12. Jan 2012: This installation guide will be slightly updated in a few days to match the latest version of the theme!
After you purchased SpiegelMagazine you can´t wait to get your site up an running?! With the themes optionspage, setting up SpiegelMagazine for the first time is as easy as 1, 2, 3. This is a step-by-step instalation guide.
Download, Unpack and Upload
After you downloaded and unpacked the zip-archive, you have a folder called PRiNZ_SpiegelMagazine_pro. This folder contains two more folders, the readme files in English and German and a logo.
Now take only the folder spiegelmagazine-pro not the whole PRiNZ_SpiegelMagazine_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_SpiegelMagazine_pro folder you might encounter several issues (like “missing stylesheet”). You will need an FTP program to do this.
Do NOT use the WordPress theme installation functionality for that. The installation functionality tries to upload the whole zip-archive and will create errors.
Setup the Theme Options
Now go to your WordPress admin and open the themes options under Appearance > SpiegelMagazine Options.
At this options page you need to make some settings to make the theme work properly. These settings are crucial. 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. 
Setup the Header
Choose if you like to use a Logo or your Blogname and Description in the Header. By default the Logo is used. You can change the Logo in the “Header” Section of your WordPress Administration (WordPress 3.0 or higher required).
Setup Pages and Categories Menue
Here you can setup the top menu bars. It is reccomended to use the WordPress custom menu functionality.
You can exclude pages and categories from the main horizontal menue bars on top of the page if you use the default menus. 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. I reccomend to use the custom menus because they offer much more flexibility.
Setup the Image Slider
Spiegelmagazine comes with a nice build-in Nivo image slider. This part was completly rebuild in version 2.0 of the theme and in case you use an older version you should read this carefully.
First you need to select whether you want to use the slider or not by ticking the box on the options page under the “Leadarticle and Image-Slider ” section. Next you select a category that you use as the category for the slider. That can be any category you like but I reccommend to setup a special category only for the image slider.
Then you select one of the transition effects for the slider, the speed of the effect and the duration time. Depending on the effect speed and duration may vary. Just play around with it and see what fits best for you.
You don´t need to select a “Leadarticle Category” if you use the slider. Only if you don´t use the slider you need to define a category for the “static” leadarticles.
For every Slider you need to set a specific slider image. This image needs to be exact 940×350 pixels. Just upload the image to your post by using the regular uploader. Then copy the url and put it into the “Slider Image” Box right below your write post area in the editor.
Setup the Leadarticle
The leadarticle can be used instead of the image slider. It provides a headline an image and some text. You should create a specific category for the leadarticle but you don´t have to. Just select the category from the dropdown select-menu. The theme will then display always the latest article from this category. When you write a post in this category you must use the “more” tag or fuction when you write a post. It will not produce an automatic excerpt.
Setup the featured Articles
The featured articles are the three articles that apear below the image slider or leadarticle on the homepage. They are taken from one specific category you may call “featured articles” or whatever you want. If this category already exists, you can select it from the dropdown selection menu. And remember: If there is no article assigned to this category, nothing can be displayed.
Since version 2.0 there is an alternative and very flexible method to display your stuff in this featured area. Instead of using a specific category to display the three most recent posts from this category you can use the fantastic featured page or featured post widgets instead. Go to the Widgets area under Appearance and you will find three widget areas for the homepage called “Homepage Left”, “-Middle” and “-Right”. Here you can put the featured widgets. They have various options to play with. Just try it.
Setup the homepage bottom columns
In the lower area of the homepage two columns (left, right) with different categories are displayed. Here you can define which ones. In every column you can define as many different categories and number of posts per category as you like. Just enter the IDs of the categories seperated by commas and the number of post taken from each category. I reccommend one post per category.
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. The settings effect the images of the leadarticle (if you don´t use the image slider), the featured articles (only the height because of the layout), the hompage bottom colums and the archive (category overview) pages.
Be aware that you only have this great flexibility if you use TimThumb (tick the box to use it). If you don´t use it for some reason, you can use the bild-in WordPress post thumbnail / featured image function. If that´s your choice you need to set a featured image in every post you write. There is a very detailed tutorial about the WordPress featured image function written by Justin Tadlock here.
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 (it´s the same for all PRiNZ Pro Themes) 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.
Google AdSense and Analytics Code
Here you can put your Google AdSense code for the Leaderboard advert on the homepage and the code for Google Analytics (or another tracking code). If you leave that empty just nothing will be displayed.
Troubleshooting
Installation Error
Do NOT use the WordPress theme installation functionality to install your theme. Always use FTP to transfer the theme files to your server as explained in the beginning of this article. The installation functionality tries to upload the whole zip-archive and will create errors.
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 homepage bottom column articles)
Image Thumbnails 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 featured 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.