You just purchased BranfordMagazine and want to make a quick start? Thanks to the themes optionspage and this installation guide, 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 (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 > Branfordmagazine Options.

At this options page you need to make some settings to make the theme work properly. You might encounter issues if your settings are incorrect. So double-check your settings if you face any issue.

Colors

Select from many different color schemes. The “default” scheme ist the one you see in the themes demo. If you select one of the other color schemes (e.g “green”) and use the option to display a logo instead of blogname and description (see next paragraph) always the default logo will be displayed and this logo doesn´t change even if you change the color scheme. Assuming you will use your own logo anyway it wouldn´t make sense.

In addition to the color schemes you can change some colors for the background of the featured articles and the leadarticle. I will surely add some more color options in a next update.

Header and Footer

In this section you select if you want to use the blogname and description text that is defined in your WordPress settings or a graphical logo in the header of your site. Default is blogname/description and if you want to use a logo image you need to upload one by using the WordPress “Header” option under the Appearance menu.

The alternative Footer provides four additional widget areas that you can use to put additional content in four columns at the footer of your site. If this is switched off you will just see the regular footer with the credit links. The  4-column footer in the demo is the alternative footer.

Navigation Menus

The theme offers two menu locations in the top menu bar. You can use both or only one to display a menu for pages, categories etc. Be aware that you need to create a custom menu and assign it it to the location in the theme. First you need to check the box(es) and then you need to create a custom menu.

Since WordPress 3.0 there is a powerful functionality available called “Custom Menus”. You find this under Appearance > Menus. With this custom menus you can create very flexible menus, you can mix pages and categories, add external links and define your own order of menu items completely independent from the WordPress defaults. See also this screencast that explains the custom menu function in detail.

There are two areas (or locations) where custom menus can be put. The primary menu is the top menu and the secondary is the menubar right below the primary.

Homepage Layout Options – Leadarticle

The leadarticle is the most recent newsarticle displayed in the tabbed area of the homepage. You need to select the the category you want do show here from the dropdown menu. It makes sense to create for example a “news” category and use it for the leadarticles only. If there is no article assigned to this category, nothing can be displayed.

Customizing the Tabbed Section

Presumably you want to customize the tabbed section as well. Under “Homepage Tabbed Section” you can change tabs or add new tabs and enter text or HTML. You cannot use PHP Code here because that´s not allowed by WordPress for security reasons. If you need to use PHP code here you need to edit the code file directly.

Homepage Layout Options – Featured Articles

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 select the category from the dropdown and enter the number of post to show (default 3 posts). And remember: If there is no article assigned to this category, nothing can be displayed. If you use the same category for the leadarticle and the featured articles it might make sense to define an offset to the featured articles section. An offset of “1″ for example means that the articles start to display not with the first but with the second article. Makes sense if the first already is the leadarticle.

Homepage Layout Options – 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).

There is a plugin that makes it easy to find the correct IDs

Images

Here you can define the dimensions (width and height in pixels) of the various images on the homepage and the archive pages. This works only if you use the TimThumb image resizer script.

You can also define if you want to use TimThumb or the default WordPress Post Thumbnail (featured image) function.

If you don´t use TimThumb and need to change image dimensions this plugin might become very handy.

And you can switch the prettyPhoto image lightbox effect on or off. The image size function 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, the featured articles , the hompage right colum (categories) 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 Sidebar

Here you can remove the newsblock and the “Stay informed” RSS Links. You can also define how many newsheadlines are displayed on the homepage sidebar. 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.

Anything else can be setup with regular or the custom widgets that are included with the theme.

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.

Custom Scripts

Here you can enter custom scripts to the header and footer like Goolge Analytics or other Javascripts. And you can use custom CSS for simple editing of fonts, colors etc.

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. 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 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 tick the box in the themes options “Homapage Tabbed Section”

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.

Need more Support?

Got to the support forum to get more support and additional information. Read the forum guidelines before you start using the forum.

Further Readings and Tutorials

• Watch the Screencasts
• More Tutorials
• FAQ

Our all-time favorite and best-seller – BranfordMagazine is an amazing and feature rich magazine style theme. It comes with lots of great options such as 6 pre-defined color schemes, additional color options, an admin interface (options page) for easy setup as well as lots of great custom widgets for individual customization (e.g Twitter, Newsleter, More from this category etc.).

Theme Features

• Outstanding magazine style layout
• 6 pre-defined colorschemes plus additional color options
• 960 grid system
• Smooth and elegant SuperFish dropdown menu
• PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included
• Auto prettyPhoto integration
• Automatic image handling and resizing
• Options page for easy setup without coding
• WordPress 3.0 features like custom headers, backgrounds and menus
• Three additional custom page templates
• 13 widgetized areas
• Eight custom widgets
• Fully localized front- and backend. Default language English. German language file included.
• W3C valid code works in all modern browsers
• Mobile device ready: Works perfect on mobile devices like iPhone and iPad

Demo, Support and Purchase

Demo Support Forum Tutorials

• 

  BranfordMagazine

  € 39,90 incl. 19% VAT

  Add to cart

There is also a free version of this theme with less functionality available.

Multisite

The theme was not build to be used with the multisite (former WordPress MU) feature. There might occur issues when using it on a multisite installation. Although there is already a fix for TimThumb/Multisite included there are still a few things that I hopefully can fix in an update.

Installation

Please read the readme.html file contained in the downloaded zip-archive before you start.

Change Log

Version 7.0 (released 12.01.2012)

• New Version of tabbed section
• Added Shortcode Collection plugin
• New prettyPhoto
• Additional header widgets
• Added some functionality
• Subtle design makeover
• Massive code cleanup
• New admin/options page
• and much more…

Changed files

• Almost any!

Version 6.1.2 (released 08.08.2011)

• Added new and safe version of TimThumb

Changed files

• /scripts/timthumb.php
• style.css (just for the version number)
• functions.php (just for the version number)

Version 6.1.1 (released 08.07.2011)

• Bugfix in navigation and logo home link
• Bugfix in width of logo

Changed files

• style.css (just the version number)
• functions.php
• header.php
• /images/logo.png (the default logo)
• and the logo PSD file inside the “stuff” folder of the download directory

Version 6.1 (released 27.05.2011)

• New Optionspanel with additional functionlities such as editing the tabbed area right from the options page
• New Superfish dropdown menus
• some minor bugfixes

Changed Files
Almost any!

Version 6.0.2 (released 03.03.2011)

• jQuery call bugfix for MSIE

Changed Files

• /tools/enqueue_scripts.php
• style.css (just because of the version number)

Version 6.0.1 (released 25.02.2011)

• Added new version of PrettyPhoto
• Re-introduced the searchbar in the header
• Some small code enhancements

Changed Files

• /tools(enqueue_scripts.php
• /scripts/prettyPhoto (folder)
• styles.css
• header.php

Version 6.0 (released 31.01.2011)

• Added 5 new color schemes
• New image handling via TimThumb or WordPress Post-Thumbnails
• TimThumb image output issue solved (smaller filesize)
• Added “full width” header
• Added translation/localization for backend (now English and German optionspage included)
• Added three new widget areas (below tabs, above content, below content)
• Fixed print.css
• Some other bug fixes

Changed Files
Almost any!

Version 5.1 (released 18.06.2010)

• Added WordPress 3.0 features
• Added auto prettyPhoto integration
• Added optional footer
• Re-build the options-page with more functions
• Re-designed to meet the 960 grid system

Changed Files
Almost any!

Version 5.0.1 (released 01.04.2010)

• Some minor bugfixes
• Fixing validation error when using custom widgets
• Featured Page Template issues fixed

Changed Files

• style.css
• tmpl_featured-page.php
• sidebar.php
• tools/custom-widgets.php

Version 5.0 (released 14.03.2010)

Initial release of the PRO version

This premium magazine style WordPress theme is the third in my “Jazz Musician Series”. SpiegelMagazine is an amazing and feature rich magazine style theme. It comes with lots of great options such as an nice image slider, an admin interface (options page) for easy setup, various pre-defined color schemes as well as lots of great custom widgets for individual customization (e.g Twitter, Newsletter, More from this category etc.).

After a sax-player (BranfordMagazine) and a trumpet-player (WyntonMagazine) I thought it was time for a guitar-player. So I dedicated SpiegelMagazine to New York based jazz-guitar-player Russ Spiegel. I know Russ personally from the days when he used to live and work in Frankfurt/Germany. The theme requires WordPress 3.0 or later.

Theme Features

• Outstanding magazine style layout
• 960 grid system
• Integrated Nivo image slider (WordPress plugin) with lots of functionality
• WP-Cycle slider support
• PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included
• Auto prettyPhoto integration
• Automatic image handling and resizing
• 6 pre-defined colorschemes
• Smooth and elegant SuperFish dropdown menu
• Options page for easy setup without coding
• WordPress 3.0 features like custom headers, backgrounds and menus
• 3 additional custom page templates
• 14 widgetized areas
• 8 custom widgets
• Fully localized front- and backend. Default language English. German language file included.
• W3C valid code works in all modern browsers
• Mobile device ready: Works perfect on mobile devices like iPhone and iPad

Demo, Support and Purchase

Demo Support Forum Tutorials

• 

  SpiegelMagazine

  € 39,90 incl. 19% VAT

  Add to cart

Multisite

The theme was not build to be used with the multisite (former WordPress MU) feature. There might occur issues when using it on a multisite installation.

Installation

Please read the readme.html file contained in the downloaded zip-archive before you start.

Change Log

Version 3.0 (released 12.01.2012)

• New Nivo image slider (now available as a WordPress plugin with lots of functionality)
• Added WP-Cycle slider support
• Added Shortcode Collection Plugin
• New prettyPhoto
• Additional header widgets
• Added some functionality
• Subtle design makeover
• Additional color schemes
• Massive code cleanup
• New admin/options page
• and much more…

Changed files

• Almost any!

Version 2.0.2 (released 08.08.2011)

• Added new and safe version of TimThumb

Changed files

• /scripts/timthumb.php
• style.css (just for the version number)
• functions.php (just for the version number)

Version 2.0.1 (released 7.7.2011)

Fixed bug in Nivo Slider after upgrading to WordPress 3.2

Changed files

• /scripts/nivo-slider (whole directory)
• /lib/enqueue_scripts.php
• functions.php (just the version number)
• style.css (just the version number)

Version 2.0 (released 25.02.2011)

Completeley re-engeneered code base. New Options page with new functions such as improved image handling, additional colorschemes etc. Almost any file has been affected and changed

Version 1.0 (released 14.03.2010)

Initial release

Happy to announce the release of version 6.0 of my famous WordPress theme BranfordMagazine. There have been many new options added to this version. The most important might be the additional color schemes and color options as well as the alternative image (thumbnail) handling. You can now choose if you want to use TimThumb to handle your thumbnails or – in case you have issues with it because your hoster doesn´t allow it to work – if you use the build-in WordPress Post-Thumbnail functionality.

Unfortunately the Multisite support didn´t find its way into this new version. Although the TimThumb issue for Multisite was solved, there are still some things I wasn´t able to fix. But I promise to keep working on that topic.

Here is a list of all new features.

• Added 5 new color schemes
• New image handling via TimThumb or WordPress Post-Thumbnails
• TimThumb image output issue solved (smaller filesize)
• Added “full width” header
• Added translation/localization for backend (now English and German optionspage included)
• Added three new widget areas (below tabs, above content, below content)
• Fixed print.css
• Some other bug fixes

Demo and Purchase

[wp_eStore_fancy:product_id:1:end]

[btn text="Demo" color="grey" size="big" url="http://www.wp-themes.der-prinz.com/branfordmagazine/" p="false"]

I´m currently working on a new version of BranfordMagazine WordPress theme. The new version comes with a lot new features and additional options to set up the theme the way you like it best without touching the code.

In the background I optimized the code for better performance. There will be several new theme options and the image handling was completely rebuild. Now you can choose if you like to use TimThumb to crop and resize images and use them as thumbnails on the various areas of the theme, or if you like to use the build in post-thumbnail function of WordPress. You will be able to select from many different pre-defined color schemes and change colors of specific areas as well. WP custom menus will be now fully supported with two custom menue areas. Since I got many requests to have a full width header (logo) area I added it.

And there is more to come in the next days, so stay tuned to receive updates. I´m planning to release the new version in a few days. People who have already purchased a copy of BranfordMagazine will get free update in the support forum.

WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” was released yesterday providing tons of great new features. Since many of those features became part of my Themes I updated the downloads to the latest versions of Branfordmagazine 5.1 and WyntonMagazine 2.1.

If you already purchased a theme you can go to the support forum and download the new version in the “download” subforum of the BranfordMagazine or WyntonMagazine support-forum. This area is only available to theme buyers who have registered to the forum and where upgraded by me. If you don´t have access to the forum but previously purchased a theme, let me know.

The new themes versions come with a long list of new features mainly based on new WordPress 3.0 functions such as:

• Completely new rebuild and fancy options-page
• Custom headers
• Custom backgrounds
• Custom menus
• Image dimensions of the thumbnails editable from the options-page
• Additional and optional widgetized footer area
• Auto prettyPhoto (lighbox-clone) integration
• 960 grid system
• and more…

Purchase Themes

Don´t waste time and save your copy of PRiNZ Pro themes today.

BranfordMagazine PRO

The theme is ready for localization. Its default language is English but it comes with a German language file included in the /branfordmagazine-pro/languages folder.

[btn text="Demo" color="green" size="big" url="http://wp-themes.der-prinz.com/branfordmagazine/" p="false"] [btn text="More Info" color="green" size="big" url="http://www.der-prinz.com/branfordmagazine-wordpress-magazine-style-theme-63" p="false"]

[wp_eStore_fancy:product_id:1:end]

WyntonMagazine PRO

The theme is ready for localization. Its default language is English but it comes with a German language file included in the /wyntonmagazine-pro/languages folder.

[btn text="Demo" color="green" size="big" url="http://wp-themes.der-prinz.com/wyntonmagazine/" p="false"] [btn text="More Info" color="green" size="big" url="http://www.der-prinz.com/wyntonmagazine-magazine-style-theme-for-wordpress-106" p="false"]

[wp_eStore_fancy:product_id:2:end]

Video: More about WordPress 3.0

WyntonMagazine is somehow the “brother” of my  WordPress theme “BranfordMagazine” but  has its own professional magazine style face.

The homepage has got a complete new face without a tabbed section and provides a professional and unique look and feel. If you like Branfordmagazine you will love WyntonMagazine.

Theme Features

• Outstanding magazine style layout
• 960 grid system
• PRiNZ Shortcode Collection plugin included
• Auto prettyPhoto integration
• Automatic image handling and resizing
• Options page for easy setup without coding
• WordPress 3.0 features like custom headers, backgrounds and menus
• 3 additional custom page templates
• 11 widgetized areas
• 8 custom widgets
• Prepared for localization. Default language English. German language file included.
• W3C valid code works in all modern browsers
• Mobile device ready: Works perfect on mobile devices like iPhone and iPad

Demo, Support and Purchase

Demo Support Forum Tutorials

• 

  WyntonMagazine

  € 39,90 incl. 19% VAT

  Add to cart

Multisite

The theme was not build to be used with the multisite (former WordPress MU) feature. There might occur issues when using it on a multisite installation.

Installation

Please read the readme.html file contained in the downloaded zip-archive before you start.

Change Log

Version 3.0 (released 12.01.2012)

• Added Shortcode collection Plugin
• New prettyPhoto
• Additional header widgets
• Added some functionality
• Subtle design makeover
• Massive code cleanup
• New admin/options page
• and much more…

Changed files

• Almost any!

Version 2.1.2 (released 08.08.2011)

• Added new and safe version of TimThumb

Changed files

• /scripts/timthumb.php

Version 2.1.1 (released 25.02.2011)

• Added new Version of PrettyPhoto

Changed files

• /scripts/prettyPhoto (folder)

Version 2.1 (released 18.06.2010)

• Added WordPress 3.0 features
• Added auto prettyPhoto integration
• Added optional footer
• Re-build the options-page with more functions
• Re-designed to meet the 960 grid system

Changed Files
Almost any!

Version 2.0.1 (released 01.04.2010)

• Some minor bugfixes
• Fixing validation error when using custom widgets
• Featured Page Template issues fixed
• Added threaded comments functionality
• Small fix on the options page

Changed Files

• style.css
• comments.php
• tmpl_featured-page.php
• sidebar.php
• tools/custom-widgets.php
• tools/theme-options.php

Version 2.0 (released 14.03.2010)

Initial release of the PRO version

The Website is about book reviews and makes use of some very nice CSS3 techniques. The layout was completely adopted from a customers Photoshop layout.

Check out the website

Wanna make a great looking website yourself? Consider using one of my WordPress themes. They make producing great websites as easy as 1, 2 ,3 – try it!

[btn text="Buy Now" color="green" size="big" url="http://www.der-prinz.com/purchase" p="true"]

Better user experience with clickable excerpt “more”

By default the excerpt of WordPress displays an un-clickable [...] at the end of the default 55 words. Well of course this makes the user somehow aware of the fact that there is more to read but he cannot click on the [...] string which causes irritations with less experienced users. Wouldn´t it be great if WordPress would add a real link at the end of an excerpt? Sure it would and here is how to do it.

The Function

Open your tools/various-functions.php file inside the branfordmagazine-pro themefolder and edit this (or similar) codesnippet:

In this example a link [continue reading...] will appear at the end of the excerpt after a linebreak. It is also prepared for localization. If you want something different just change the “[continue reading...]” string to e.g. “read on” or whatever you like. If you want the link to appear right behind the last word of the excerpt remove the < br / > tag.

Here is an example of three (clickable) dots right after the last word:

A little styling

As you can see there is a CSS class called .excerpt_more. You can now style this class to meet your requirements. it can be found in the style.css file.

Works everywhere

This little trick is not just for BranfordMagazine. You can use it with any theme as long as you run WordPress 2.9 or higher.

Custom Excerpts with “more” Links

The functions.php file now has not only an area to define custom excerpt lenghts but also an area where you can define the appearance of the default WordPress excerpt “more” string [...] as well as it is now really clickable (which it is not by WordPress default). A tutorial will follow soon.

100% W3C valid

One of the features that was missing in all previous versions is that BranfordMagazine now is 100% W3C valid. All errors have been erased. You will not really see this modification because the theme used to work without issues anyway but it is another improvement in terms of clean coding.

Here´s a list of the new stuff:

• Optionspanel with additional settings for Google AdSense and google Analytics
• Default settings of the options panel that work for most default WP installations
• Custom excerpts with clickable “more” links
• 100% W3C valid

If you want to update

If you want to update from version 4.1 to the new version 4.2 you need to replace the following files:

• functions.php
• index.php
• header.php
• sidebar.php
• /incudes/ui.tabs.php
• style.css

The Future

There´s more to come in future releases. I´m also planning to release a “Pro” version of BranfordMagazine with a whole bunch of new features and an optimised design. So stay tuned for updates.