Boldy Theme Help: WordPress Tips & Tricks How-To

Frustrated by the  Site5 Boldy WordPress theme and need some help? This post was created after installing Boldy theme on a couple of client sites and devising a simple tutorial for future installations.

UPDATE: Site5 Released an Updated Version of the Boldy Theme in October 2012. They’ve improved the way you add slider images and set up the homepage. Download the update here

The Boldy theme is a beautiful, classic theme that can be used for the simplest websites, yet provide a professional front for any sized business. The great things about the Boldy theme are it’s built-in slider, simple layout and clean look. The downside to the Boldy WordPress theme is the lack of good, thorough documentation for using it.

Dennis Lambing wrote a post about the Boldy WordPress theme in 2010 that gave me the courage and know-how to make modifications to the Boldy theme. Because of that post, I was able to set up a site within a couple of hours. I highly recommend you read that post and the comments for things not covered here.

So I would be able to remember what I did the next time I use this theme, I decided to take the Boldy theme set-up step by step and create a How-To. Below are the steps needed to set up the Boldy theme and the order in which they should be done.

You’ll want to have Notepad open when you start because you’ll be copying links to the Boldy theme Options panel. This is much easier than jumping back and forth between your pages.

This tutorial assumes that you know how to upload a theme to WordPress. It also assumes you have Photoshop, Gimp or at least a photo editor like Irfanview, because the image sizes used on the homepage are very specific.

Before You Upload the Boldy WordPress Theme

The Boldy Theme Needs a Logo

• If you want something fancier than a plain text logo in blue, make a transparent png logo or jpg with #F0F0F0 background that is no more than 291 x 86.
• Upload it to Media and save the link in notepad. (Link 1)
• The plain text logo is pulled from your Site Title under Settings > General

Size Your Images

• Make 3 images that are 239 x 99 for the 3 boxes on the homepage. You must have three boxes – or nothing will show up there.
• Make your slider images exactly 960 x 370 wide.
• For other interior pages, images should be 650px wide or less to prevent overspill into the sidebar.

Boldy Theme WordPress Settings

•  In Settings>Reading, make sure that your front page is set to ‘Your Latest Posts.’
•  In Settings > Permalinks, change your structure to Custom Structure and enter /%postname% into the box. Save Changes.

Upload the Boldy WordPress theme… or wait until your content is in place. Either way is fine.

Setting Up Your Site Content

Create 3 Pages for Just the Homepage Boxes

Build 3 separate pages that only have the content you want included in the 3 bottom boxes on the homepage. These 3 boxes look like ‘excerpts’ except that they’re not. The Boldy WordPress theme doesn’t automatically create these excerpts; you create them on a separate page for each one. Name your homepage box pages differently than the full-content pages they will link to; otherwise you will become extremely confused (believe me.) The page name will show up as the title of the box.

1. Upload an image that is 239 x 99 to fit in the box. Center the image.
2. Add your text below it.
3. Do this for all 3 Homepage Box pages, each on a separate page.
4. No need to add ‘Read More’ links. Boldy does that for you.

Create 3 Other Pages the Homepage Boxes Will Link To

1. Build 3 more pages that the 3 boxes will link to that have the full content of the page on them..
2. Save the full links in notepad and label them Box 1, Box 2, Box 3. (Link 2, 3, 4)

Build a Page called Slider Images

1. Insert images on the page that are exactly 960 x 370 wide. Just add them one on top of another. The theme will parse them out.

• If you want the black transparency to show up with text on the slider images, you’ll need to add your text to the ‘title’ section when you upload or change it on the HTML screen after uploading.
• If you don’t want text on the slider images, go into the HTML view and delete the name from the title=”xxx” (ex: your image title would be “xxx”.) You can’t delete the title when you upload the images, as WP requires it.
•  If you want the images to link to a page, change the File URL to that page when you upload them. Difficult to do if you haven’t created those pages yet. So either wait on this page or go back to this page and change the a href = “URL” in the HTML view when you’ve finished adding pages.

Build a page called Contact Us.

• Do not put anything in the page because nothing will show up. Just title it Contact Us and choose the ‘Contact’ template from the right sidebar.
• The Boldy theme Options panel has space to add text for the Contact page, like address and phone. You’ll write whatever you’d like to show up above your contact form into the Boldy Options panel.

Create a Category for Portfolio and Blog

• If you’re including a blog, create a default ‘Blog’ category under Posts> Categories.
• If you’re including a Portfolio page, create a default blog category called ‘Portfolio’ under Posts > Categories.

Build out your other pages

• You must choose the template type in the right sidebar. Default is used for regular pages.
• Do not build a ‘Home’ page – Boldy automatically pulls the slider images and Homepage Box content from your other pages to make the homepage.
• See the Create a Custom Menu section below for instructions on getting a Home link into the top menu.

Create a Portfolio page

• A Portfolio page will show images and excerpts pulled from posts in the category ‘Portfolio’. Create your posts and choose the Portfolio category to get them to show up here.
• Be sure to choose the Featured Image so the Boldy WordPress theme knows where to get the images for the Portfolio.

Create a Blog page

• A blog page will show 3 posts per page that are automatically pulled in from your posts by Boldy. Categories will become the subheadings under the top level menu item ‘Blog.’
• Create your posts, using the category ‘Blog’

Create a Custom Menu for the Boldy Theme Top Navigation

1. Go to Appearance > Menus and create a new Custom Menu for your top navigation called ‘topmenu’. Click on ‘Create Menu’.
2. Once that’s saved, choose it from the Theme Locations dropdown, click Save and then click the other Save Menu button.
3. Add the pages you want to show up in the top nav into the Custom Menu.
4. In custom links, create a ‘Home’ link using the direct URL to your site; otherwise none will be visible. (The logo will be clickable back to the home page.)
5. Then Save Menu again when you’ve done this.

Ok, now you’re ready to change the Boldy Options to suit you.

Use the Site5 instructions to see the Boldy WordPress theme Options menu. A couple of notes:

‘Cufon Font Replacement’ is what makes the headers and subheaders blue and special. If you choose ‘no’, your headers will revert to black bold Arial.

The Request Quote link page quirk: The Boldy theme doesn’t give you the option to place a modified contact form on any page. If you use the Contact template for your Request Quote Page, the same blurb you entered into the Contact Page Text box in the Options panel will show up. You’ll need to add another contact form plugin to create a more detailed quote page with a contact form. Fast Secure Contact Form works with this theme. Others may as well.

Boldy WordPress theme SEO: Unfortunately, your homepage will not have an H1 tag on it. Your interior pages will show the page title as an H1. Do yourself a big favor and add subheads on your pages and label them H2. And do yourself a bigger favor and install Yoast’s SEO plugin.

And yet there’s more…

Sidebar widgets
Go to Appearance > widgets to change the sidebar contents. In the sample site shown above, a Text widget with links to the pages was used instead of WordPress’ Pages widget.

Changing the incredible speed of the slider images

• The slider settings are found in the home.php file. Modify with care.
• Go to Appearance > Editor and find home.php near the bottom of the right sidebar.
• Scroll to the bottom of that file and look for <!– SLIDER SETTINGS –> . You want to change pauseTime:3000, to pauseTime:5000, to slow it down.
•  If you’re familiar with the Nivo slider, you can change out the type of  effect here, as well. If you’re not familiar with it and want to mess around, be sure to save a copy of the original home.php file in case you blow it.

Getting rid of the Site5 ‘Wordpress Hosting’ link in the footer

• Go to Appearance > Editor and find footer.php.
• Scroll to the bottom and delete everything between <div id=”site5bottom”>……and…….</div>

Modifying the Request Quote button

• You’ll need a button graphic in a png file type sized 202 x 50 to replace the original button. Name it ‘but_blurg.png’.
• This will need to be uploaded to your hosting backend to the wp/content/themes/boldy/images file to replace the original but_blurb.png file.

That’s enough of the Boldy WordPress theme for now.