BranfordMagazine Step-by-Step Installation Guide
You just purchased BranfordMagazine and want to make a quick start? Thanks to the themes optionspage, setting up BranfordMagazine for the first time is pretty easy. Here I explain it step-by-step.
Download, Unpack and Upload
After you downloaded and unpacked the zip-archive, you have a folder called PRiNZ_BranfordMagazine_pro. This folder contains two more folders, the readme files in English and German and a logo.
Now take only the folder branfordmagazine-pro not the whole PRiNZ_BranfordMagazine_pro folder and upload it to your WordPress themes folder which is normally located at /wp-content/themes in your servers WordPress installation. If you upload the whole unpacked PRiNZ_BranfordMagazine_pro folder you might encounter several issues. You will need an FTP program to do this.
You can not use the themes installation function within WordPress because that would use the whole zip-archive instead of just the theme folder.
Setup the Theme Options
Now go to your WordPress admin and open the themes options under Appearance > Branfordmagazine Options.
At this options page you need to make some settings to make the theme work properly. To be very explicit on that: The theme works, there are no known bugs or major issues. If something doesn´t work double check if your settings are correct. In most cases it´s a users failure and not a themes issue. That´s the truth 
Setup Pages and Categories Menue
Here you can exclude pages and categories from the main horizontal menue bars on top of the page. Enter the IDs of the pages and categories you want to EXCLUDE from the top menue bar. Enter the IDs separated by comma. If you don´t know how to find the IDs, have a look at this tutorial. If you don´t enter any IDs, every page and every category will be displayed here.
Categories that don´t contain any posts will never be displayed. So if you can´t see a specific category you should check if there is already at least one post in that category.
You can also specify if you want the pages- or category menubar to display or not. And you can tell the theme to use a WordPress custom menu instead or additionally. If you want to use the WordPress custom menu (Introduced in WordPress 3.0) you need to set it up under Appearance > Menus.
Setup the Leadarticle
The leadarticle is the most recent newsarticle displayed in the tabed area of the homepage. You need to define the ID of the category you want do show here. It makes sense to create for example a “news” category and use it for the leadarticles only. By default one article will appear here and it makes sense to leave the default number (1). Otherwise it would look strange and destroy the layout. Again: If there is no article assigned to this category, nothing can be displayed.
Setup the Featured Articles in the left Column
The featured articles are the articles (three by default) in the left column of the homepage. They are taken from one specific category, typicallly called “featured articles” (or whatever you like) which you have to setup first or you assign a category that already exists. Again you need to enter the ID of the category and the number of post to show (default 3 posts). And remember: If there is no article assigned to this category, nothing can be displayed.
Setup the Homepage middle Column
In the middle column of the homepage all other categories that you define are displayed. Always the most recent article from the categories will be displayed. Enter the IDs of the categories separated by a comma (e.g. 3,5,7,8,9). You can also change the number of articles to dislay per category but I reccomend to leave the default (1).
Setup the Image Dimensions
Here you can define the dimensions (width and height in pixels) of the various images on the homepage and the archive pages. This is a very powerful feature that allows you to change the image dimensions whenever you like. Thanks to the TimThumb image script all images are croped and scaled “on the fly” and can be changed as often as you like. Imagehandling has never been so easy.
Setup the Sidebar
Here you can define how many newsheadlines are displayed on the homepage sidebar and which categories should NOT appear in the list of categories. The newssection shows a number of headlines from the same category that you set as the leadarticle category. There is an offset of 1 which means that the list starts with article 2 from this category. If you have only one article in this category it will show this article as the leadarticle but no other article will appear in the list of news headlines. If you have two articles in this category the first one (most recent) will be the leadarticle and the next (older one) will appear in the list in the sidebar.
It might make sense not to display the “featured” and also the “news” category (or whatever they are called at your site) in your list of categories (Browse Categories). But it´s up to you. If you use widgets in the sidebar then you don´t need to care about this section. Widgets will completely replace the default stuff.
Setup the 3-colum Page Template
The 3-column page is a special template to display content from three different categories in a very prominent way. Take a look at the demo and see how it can look like. All relevant settings can be made here. See the tutorial to this template for more details.
Setup the Footer
Choose if you like to use the alternative Footer. You will get an additional 4-column widgetized area on the bottom of the page that you can use for various purposes.
Setup Google AdSense and Analytics Code
Here you can put your Google AdSense code for the sidebar ad and the code for Google Analytics (or another tracking code). If you leave that empty just nothing will be displayed (except the headline for the ads & sponsors section in the sidebar).
Customizing the Tabbed Section
Presumably you want to customize the tabbed section and get rid of the default “About this Theme” tab. Have a look at this tutorial that explains the tabbed area in detail.
Troubleshooting
No Categories
Make sure you use correct category IDs otherwise you will see “no categories” where you expect the name of a category (e.g featured articles)
How to remove the double “Continue reading…” below the Leadarticle
If you encounter a “Continue reading…” link twice below your leadarticle in the tabbed section and want to get rid of one of them just have a look at this FAQ entry.
Images do not show up
If you have issues displaying the image thumbnails on the homepage have a look at this tutorial that shows you how to use images. Another tutorial which can be found here, deals with potential issues with the image handling script. Don´t worry: there is a solution in 99,9% of all cases.
No articles appear
The reason why no articles appear for example in the lead article area is because you have no articles in that category. Once you write an article it will apear. So always make sure your categories have articles.
It´s quite a good helper to write e.g. 3 testarticles and assign them to each category. That gives you a good overview how it works.
Further Readings and Tutorials
- How to edit the tabed interface
- How to use images on the homepage
- Use Widgets in the Sidebar
- Changing the Logo
- More Tutorials
