Voice Documentation

Welcome to the Voice WordPress theme documentation by Meks.

If you're having an issue and can't find the answer here, please contact us via contact form on MeksHQ.com and we will try to answer as soon as possible. Also, feel free to suggest any new features you may want in this theme and we will consider adding it for the next update(s). Once you have purchased this theme you would have full access to all upcoming theme updates.

We have put a lot of effort into making every piece of this theme right in place. Please don't forget to rate Voice theme on ThemeForest if you like it.

Cheers,
Meks Team

Important note:
Documentation is related to this particular theme and explains how to setup and use most of its specific options and features. It does NOT explain how to use WordPress. If you are not familiar with using WordPress itself, we warmly recommend you to first visit and learn from Official WordPress Codex .

Extract the zipped package downloaded from ThemeForest to your desktop, in the extracted package you will find voice.zip file which is installable WordPress theme.

You can install the theme in two different ways:

1. WordPress theme uploader

Navigate to Appearance -> Themes page to access theme uploader screen and use voice.zip file.

2. FTP

Extract voice.zip file and upload the extracted voice folder to /wp-content/themes/ folder on your server. If you are not familiar with FTP method, you will have to use some of FTP software, for example FileZilla.

After uploading the theme, you have to activate it. Navigate to Appearance -> Themes page to activate the theme.

How to do Voice theme update without loosing any data?

1. Automatic

• Navigate to Theme Options -> Updater and specify your ThemeForest username and API key
• Once the new update is available, you will be notified via Dashboard -> Updates screen alongside other installed themes and plugins. And you just update Voice with a single click.

2. Manual

• Download the latest package from ThemeForest and extract it
• Find "voice" folder inside the package
• Use FTP to overwrite current theme folder on your server with new one

3. Re-Install

If something goes wrong during an update, don't panic. You can always do the following without losing any data and settings:

• Deactivate and delete currently installed Voice theme
• Install the latest version again

Voice comes with several plugins which will extend the theme basic functionality. They are not required but we warmly recommend you to use them if you want to make the most of the theme features. Go to Appearance -> Voice Plugins to install and activate plugins.

All the plugins are hosted on official WordPress repository so you will have access to all upcoming updates, they are 100% free and you can use it on other themes as well.

• Regenerate Thumbnails This plugin will help you a lot when you are switching to a new WordPress theme and you already have a website with existing content. You should actually use it for any new theme. You just need to run this plugin once and it will (re)generate all your uploaded image sizes to match your new theme layout. That way your theme will use proper and optimized image sizes and it will improve website performance significantly.
• Contact Form 7 This plugin is one of the most popular WordPress plugins, you can use it to create simple or complex contact forms with many powerful settings and features.
• Entry Views With this great plugin you will get support to track number of views for each post. That way you can display number of post views or use option to sort/order posts by its number of views.
• Other Other plugin's features and functionality are described in more details in Shortcodes and Widgets sections of this documentation.

For a quick and easy setup, there is a demo content XML file included in the package so you can get the content similar to our demo website as a good starting point. We suggest you to use it because this way you will have some good setup overview before you start with your own setup.

• Find demo content XML file voice_demo_content.xml located inside the package you have downloaded form ThemeForest.

• Go to Tools -> Import. Then at the bottom of the page, click to install WordPress importer and then upload voice_demo_content.xml via this tool.

If you are not building your website from scratch and you have some existing content and images on your current website, you should keep in mind that each particular theme has its own image sizes to fit its specific design.

So, after you switch to Voice theme, we warmly recommend you to install and once run Regenerate Thumbnail WordPress plugin (described already in plugins section of this documentation). It will regenerate all your previously uploaded images to use the most optimized sizes for this theme.

Voice uses standard WordPress menu system for navigation. In order to setup top navigation menu, go to Appearance -> Menus.

You simply need to create your menu and drag and drop pages you want to show. After menu is created, you need to assign this menu to a specific theme location. Voice theme provides five different theme locations to assign your menus:

• Main Navigation This is your main menu navigation.
• Top Navigation This is secondary menu you can optionally use in header top bar.
• Social Menu This is a menu where you should put links to your social profiles. Note that you just need to specify custom link to your social page i.e. http://facebook.com/link-to-your-page and the Facebook icon will be automatically displayed.
• Footer Menu Another secondary menu you can use in footer/copyright area at the bottom of your website.
• 404 Menu Optionally, you can specify another menu to be displayed on your 404 page and point visitors to some useful resources on the website.

Below is an example of simple menu assigned to Main Navigation:

Mega Menus

This theme also provides functionality for so called "Mega Menus" with which you can get different behavior and style than standard drop-down menu.

1. Category Mega Menu Below is an example of using category link as mega menu. This means that it will load your category posts in drop-down area.

2. Classic Mega Menu Below is an example of using classic mega menu. Basically, you setup this many the same as standard third-level menu but sub-items will be displayed all at once in one big drop-down area.

If you are not familiar with using WordPress menus and its basic setup, there is a great user guide on the official WordPress Codex: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Menu_User_Guide

Voice theme provides plenty of options divided into several sections. In the list below, we will just give you some good overview. Almost every specific option is described inline in the Theme Options admin panel.

• General Here you can find the options which apply to your website globally.
• Header Styling Style and manage your header/navigation area, upload your logo, etc...
• Content Styling Style your main content area (posts, pages, etc...).
• Sidebar Styling These are options to style your sidebar and widget areas.
• Footer Styling Style and manage options for your footer/copyright area.
• Post Layouts These are global options for all layouts you can use inside this theme.
• Single Post These are options which will apply to your single post templates.
• Page Templates These are options which will apply to all your pages.
• Category Templates These are options which will apply to your category archives.
• Tag Templates These are options which will apply to your tag archives.
• Author Templates These are options which will apply to your author archives.
• Search Template These are options which will apply to your search results.
• Post Page Template This options will apply if you use some page as "posts page".
• Archive Templates Options for other archives on the website, such as date archive, etc...
• Miscellaneous Some additional bunch of "not important" options.
• Typography Here you can customize your fonts as well as some text options.
• Translation Easy to use translation panel. Here you can quickly change or translate all the text which displays on the front-end of the theme.
• Updater Connect your theme with ThemeForest API so you can enable "one click" updates for this theme.
• Import/Export Nice tool where you can save and backup all your theme options. It can be very useful if you want to copy and import your option settings to another site which is using same theme, i.e when moving your site from localhost to live server.

Voice provides several layouts you can connect to various archive templates and modules across the website. To manage global display options for your post layouts, go to Theme Options -> Main Layouts section.

Featured Area Layouts

Every category template as well as modules page may have featured posts area. There are 3 different layouts provided:

• Big Post + Slider One big post and post slider/carousel below.
• Big Post One big post only, or slider with big posts without carousel below.
• Slider Without big post, only post slider/carousel.

Main Post Layouts (A,B,C,D,E,F,G)

These are 7 main post listing layouts which you can choose from to connect to templates/modules on the website.

Combining Layouts (using "starter" posts)

One of the coolest features is that you can combine two layouts on the same template/module using so called "starter" posts. In an example below, all posts are displayed in Layout D, except first two posts (starter posts) which are displayed in Layout C.

Voice theme provides great possibilities using our Modules page template.

Step 1

In order to create Home Page, first go to Pages -> Add New and create another page. Under template setting, choose "Modules" template. If you have inserted our demo content, example Home page will be added already so you can skip this step.

Step 2

Go to Settings -> Reading and select "Front page displays a static page" option. Then choose your home page from page selection below.

Step 3

Ok, home page is set and now you can play with its content. Go back to your home page edit screen and check for two additional boxes.

• Featured Area / Slider This is the area where you can manage featured area on the home page.
• Modules This is the area where you can manage your post modules on home page. You can add as many as you want with many different options provided.

Good thing with Modules Template is that it may not be used only for your home page. If you want to be creative, you can make additional module pages with their own list of modules, displaying posts in different layouts and different criteria than on home page.

Besides common stuff, Voice provides some cool page features and customization which are described below. Go Theme Options -> Page Templates to manage global settings for page sidebar and layout. More about sidebars is described in Sidebars sections of this documentation.

After you are finished with global page options, you can go to Pages -> Add New.

You can then set specific sidebar for each page. You can inherit from global page settings (as default) or specify layout and sidebars for particular page only.

Voice provides all common WordPress post features and functionality, as well as some more cool features and customization which are described below.

Post Options

First go to Theme Options -> Single Post section to manage default settings for your posts.

After setting default options for all posts you can go and edit each particular post separately.

Post Sidebar

Just as for each page, you can set specific sidebar for each post.

Post Formats

This theme also provides support for several built-in post formats, introduced since WordPress version 3.1.

All the posts by default have "Standard" format and it will probably be enough to run classic WordPress blog for most of the users, because it actually supports all the WordPress common features. For something more specific, there are couple of variations.

The best way to learn how to use post formats with this theme is by checking posts in our demo content, but here is a quick guide for each one.

Audio Post

Audio post usually have audio url or embed code at the beginning of your content.

Gallery Post

Gallery post usually have gallery at the beggining of your content. You can add some more content bellow created gallery.

Image Post

Image post consist of featured image only. You can use content editor to add more content if you want.

Video Post

Video post usually have video url or embed code at the beggining of your content. You can add some more content bellow video.

Paginated/Multi-Page Post

This is also a cool WordPress feature which Voice theme supports. You can split your post content into multiple pages with <!--nextpage--> tag and use it as so called "paginated" post with stylish previous/next pagination.

Standard Post - wrapping up

All these format features previously described are of course supported in standard post format as well. So if you want to show mixture of galleries, videos, audios, content, etc... in one single post, you will probably want to use standard post format.

Note:
These were only a few examples of inserting content into your website. If you want to learn more about WordPress embedding features, we suggest you to visit WordPress Embeds Page . Also, if you are a beginner and not sure how to create or edit posts and use its default features, we suggest you to check and learn from Official WordPress Codex.

Voice provide some cool features for categories. Each category may have its own different featured area, sidebar, post layout and color. It can be quite interesting if you want to give some accent and style to each category on your website, feel free to be creative.

To create or edit categories, go to Posts -> Categories screen and follow provided options. Below is example of properly created category with most of the features used.

Voice theme allows you to use unlimited number of sidebars. Go to Theme Options -> General and find sidebar option as shown on image below.

By default you will have 5 predefined and 5 additional sidebars you can assign to each post, page or category, but if you need more you can just raise the value in additional sidebars field.

• Default Sidebar This is predefined sidebar which will be displayed on all templates by default, unless you want to do some specific changes.
• Sticky Sidebar This is predefined sticky sidebar which will be displayed on all templates by default.
• Sidebar 1,2,3,4,5 Five additional sidebars generated by default value from theme options.
• Footer Column 1,2,3 These are predefined sidebars to use in footer area. Each one of them represents one footer column respectively.

After saving theme options and when you go to Appearance -> Widgets you will see all predefined and custom sidebars ready for use.

Standard VS Sticky

One of the coolest features of this theme are sticky sidebars. Basically, each template allows you to optionally use 2 sidebars, which means you can use only standard sidebar, only sticky sidebar, or combine these two one below another.

"Sticky" means that widgets inside this sidebar will always be visible while scrolling to your website content. This can be very useful when you want to point out some important content on your website, for example, advertisements, newsletter forms, social networks, etc... Sticky sidebars may improve user engagement and conversion significantly.

Finally, while you are creating post, page or category, you will be able to pick any of these sidebars in two areas (standard and sticky) as shown on image below.

Besides standard WordPress widgets, Voice theme provides several additional custom made widgets. Widgets that are built-in into this theme have Voice prefix and widgets added via our plugins have Meks prefix.

To manage widgets, go to Appearance -> Widgets as shown on image below.

Built in widgets:

• Voice Posts Display your posts in a stylish way, similar to standard WordPress post widget but with more options provided.

• Voice Adsense Widget If you are using Google Adsense, you can put your ad-sense script inside this widget. Actually, not only Google Adsense, you can put any JavaScript related advertising service here.

• Voice Video You can easily display YouTube or Vimeo videos with this widget.

Added via Meks plugins:

• Meks Easy Ads Widget Great solution if you are using advertisement on your website.

• Meks Smart Social Widget You can use this widget to display social icons.

• Meks Smart Author Widget Use this widget to display your user/author profile info.

• Meks Simple Flickr Widget You can display your flicker photo-stream with this widget.

• Meks Smart ThemeForest Widget You can display your or other users ThemeForest items here, with affiliate links as well.

Voice theme provides full support for our Meks Shortcodes plugin.

You need to install and activate our shortcodes plugin, as described in Plugins section of this documentation. Then, while you are in page/post admin, set your content editor to visual mode, and click Meks Shortcodes button in order to open shortcodes screen.

Below is a quick explanation and usage example for every shortcode we provide.

• Columns You can use this shortcode to split your content into columns and point out some important parts of your page content. They can be used in conjunction with any other shortcodes. You can write any content or insert any shortcode between column tags.

  Usage example:

  [mks_col]
  [mks_one_half] Left content goes here [/mks_one_half]
  [mks_one_half] Right content goes here [/mks_one_half]
  [/mks_col]

• Separators These are simple horizontal line elements which you may use to divide some areas within your page content. Several styling options are provided.

  Usage example:

  [mks_separator style="solid" height="2"]

• Buttons Basically, these are links with button style. You can target any URL here.

  Usage example:

  [mks_button size="large" title="More about us" style="squared" url="http://mekshq.com" target="_self" bg_color="#000000" txt_color="#FFFFFF" icon="fa-road"]

• Dropcaps Dropcaps are mostly used to make big first letter of specific sentence.

  Usage example:

  [mks_dropcap style="letter" size="52" bg_color="#ffffff" txt_color="#000000"]A[/mks_dropcap] smart theme SeaShell is.

• Highlights You can add colored background to some part of the text with this shortcode.

  Usage example:

  I can't wait to see how [mks_highlight color="#dd3333"]awesome[/mks_highlight] SeaShell theme is.

• Pull Quotes Stylish boxes usually used to point out some important notes.

  Usage example:

  [mks_pullquote align="left" width="300" size="24" bg_color="#000000" txt_color="#ffffff"]He who dares wins![/mks_pullquote]

• Icons Add some icons inside page/post content with this shortcode to make the content more interesting.

  Usage example:

  [mks_icon icon="fa-star-o" color="#000000"] Five stars for this theme!

• Social Icons Add your social icons inside page/post content with this shortcode.

  Usage example:

  Follow me: [mks_social icon="facebook" size="48" style="square" url="http://facebook.com/mekshq" target="_blank"]

• Progress Bars Progress bars are usually used to graphically display some of your skills or some analysis.

  Usage example:

  [mks_progressbar name="WordPress" level="Pro" value="80" height="20" color="#000000" style="squared"]

• Tabs With this shortcode you can wrap some part of your content to be displayed as tabs.

  Usage example:

  [mks_tabs nav="horizontal"]
  [mks_tab_item title="Title 1"]
  	Example content 1
  [/mks_tab_item]
  [mks_tab_item title="Title 2"]
  	Example content 2
  [/mks_tab_item]
  [mks_tab_item title="Title 3"]
  	Example content 3
  [/mks_tab_item]
  [/mks_tabs]

• Toggles Use toggles shortcode if you want to display some content in show/hide manner.

  Usage example:

  [mks_toggle title="Example Title" state="open"]Toggle content goes here...[/mks_toggle]

• Accordions Accordions shortcode is similar to toggle, it is like group of connected toggles.

  Usage example:

  [mks_accordion]
  [mks_accordion_item title="Title 1"]
  Example content 1
  [/mks_accordion_item]
  [mks_accordion_item title="Title 2"]
  Example content 2
  [/mks_accordion_item]
  [mks_accordion_item title="Title 3"]
  Example content 3
  [/mks_accordion_item]
  [/mks_accordion]

This theme also provides ability to use shortcodes in widgets. You can use standard WordPress Text Widget and paste any shortcode into the text field of the widget.

How to get rid of "Category" word?

This can be easily done via Theme Options -> Translation section. For "Category" string just as for any other string, you can put "-1" inside translation field and it will remove the text entirely.

How to display author/user avatar

WordPress fetches this avatar automatically from your Gravatar.com profile which is WordPress default service for avatars. This avatar will be shown on your author widget as well as on some other places for example inside comments section.

• Solution 1: Go and register to Gravatar.com with the same email you are using for specific user on your website and that's it.

• Solution 2: You can use some plugin which will allow you to upload your custom image instead of registering to gravatar.com. For example: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-user-avatar/

What is the best size for my images?

Voice theme will automatically generate all image sizes to fit each layout you choose to display. The only thing you should keep in mind is that images shoudn't be too small to show them on particular areas. That way we can properly generate an image size for each of the layouts. Don't worry about larger images as theme will resize theme properly, just avoid to upload small ones.

My navigation won't save its settings

That's most probably because you haven't installed the theme properly. Common mistake is that you copy/install entire package you have downloaded from ThemeForest, please make sure that you use proper file/folder.

Extract the package downloaded from ThemeForest and find the file called voice.zip which is our WordPress theme main file.

Why my posts shared on Facebook and other social networks do not display proper images?

Facebook and other social networks sometimes randomly decide which image to choose from current page if it is not striclty stated within the code. This is something we shouldn't control control via themes but there are some good plugins which may help you to specify what images exaclty will be displayed when posts are shared.

• WordPress SEO by Yoast - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
• WPSSO - https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpsso/

How to do theme update without loosing any data?

1. Automatic

• Navigate to Theme Options -> Updater and specify your ThemeForest username and API key
• Once the new update is available, you will be notified via Dashboard -> Updates screen alongside other installed themes and plugins. And you just update Voice with a single click.

2. Manual

• Download the latest package from ThemeForest and extract it
• Find "voice" folder inside the package
• Use FTP to overwrite current theme folder on your server with new one

3. Re-Install

If something goes wrong during an update, don't panic. You can always do the following without losing any data and settings:

• Deactivate and delete currently installed Voice theme
• Install the latest version again

Why do I get 404 error for some of my posts/pages?

That's because WordPress website usually needs re-save of your permalink structure when you transfer the website. In admin panel, go to Settings -> Permalinks and just save settings again.

Version 1.1

• Added: Color option for website title if logo is not used (Theme Options -> Header Styling)
• Added: Option to automatically select posts from child categories if parent category is selected (in Modules Template)
• Added: Options to use meta data in Voice posts widget (date/time, comments, author, etc...)
• Added: Options to display post reading time in meta data list (Theme Options -> Post Layouts and Single Post)
• Added: RSS and email icons (for Social Menu)
• Added: Option to move navigation links for paginated post below content (Theme Options -> Single Post)
• Improved: Post gallery - Now images can be navigated in pop-up mode and it will aslo display image captions
• Improved: Smarter Sticky Header (better experience on devices with small screen / hide on scroll down and show on scroll up)
• Improved: CSS styling/crossbrowser/responsive tweaks for minor issues
• Improved: Sliders in RTL mode
• Fixed: Category link on/off not working on Layout G
• Fixed: Sticky sidebar option for posts and pages not working in some cases
• Fixed: Manual post pick option not working in modules in some cases

Version 1.0

• Initial release

We would like to say big thanks to great people for their products which help us in our theme development!

JavaScript

• FitVids - http://fitvidsjs.com
• Magnific Popup - http://dimsemenov.com/plugins/magnific-popup
• Match Height - http://brm.io/jquery-match-height
• Bootstrap Affix - http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#affix
• Owl Carousel - http://www.owlcarousel.owlgraphic.com
• ImagesLoaded - http://plugins.jquery.com/imagesloaded
• Sidr - https://github.com/artberri/sidr
• HTML5 Shiv - https://github.com/aFarkas/html5shiv

PHP

• Redux Options Framework - http://reduxframework.com
• TGM Plugin Activation - http://tgmpluginactivation.com
• Pixelentity Theme Update Class - http://pixelentity.com
• Hybrid Media Grabber - http://themehybrid.com/hybrid-core

Icons

• Font Awesome - http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome

Images

All images used on demo website are purchased from ShutterStock and downloaded from Unsplash and they are all credited to their respective creator/owner. These images are not included in theme package.