Welcome!
Welcome to the School Center theme’s documentation page!
This documentation talks about how you can install the theme on your WordPress site, how to customize the theme to suit your needs and a couple of other things that you’ll need to know to get going.
Recommended Server Requirements
Although having WordPress installed in your server is enough to install the theme, we recommend that your server meets the following versions:
- PHP version 7.0 or greater.
- WordPress version 5.1 or greater
Installing The Theme
Installing the theme is quite straightforward.
Download and save the ZIP file containing all the theme files. We’ll be using it later on.
Step 1. Go to your WordPress dashboard and head over to Appearance > Themes.
Step 2. Inside Themes, click on Add New (plus icon).
Step 3. Click on Upload Theme located near the top right.
Step 4. It will then ask you to choose the ZIP file for the theme. Navigate to and select the ZIP file for the School Center theme that you downloaded earlier. Once done, click on Install Now.
Step 5. Click on the Activate button after the theme installation finishes.
That’s pretty much it! Reload your website to see the gorgeous theme in action!
Installing Recommended Plugins
School Center Theme requires two essential plugins to be installed for some components to work: Contact Form 7 for contact forms and Regenerate Thumbnails for image resizing.
To install the plugins, follow the following steps:
Step 1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard. Head over to Plugins > Installed Plugins.
Step 2. On the top it displays a notice, asking you to install the recommended plugins. Click on Begin Installing Plugins.
Step 3. Select all the plugins and choose Install from the dropdown menu. Hit Apply.
Step 4. Head over to the Installed Plugins page once again. Select all the plugins, choose ‘Activate’ in the dropdown, and click on Apply as shown below.
That’s it. The plugins are now installed, activated, and ready to use. You’re all set!
Configuring The Theme
Now that you have the theme successfully installed, time to tweak the customization settings to make it your own!
As with all the other themes from GLThemes, the School Center theme comes with tons of customization features to truly give you full control over the look of your website.
We’ll be exploring various customization options available in the theme’s customizer in this section.
Site Identity Options
While inside the customizer, navigate to Site Identity to edit settings such as Header title and tagline, add an (optional) logo, and add site icon (optional).
Inside Site Identity, you can add a logo via the Select Logo option, change your site’s title in the Site Title option, change the tagline in the Tagline option, and add a site icon in the Select Site Icon option.
You’ll be able to see the live preview as you edit the options.
Change Basic Appearance Settings
You can change the basic appearance of your website through the Appearance Settings option inside the customizer as shown below.
While inside the Appearance Settings option, you can change the Colors and Background Image in their respective settings.
Change Website Colors
While inside Appearance Settings, go to Colors.
Available Color Options:
- Background Color: The color of the hindmost background. Color changed for visibility. Default is #FFFFFF(white).
Change Background Image
You can add or change the background image of the whole website through Background Image settings inside Appearance Settings. By default, no background image is set.
Click on Select Image and upload the image file to the uploader. After uploading the image, you can choose variously Preset to change how the background image displays.
Front Page Settings
The front page is what makes or breaks the first impression of a visitor to your website. In the School Center theme, you’ve given numerous options to tweak and customize various sections of the front page.
The Front Page includes the following sections: Banner Section, Banner Box Section, About Section, Course Feature Section, CTA Section, Featured Courses Section, Video Block Section, and Blog Posts Section.
To start customizing the front page, go to Front Page Settings while inside the customizer.
Inside the Banner Section, you can choose either the Static CTA Banner or disable the banner.
In the Free version, you’re given a single banner option — Static/Video CTA Banner.
You can choose to disable the banner in the Banner Options.
This banner type includes an image or a video as the background banner, banner heading, banner subheading, and Call-To-Action (CTA) buttons.
Customization Options:
- Header Video: You can upload a video to use as the background video for the banner. Alternatively, you can also enter a URL for a YouTube video in the given field.
- Header Image: This is the background image for the banner. Try to use the recommended image size of 1920×760 pixels for best results. Optimized, small-size images are highly suggested because of their impact on site performance.
- Title, Sub Title and Description: Title is the main heading of the banner, Sub Title appears as sub heading at the top while Description is the dwscription for banner and appears at the bottom.
Completely removes the banner section.
This section is where you can add a banner with an image accompanied by a short description. Extremely useful to highlight new offers, courses, or just about anything that you want your visitors to know first and foremost.
Customization Options:
- Enable Banner Box Section: Toggle to enable or disable the section. Disabling will cause the other customization options for this section to be inaccessible.
- Add New Icon Text: This option allows you to add an icon image and a text for the banner. Click on Add New Icon Text button and it should gain you access to the following sub-settings.
Here you can upload an icon image of your choice as well as the title and short description for the banner.
About Section
This section is where you can add a short description of your company with an image.
Customization Options:
- Enable About Us section: Toggle to enable or disable this section.
- Section Title, Subtitle, Description and View Button Options: This is where you can change the title, subtitle and description and description for the About Us section, which will be reflected in the banner. Moreover, you can add a link and a text to the “View More” button to direct your visitors to a relevant link.
- Upload an Image: You can change the image that you want to show in the About Us section from here.
Course Features Section
As a theme for educational websites, we think having a section like “Course Features” really makes it convenient to include relevant information on the homepage for your visitors to see.
Customization Options:
- Enable Course Feature Section: Toggle to enable or disable this section on the front page.
- Section Title and Subtitle: Set or change the title and the subtitle of the course here.
- Add new feature: To add features for your course, click the “Add new feature” button and it should open up a new panel of options like the one below.
You can add an image for the feature, enter a title and a description of the feature you want to include. Here’s an example:
Piece everything together, and the section should typically look like this:
CTA (Call-To-Action) Section
CTA section allows you to include important links and details for your visitors and prompt action from them. This, in turn, helps generate more leads.
Customization Options:
- Enable CTA Section: Toggle to enable or disable this section.
- Section Title, Subtitle, CTA Image, and Button Options: Here you can change or set the section’s title and subtitle, upload a CTA image, and edit the CTA button’s label and link.
This is what a typical CTA Section looks like:
Featured Courses Section
As a theme for educational websites, we think having a section like “Courses” really makes it convenient to include relevant information on the homepage for your visitors to see.
Customization Options:
- Enable Featured Courses Section: Toggle to enable or disable this section on the front page.
- Section Title and Subtitle: Set or change the title and the subtitle of the course here.
- Button Label: Set or change the button level where link is added about the courses.
- Add new course: To add new course, click the “Add new courses” button and it should open up a new panel of options like the one below.
You can add an image for the feature, enter a title and a description of the feature you want to include. Here’s an example:
- Upload an Image: Upload or change the image for the whole banner.
- Title and Description: Add or change title or subtitle of the course you wish to add.
- Link: Add or change link to redirect to the courses. This link will be added in the button.
Piece everything together, and the section should typically look like this:
Video Block Section
Customization Options:
- Enable Video Block Section: Toggle to enable or disable this section.
- Section Title, Content and Video Link: Change the title, description and the video link for the video to use in this section. If you leave the Video Link blank, it will use the default placeholder image background (see the image above).
Blog Posts Section
In this section, your blog posts are displayed.
Customization Settings:
- Enable Blog Section: Toggle to enable or disable this section.
- Section Title, Subtitle and ReadMore text: You can change the heading, subheading and the text for the Read More button here.
And this is what the section looks like, after making all the necessary changes.
General Settings
General Settings comprises settings that allow you to tweak several aspects of the Header, edit Breadcrumb Settings for your website, and a couple of Post-Page settings.
We’ll go through each setting and sub-settings inside the General Settings of the customizer and explain what the setting does, how it impacts your website, and where you can see the changes take place.
Header Settings
Header Settings is where you can change the settings of the header of your website. Most of the settings are mostly preferences and are localized, meaning they don’t majorly impact the whole website.
Available Sub-Settings:
- Enable Search: Toggle to enable or disable the search button in the header.
- Contact Details: You can set or modify the contact details shown on the header through these settings.
- Enable Social Links: Toggle to enable or disable the social link icons and links on the header.
- Social Links: This option is where you can add, remove and customize the social links present on the header. This option is only effective if you have Enable Social Links turned on.
To add a new link, click on the Add new links button.
For this demo, let’s set up 3 social media links for the header — Facebook Link, Twitter Link, and Instagram Link.
For the first link i.e, the Facebook link, choose “facebook” from the Social Media dropdown menu.
Add the link to your Facebook profile in the Link field.
The steps for the other two links are quite similar. Here’s the end result:
Click on Publish and you’ll be able to see the changes in the header.
Post-Page Settings
These settings apply to all the Single Posts on your website, which are generally blog posts.
Available Sub-Settings:
- Hide Author, Posted Date, Post Views: Enable these settings to hide Author name, Date of Publishing, and number of views on your Single Page Posts (blog posts).
This is what the blog post looks like before turning on these settings.
After turning on each of those settings, this is what the same page looks like:
- Related Posts Section Title: You change the Related Posts heading displayed at the end of each blog post by editing this setting.
By default, the text is set to “You might also like”:
Breadcrumb Settings contain a few basic settings for the inner pages/blog posts, that have an effect on the SEO of the website.
Available Sub-Settings:
- Enable Breadcrumb: Toggle to enable or disable breacrumb/directory path inside single posts.
- Breadcrumb Home Text: Allows you to change the text for the “Home” link in the breadcrumb. Requires Breadcrumb to be toggled on.
Configuring Layouts
Layouts are essentially how the components are displayed in a particular section or theme component — their positioning, colors. size, etc.
School Center theme (Free) only comes with layouts for Sidebars. You can always upgrade to the Pro version of the theme for more layout options such as Header, Sliders, Archive, and Pagination.
To start customizing layouts, head over to Layout Settings inside the customizer.
Note: Only Sidebar Layouts are customizable in the free version of the theme.
There are 3 layouts for the Pages in School Center theme. Pages include any page you create through the Admin Panel or the template pages created by us such as Contact Page, Default Page.
We’ll mark each layout numerically from top-right-down as you see on the screenshot above.
- Page Sidebar Layout #1: Sidebar completely disabled.
- Page Sidebar Layout #2: Sidebar on the left side of the page.
- Page Sidebar Layout #3: Sidebar on the right side of the page.
Note: The Page sample used here is the default Privacy Policy page. All of these layouts look the same on any Page.
There are 3 layouts for the Posts in School Center theme. Posts include any Post you create through the Admin Panel which is generally a blog post.
We’ll mark each layout numerically from top-right-down as you see on the screenshot above.
- Post Sidebar Layout #1: Sidebar completely disabled.
- Post Sidebar Layout #2: Sidebar on the left side of the page.
- Post Sidebar Layout #3: Sidebar on the right side of the page.
How To Create A Page in WordPress
Creating pages in WordPress is a simple process. Pages can be fully custom or you can create a page with premade templates.
Follow the steps below to create a simple new page for your website:
Step 1. Log in to your WordPress Admin Panel. Go to the Pages option located in the left sidebar.
Step 2. Click on Add New at the top. You should have a screen that looks like this:
You can add titles, paragraphs, and many other blocks through the editor. For now, let’s create a basic page titled “My First Page” and a dummy text for the paragraph.
Step 3. Click on Publish button located on the righthand sidebar.
That’s pretty much it. We’ve created a page titled “My First Page”.
Here’s what the page looks like:
You can add different blocks, headings, and media files via the + button in the editor.
Set Up and Configure Contact Page
Let’s create a Contact page for your website from a ready-made template that comes with the School Center theme.
Step 1. Create a new page by following the steps described above.
Step 2. While inside the page editor, locate the Template dropdown selector menu on the righthand side, and choose the Contact page.
Step 3. You can configure other settings such as setting the Featured Image for the page. For this demo, we’ll keep the default values. Click on Publish and then click on View Page to visit your newly created page. Here’s what it should look like:
Time to configure the theme!
Step 4. Go to your Customizer and head over to Contact Page Settings to begin customizing your newly created Contact page.
Customization Options:
- Contact Details Section: Here you can change the text for Section Title, Subtitle, Content, Location Title, Description, Mail Title, your email address, Phone Us heading title, your phone number, and details about your hours of operation.
Ensure that the changes are reflected on the Contact Us page by publishing the changes and refreshing the page.
As expected, we can see the changes on the page.
- Google Map Section: You can embed Google Maps of your location via this section. You can always disable this section by toggling the Google Map Settings button off.
To add a new embed for your location, go to Google Maps and enter your location. For this demo, we’ll input the following address: Empire State Building, West 34th Street, New York, NY, USA
Click on the Share button.
And on the Share page, go to the Embed a Map tab. Copy the link shown.
Go back to your Contact Page Settings, and enter the embed code you just copied in the Embedded Google Map field.
Refresh the page to see the changes.
- Contact Form Section: Contact forms are essential components of a Contact page. You can add a contact form to your page by creating and configuring a form in Contact Form 7, which is a plugin we’ll use. If you don’t have the plugin installed, please refer to Installing Recommended Plugins section to learn how to install it.
You can change the form title in the Contact Form Title field. For this demo, we’ll keep it as it is.
To get a shortcode for a form configured in Contact Form 7, follow the steps below:
Note: You must have the Contact Form 7 plugin installed.
Step 1. Go to your WordPress dashboard and go to the Contact page from the sidebar.
Step 2. Click on Add New to add a new contact form. Enter your form title in the given field.
Step 3. You can configure the form as you please, but for now, we’ll use the default template.
Step 4. Configure the Mail settings to make sure the contact form is fully functional and sends mail to the right email address.
You can configure other settings for the form as well. For now, this will do for us. Hit the Save button.
Step 5. Copy the shortcode shown on the top.
Go back to the Contact Us Form settings, and paste the code in the Contact Form Shortcode field as shown below.
Hit Publish and refresh the Contact Us page to see the changes in action.
Recommended Image Sizes
Image sizes can impact the performance of your website, which is why we suggest you use the following sizes for images on the website (in pixels):
- Featured Video Section (1st Post): 648px * 581px
- Featured Video Section (2nd to 5th Post): 317px * 287px
- Featured Posts Section: 718px * 487px
- Latest Post Images (1st and 2nd post): 693px * 464px
- Latest Post Images (3rd to 5th post): 446px * 293px
Further Support
If you have any issues about how to install the theme, set up the pages, or customize the website elements, please submit an inquiry ticket at the Support page. You can also directly mail us at [email protected]
Theme Installation Service
If the theme installation process is a little too technical for you, we offer theme installation services at an extremely affordable price. Check out our Theme Installation service page for more info.
Theme Customization Service
If you want professionals to customize the theme for you, or make internal changes to the theme’s core elements to better suit your liking, our Theme Customization service might just be the right service for you.