Ovation Documentation

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Overview

Ready to get started? Read through the documentation below to learn how to harness the full potential of Ovation and build a stunning website in no time! It will walk you through setting up your site to look like the demo, answer common questions, and provide tips for getting the most out of your theme.

If you have any questions we haven’t covered in this guide or are having trouble getting started, please send us an email through the priority support form.

Installation

If you’re not familiar with the process for installing WordPress themes, please follow the steps in the theme installation guide.

Getting Started

After installing and activating Ovation, you can jump in and begin customizing your site by going to Appearance → Customize in your admin panel to open the customizer.

The customizer allows you to preview changes to your site before publishing. The left side of the screen contains a series of sections and controls to modify various site settings, while the right side displays a real-time preview of your site.

You’ll find options for adding a logo, changing colors, creating custom menus, front-page settings, and more.

Ovation requires WordPress 4.7+

Your site’s title and tagline are displayed in the header area of Ovation by default, but you can easily add to or replace the text with your own logo in the customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Site Identity section to expand it
  3. Upload a new image in the Logo field

You can also update the site title and tagline text, or hide them to display the logo by itself.

If you only want to hide the tagline and not the site title, drop this snippet in the Additional CSS section in the customizer:

.site-description {
	clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);
	height: 1px;
	overflow: hidden;
	position: absolute !important;
	white-space: nowrap;
	width: 1px;
}

Custom Menus provide control over the links that appear in the navigation areas on your site.

Ovation supports two menu locations out of the box: the Header Menu and Social Links Menu. Additional menu locations are also available when using AudioTheme.

You can manage menus by going to Appearance → Customize → Menus.

Header Menu

The Header Menu can appear above or below the header area at the top of your site and supports one level of drop-down links. It may also be fixed to the top of the screen while scrolling.

On smaller screens, the menu is displayed when a visitor clicks the “Menu” button.

Header Menu Position

To change whether the Header Menu displays above or below the header:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Theme Options section to expand it
  3. Click the Layout section to expand it
  4. Under the Site Header Layout setting, drag the “Navigation” item above or below the “Site Identity” item to rearrange them

Header Submenu Style

To change the style of the submenus on the main navigation:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Theme Options section to expand it
  3. Click the Layout section to expand it
  4. Choose one of the Navigation Dropdown Style options

Be sure to hover over the menu items in the preview to see the dropdowns.

The Header Menu scrolls with the page by default, but it’s also possible to make it stick to the top of the screen when scrolling. To enable the sticky navigation:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Theme Options section to expand it
  3. Click the Layout section to expand it
  4. Check the box for the “Enable sticky navigation” setting

The Social Links Menu allows you to display links to your social media profiles as icons. It appears in the middle of the header above or below the site title and logo depending on where the Header Menu is located.

Learn how to add a social links menu.

Homepage

The homepage, or front page, is typically one of the first pages most visitors see when visiting your site. While it shows a list of your latest posts by default, Ovation includes a few options that allow you to customize the layout and information displayed.

Read the instructions for setting up a static front page if you’d prefer to use a page for your homepage. You’ll also want to create a page for displaying your latest posts (or blog).

Header Background Color

The header background color can be changed in the customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Colors section to expand it
  3. Choose a new color for the “Header Background Color” setting

Header Media

Adding an image or video to the top of the homepage is a great way to make a good first impression and set the tone for your site.

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Header Media section to expand it
  3. Upload a new image or video

If you’re going to feature a video, it’s a good idea to also set a similar image to display on devices where the video doesn’t load and on internal pages.

A video header will only load on the homepage on screens that are at least 900 pixels wide and 500 pixels tall to help your site load more quickly on mobile devices.

Front Page Sections

One unique feature available in Ovation is the ability to highlight manually curated content on the homepage. Front page sections can consist of recent posts, pages, records, videos, and AudioTheme archives.

Adding Front Page Sections

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Theme Options panel to expand it
  3. Click the Front Page section to expand it
  4. Click the Add Posts button
  5. Select the items you want to feature from the fly-out panel
  6. Click the Add Posts button to close the fly-out panel
  7. Drag and drop items into your preferred order
  8. Click the Save & Publish button at the top of the customizer

Each featured item can be further customized by clicking the arrow to the right to expand it.

It’s worth noting, if a featured image is not set for the item, an image will be pulled from the item’s content.

Widgets

Widgets allow you to add content or tools to sidebars, or other widget-enabled areas, on your site. They can be used for displaying lists of posts, static text, images, and email sign-up forms, among many other possibilities. Most widgets are configurable so you can customize how they display.

WordPress includes a number of widgets out of the box and additional widgets can be added using plugins. Learn more about managing widgets.

Ovation includes one widget location:

Widgets added to the Sidebar widget area will display on all pages in the off-screen sidebar that’s toggled using the “Sidebar” button in the main navigation area.

Appearance

Colors

The header background, header text, and background color can be changed in the customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Colors section to expand it
  3. Update the color settings

An additional setting for changing the opacity of the header background color is included and is useful for making sure the text in the header remains visible when using a header image or video.

Fonts

Ovation has built-in support for a few handpicked Google fonts. To update your fonts:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Fonts section to expand it
  3. Update the selected font in each dropdown

Typekit Fonts

If you have a Typekit account and would like to use the fonts included in one of your kits, you can follow the documentation for integrating custom fonts for Typekit.

Page Templates

Page templates allow you to change the layout or functionality of individual pages on your site. The page template can be set in the Page Attributes meta box when editing a page in your admin panel.

Default

The default page template displays content in a single column. When a featured image is added, it will appear as a banner behind the page title.

Full-width Page

The Full-width Page template is a page template that displays content the full width of the content area. Learn more about how to use the Full-width Page page.

Grid Page

The Grid Page template displays child pages in a visually appealing grid using the featured image and page title. Learn how to use the Grid Page template.

Ovation includes extra support for a few plugins.

AudioTheme Integration

AudioTheme makes it easy for bands and musicians to showcase music, keep fans updated with live performances, tour dates and venue information, and embed videos from over a dozen popular services.

Ovation requires the AudioTheme plugin to function as shown in the theme demo. It can be downloaded from your account dashboard.

Gig, Discography, & Video Archives

Be sure to read the documentation for setting up your archives to add links to your discography, gig, and video pages.

Archive Menus

Ovation includes menu locations for the Gig, Record, and Video archive pages. These menus can be used to add additional navigation for past gigs or display different record types (e.g. Albums, Singles).

Assigning a menu to these archive pages is the same as assigning a menu to other menu locations via Appearance → Customize → Menus.

Gigs

Documentation for managing gigs can be found in the AudioTheme plugin documentation.

Records

Documentation for managing records can be found in the AudioTheme plugin documentation.

Videos

Documentation for managing videos can be found in the AudioTheme plugin documentation.

Customizing Ovation

Check out the knowledge base article on the recommended ways to customize your theme along with helpful plugins and links.

Child Theme

You can download a sample child theme here. In the sample, we’ve changed the site content background color from white to red as a way to demonstrate the changes are working.