MH Squared WordPress Theme is a stylish template for outstanding online magazines or other editorial websites. After you have installed the MH Squared WordPress Theme, you can follow the below mentioned steps to configure the theme.
If you are new to WordPress, we recommend you to have a look at a few basic WordPress tutorials first. A good place to start here, is the WordPress Codex: Getting Started with WordPress. Now have fun creating beautiful and attractive websites with MH Squared.
Create a Static Front Page #
If you would like to configure your website like the layout you can see in the theme demo of MH Squared, you'll need to create a static front page first. The second step is to place the widgets on the front page. To create a static front page with the widgetized layout, please navigate to "Pages" in your WordPress dashboard and create a new page with name "Home" (or anything else) and select "Homepage" as page template:
After you have created your static page and have selected the "Homepage" template, please navigate to "Settings => Reading" in your WordPress dashboard and set that page as static front page:
If you need further help and instructions with creating a static front page in WordPress, please read and follow this tutorial: How to set a Static Front Page in WordPress.
Available Widget Locations of MH Squared #
MH Squared WordPress Theme has in total 12 widget locations. Inside these widget locations you can place WordPress widgets, custom widgets or add any HTML code you like (by using a text widget). After you have completed the setup of your static front page (as stated above), please navigate to "Appearance => Widgets" in your WordPress dashboard to easily drag & drop widgets into the specific widget locations you prefer:
- Header - Advertisement (Top): widget area located within header alongside logo (premium)
- Header - Advertisement (Bottom): widget area located below the header area (premium)
- Home 1 - Main Column: large widget area on "Homepage" for all widgets
- Home 2 - Sidebar: sidebar widget area on "Homepage" for all widgets
- Global - Sidebar: widget area / sidebar on posts and pages (not Homepage)
- Posts 1 - Advertisement (Top): widget area above the post content (premium)
- Posts 2 - Advertisement (Bottom): widget area below the post content (premium)
- Footer - Advertisement: widget area above the footer (premium)
- Footer 1 - First Column: widget area located in the footer (premium)
- Footer 2 - Second Column: widget area located in the footer (premium)
- Footer 3 - Third Column: widget area located in the footer (premium)
- Contact - Sidebar: widget area on contact page template (premium)
Via drag & drop you can easily put widgets into the several widget locations / sidebars. To do so, please navigate to "Appearance => Widgets" in your WordPress dashboard. There you will find an extensive collection of default WordPress widgets and custom widgets that are included in MH Squared WordPress theme, like for example: MH Slider, MH Custom Posts, MH Custom Pages, MH Posts Grid, MH YouTube Video, MH Authors Widget, MH Facebook Page and more.
How to place the Widgets like in the Theme Demo #
If you like the layout and the way we arranged the widgets in the MH Squared theme demo, you are welcome to reproduce the demo layout. Just go to "Appearance => Widgets" in your WordPress dashboard and place the widgets as stated here:
Widgets visible on all pages #
- Header - Advertisement (Top): Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Header - Advertisement (Bottom): Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Footer - Advertisement: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Footer 1: Default WordPress Custom Menu widget
- Footer 2: MH Recent Comments widget with three comments
- Footer 3: Default WordPress text widget with banner
Widgets visible on homepage only #
- Home 1 - Main Column: MH Slider widget with image sizes of 732 x 377px
- Home 1 - Main Column: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Home 1 - Main Column: MH YouTube Video widget
- Home 1 - Main Column: MH Custom Posts widget with 6 posts
- Home 1 - Main Column: MH Posts Large widget with 1 post
- Home 1 - Main Column: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Home 1 - Main Column: MH Posts Grid widget with 4 posts
- Home 2 - Sidebar: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Home 2 - Sidebar: Default WordPress Search widget
- Home 2 - Sidebar: Default WordPress Recent Posts widget
- Home 2 - Sidebar: MH Authors widget with three authors
- Home 2 - Sidebar: MH Recent Comments widget with four comments
- Home 2 - Sidebar: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Home 2 - Sidebar: Default WordPress Tag Cloud widget
Widgets visible on posts & pages #
- Posts 1 - Advertisement (Top): Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Posts 2 - Advertisement (Bottom): Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Global - Sidebar: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
- Global - Sidebar: Default WordPress Search widget
- Global - Sidebar: MH Facebook Page widget
- Global - Sidebar: Default WordPress Recent Posts widget
- Global - Sidebar: MH YouTube Video widget
- Global - Sidebar: Default WordPress Text widget with banner
Map of Widget Locations on the "Homepage" Template #
Here you can see the locations of the widget areas on the fully widgetized "Homepage" template of MH Squared WordPress Theme:
Images in MH Squared WordPress Theme #
WordPress themes in general have defined their own image dimensions and thumbnail sizes. These thumbnails are automatically generated by WordPress when you upload an image. In case you change your WordPress theme, it may happen that the thumbnail requirements of your new theme do not match the sizes of the available thumbnails in your media folder. If that is the case, your thumbnails won't look consistent in size. You can solve this by regenerating your thumbnails.
Image dimensions in MH Squared:
- 732 x 377px (Thumbnails for the "MH Slider" widget)
- 682 x 351px (Thumbnails for posts and "MH Posts Large" widget)
- 329 x 329px (Thumbnails for "MH Posts Grid" & "MH Custom Posts" widget)
- 80 x 80px (Small Thumbnails for "MH Custom Posts" widget)
MH Squared WordPress Theme uses featured images for the thumbnails on archives and within the custom widgets. In case you have already uploaded images to your site or added images manually to your posts, it may happen that these images don’t appear as thumbnails. In that case please read and follow this: How to use featured images in WordPress.
Additional Features/Options #
If you have followed the above mentioned steps of this documenation, you have completed the basic theme setup of MH Squared WordPress Theme. Now you can start creating your content, writing posts etc. If you like, have a look at the other available theme options and use additional theme features. To access the theme options panel, simply navigate to "Appearance => Customize => Theme Options" in your WordPress dashboard, there you will find these sections:
- General
- Layout (premium)
- News Ticker (premium)
- Typography (premium)
General Options #
In the "General" options section you'll find some basic options to upload a favicon, manage excerpts and modify the copyright notice in the footer:
- Upload a favicon (premium)
- Modify custom excerpt length in words
- Change custom excerpt more-text
- Change copyright text in footer (premium)
- Hide theme credit link in footer (premium)
Layout Options (premium) #
In the "Layout" options section you can easily change the look of your theme and enable/disable several elements with only a few simple clicks. In the layout options section you can find the following options:
- Change position of sidebar right or left
- Enable/Disable breadcrumb navigation
- Enable/Disable featured image on posts
- Enable/Disable categories on posts
- Enable/Disable date on posts
- Enable/Disable author name on posts
- Enable/Disable comment count on posts
- Enable/Disable tags on posts
- Enable/Disable sharing buttons on posts
- Enable/Disable author box below post content
- Enable/Disable related articles below post content
- Enable/Disable post navigation
- Enable/Disable comments on pages
News Ticker Options (premium) #
This stylish and fancy magazine WordPress theme has included a nice and useful news ticker located above the header where you can display articles from any category or tag. You can manage the news ticker with the following options:
- Enable/Disable news ticker
- Change ticker title
- Set number of posts on ticker
- Filter posts by categories (use category ID)
- Filter posts by tags (use tag slug)
- Skip posts (Offset)
- Ignore sticky posts
Typography & Color Options (premium) #
If you like, you can select your favourite font from a collection of most popular Google webfonts in the theme options panel under "Typography". Besides, you may also easily change the color scheme of your theme with a few simple clicks by using some awesome colorpickers. We have extended the basic color options of WordPress under "Appearance => Customize => Colors" in your WordPress dashboard with some new options to change the colors of your theme. Just check it out and create your favourite color scheme.
Related Articles (premium) #
MH Squared WordPress theme includes a built-in box with related articles below the content on posts. These recommendations are based on tags. So if you want to use this feature, and show related articles, please ensure that you have tagged your posts. As soon as tags match, articles will be recommended in the "Related Articles" box. Here you can find more information: How do related posts work.
Social Icons above Footer (premium) #
If you would like to display the social icons above the footer, you’ll simply need to create a custom menu with custom links to your social media channels in your WordPress dashboard under "Appearance => Menus" and assign this menu to the "Footer Social Icons" menu slot. The theme will automatically recognize the social networks based on their URLs and display the specific icons. Currently the following networks are supported: Behance, Dribbble, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Soundcloud, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, Xing and YouTube.
Contact Page (premium) #
MH Squared Magazine WordPress Theme offers a "Contact" page template with an additional sidebar to display a different sidebar on your contact page than on other posts and pages. In case you want to use this template for your contact page, you could for example place the "MH Facebook Page" widget and a text widget with your contact details in the "Contact" widget location under "Appearance => Widgets". MH Squared WordPress Theme also supports the popular "Contact Form 7" plugin to easily create working contact forms with only a few clicks. Please read the following to learn more: How to create a working contact page in WordPress.
Font Awesome Icons #
MH Squared WordPress Theme comes with a nice collection of over 400 awesome icons by Font Awesome. You can view these icons in detail on the Font Awesome website and use them as you like on your own website to give your content a personal or professional touch. You can easily display the icons by adding the small HTML snippet of the specific icon in the WordPress text editor (not visual), for example a cloud icon:
<i class="fa fa-cloud"></i>
Shortcodes #
If you would like to use shortcodes to easily add styled elements like tabs, columns, boxes, accordions or else to your website, we recommend the "Shortcodes Ultimate" plugin. This plugin has included tons of useful shortcodes to easily customize your website. You can find more information and the documentation on the plugin site.
In case you want to learn more about WordPress, MH Squared WordPress Theme or if you would like to read additional tutorials, please have a look at our support center.