need to input your Flickr Photostream RSS ID number that shows up in the address bar that looks like this 32966415@N00 in the Theme Options page, under the General tab.

Simple Advertising Widget

This isn’t actually a custom widget but you can easily make it into one by placing the following code in a Text widget and adding URL’s to your own ads.

<div id="ads">
<ul>
<li class="wide"><a href="your URL here">Wide ad image here</a></li>
<li><a href="your URL here">Ad image here</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

Adding Posts and Pages

Adding posts and pages is pretty straightforward as there aren’t any special directions you have to follow as it’s all stuff you should be used to if you have used other themes in the past.

Post Thumbnails

To add an thumbnail to a post, you can do one of three things: 1) Set a “Featured Image” (introduced in WordPress 2.9), 2) Add an image to the post which will be automatically pulled from the post and resized to match the dimensions you set in the Theme Options, or 3) Add a URL in the Post Image meta box on the “Add a Post” page which will take priority over the content-pulled image but not over the Featured Image.

Page Templates

Two page templates are included with Revolution Magazine; one is a full-width page without the sidebar and the other is a page with a contact form. To use either of these templates, on the “Add a Page” page, select either one from the Template drop-down menu and your layout will be changed accordingly. The contact form automatically uses the e-mail address you registered with our blog so there is no need to enter any information in — it’s ready to go out of the box!

Theme Settings

There are four tabs in the Theme Settings (or Theme Options, both are the same thing) page under the Appearance tab, each for its own topic. Each option has a thorough description of what it does, so there is no need to go into detail about what each does. The Theme Options were made to increase the usability and ease of changing options while keeping unnecessary, redundant options out to make it that much easier for you to customize, unlike some themes which include an option to modify every single possible aspect, making your life hectic. The strong code of the theme will act as an option to build upon, if you have the knowledge to do so, and the clean, structured design will allow you to leave it the way it is with no customizations.

Most, if not all, options have fall-backs or default values that they will revert to in case you enter in a ridiculous value or no value at all.

Credits

The following resources were used in the production of this theme:

Conclusion

If you have been looking for a clean, light-weight, modern magazine theme that isn’t loaded with unnecessary features that drag it down while maintaining an open and customizable look and feel to it, you have found the right product. You can buy it on ThemeForest and get started right away. If you ever need any support and have questions about the product before you buy, please contact me through my ThemeForest profile or through the contact form found on this live preview.

Proud designer and developer of Revolution Magazine,

Alex Pascal