Clean Slate Documentation

Current Version: 2.3.1
Updated: January 20th, 2012
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View the Change Log

If your version is not up to date email Brian to obtain the latest theme update. Provide the email address you used at purchase or your Invoice ID.

Installing Clean Slate

METHOD 1: The easiest way to install Clean Slate is to use the built in theme uploader in WordPress, by following these instructions:

  1. Log into your WordPress Admin.
  2. Go to Appearance > Themes > Install Themes > Upload
  3. Browse for and upload the .zip file you downloaded from ThemeJam.com.
  4. Click "Activate".
  5. Go to Appearance > Clean Slate Options, click "Save". This confirms the default theme settings.

METHOD 2: If you encounter any problems with the process above, try installing it via FTP:

  1. Unzip the CleanSlate.zip file you downloaded from ThemeJam.com.
  2. Using FTP, upload the folder named "CleanSlate" inside this folder: /wp-content/ themes/
  3. In your WordPress admin, go to Appearance > Themes. Under "Clean Slate", click "Activate".
  4. Go to Appearance > Clean Slate Options, click "Save". This confirms the default theme settings.
  5. Follow the instructions below for configuring the theme.

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Configure Your Home Page

You can view the official demo of Clean Slate here. These instructions will show you how to configure Clean Slate to match the demo.

Set a home page template


NOTE: This video was recorded with Clean Slate 1.3, but the instructions still apply to 2.x.

  1. Set the home page template: Create a static page in WordPress, and title it "Home". Under Attributes, select the Template for this page. Choose any of the 3 "Home Page" templates.
  2. Set the blog page: Create a static page in WordPress, and title it "Blog" (or whatever you want). Leave the body of this page completely blank.
  3. Reading settings: Go to Settings > Reading, and look at the first section: 'Front Page Displays'. Set this to 'Static Page'. Then set the front page to "Home" and the Posts page to "Blog".
  4. Set the widgets: Set the widgets by going to Appearance > Widgets.
  5. Configure Theme Options: Go to Appearance > Clean Slate Options. Change settings to your liking.

Adding video to the home page slider

Use the custom post type, "Features" to adding video and static images.

Set your slider to use "Features" by going to Appearance > Clean Slate Options > Home Page Slider Options > and set "Post Type" to "Features". Click save.

Display Pages in the Featured Slider

The featured slider gives you the option to display posts or pages. By default, it displays posts. Follow these instructions to displaying and selecting pages for the slider:

  1. Go to Appearance > Clean Slate Options > Featured Slider
  2. For "Pages or Posts", select "Pages".
  3. For "Featured Pages", enter the ID numbers of each page you'd like to feature, separated by a comma (no space), like so: 175,39,182,7

How to find the ID number of your pages:

In your WordPress Admin, click "Pages" to view your list of Pages. Hover over (don't click) the page you're looking for. View your browser's status bar (at the very bottom of your browser). You will see the URL path. Within that URL path, you will notice a portion which says:

...post.php?post=NUMBER...

That number is the ID for that page.

Set the order of pages in the featured slider

The order in which pages are displayed in the featured slider is determined by their publish date. So a page that was published on 6/20/2010 will display before a page that published on 6/19/2010.

You can change the publish date of an existing page by editing that page, and changing the date in the right side where it says "Published on".

Unlike posts, the publish date pages is not displayed anywhere on the site. But it does affect the order of the featured slider.

Using the "Callouts" custom post type

New in Clean Slate version 2.0 is a custom post type named "Callouts". These can be used as small pieces of content placed on your home page.

Configuring Widgets

Custom Widget: "Display Page"

The "Display Page" widget, allows you to set static content and place it in any widgetized area. This is perfect for creating short callouts, featured information on the home page, etc.

First create a Page in WordPress. Add the text, image, or other content to the body area.

Then go to Appearance > Widgets, and add an instance of "Display Page" to any widget area. In the widget settings, choose the page you had created. Then set the title text to be displayed above it.

For example, to create 3 static text callouts, as seen in the demo for Clean Slate, create 3 pages for the callouts. Then add 3 instances of the "Display Page" widget to the widget area, "Home - 3 Columns".

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Custom Menus in WordPress 3.0+

If you’re running WordPress 3.0 or above, WordPress menu management can be used to control the top navigation and other menus placed as widgets.

Menu Management is automatically enabled. Go to Appearance > Menus to create and save your custom menu(s).

If you have not created any custom menus, the top navigation will revert to displaying all of your pages with proper hierarchy. The same applies if you are running WordPress 2.9.

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Set Social Icons

New in Clean Slate 2.0, you can now add linked icons to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and RSS at the top of your site, just above the slider.

Go to Appearance > Clean Slate Options > Social Media Icons.

Enter the URL for each icon. To disable an icon, leave the URL field blank.

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Change the site Logo

By default, Clean Slate will display the text title of your site as the site logo. Your site title text is defined in your general settings. Go to Settings > General, and set the text for Site Title.

Alternatively, you can upload a logo image:

  1. Go to Appearance > Clean Slate Options > General Options > Upload an Image.
  2. Browse for and upload your logo image.
  3. When the upload completes, find the field for "Link URL". Copy (command + C), the entire File URL. Close out of the image upload box.
  4. Paste (command + V) the File URL in the box provided.
  5. Save Changes.

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Adding Your Own Custom CSS

There are two ways to add your own CSS customizations:

METHOD 1: Theme Options

This is most reliable method, since your changes will always be intact if/when you update the theme later on.

Go to Clean Slate Options > Miscellaneous > Custom CSS. Enter your CSS code in the box and save.

Method 2: custom.css

If you prefer to use your own code editor and FTP your changes to the server, enter your custom CSS in the provided /styles/custom.css. This stylesheet is placed after all other stylesheets, making it easy to override any styles you want.

By default, custom.css is blank. Be sure to keep a backup copy of your additions so that when a theme update is available, you can keep your customizations intact.

Translate Clean Slate to Your Language

The Clean Slate theme is localized, which means it can be easily translated to any language. Instructions for translating the theme can be found here.

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