MT // general

Global Docs

Please note, we will be soon transferring our website to a new domain at megathemes.com
MegaPanel is the new branding to AlivePanel (MegaPanel is the theme options panel)
MegaFrame is the new branding to AliveFrame / aFrameWork, or other names you might saw during the beta. (MegaFrame is the core framework on top of which we build all of our themes).

Global Docs are documentations for any theme that is running MegaFrame core, you will have a reference to this section from the readme.txt file in theme files or other locations.

These docs will cover MegaFrame components available in each of our themes, please note that initially some of the components might not be available in your theme while in others are, those will be added eventually to all of the themes that use MegaFrame.

Requerments:

All themes that were developed with MegaFrame will only work with WordPress version 3.0 and above, the reason for that is because this way the theme remains compact in code, and allows us to extend it for further features, keeping it simple and easy to use and edit.

FTP & File Handling:

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, Here are some tips on how to utlize FTP to upload files.

• You can install an FTP program to do that, such as CuteFTP PRO.
• If your hosting provides a web ftp access you can do that from there. (example: http://webftp.dreamhost.com/)
• Use a file manager from your hosting control panel.
• You can use browser to connect via FTP. (example: ftp://example.com/)

If you need to edit files you can use the editor from wp-admin > Appearance > Editor or edit the file in your computer and upload via FTP.

Install:

You Should Know

• Older versions of themes that don’t use MegaFrame can’t be migrated automatically by WordPress and it will most likely produce bugs and errors resulting in a completely broken theme. Instead, you should not migrate but rather install it from scratch.
• Any theme customization you did in the past will have to be manually re-applied to the theme, most if not all the classes and IDs were changed so any old CSS backups you had will have to be re-considered/changed.

How to Install

1. Upload

• Manually: Extract the theme folder into the folder wp-content/themes/ so it should look like wp-content/themes/Theme-NameYou can use FTP to do that, see section FTP & File Handling.
• Automatically: Navigate to wp-admin > Appearance > Themes > Install Themes > Upload (example: example.com/wp-admin/theme-install.php?tab=upload)
  From this section you can select the .zip file and it will upload and unpack it.

2. Activate

Navigate to wp-admin > Appearance > Themes, look up for your theme and activate it.

3. Ready

Your theme is now installed and activated, you can navigate to your homepage to see how it looks.

MegaPanel:

Under wp-admin > Appearance a new section will appear called Theme-Name Options.
example: wp-admin > Appearance > Theme-Name Options.

Thumbnails:

TimThumb

TimThumb script is great for cropping images and keeping correct aspect ratios.

Availability: By default timthumb script is not installed in the theme but it can be enabled (from MegaPanel) in the PRO version of the theme.

Permissions: You’ll need to set permissions 777 to the CACHE folder located at /Theme-Name/images/cache
You can use FTP to do that, see section FTP & File Handling.

External Thumbnails: If the thumbnail is hosted at external location other then your website, the TimThumb script will fail to execute and the thumbnail won’t be shown, this is a security measure that was added by the author.
To fix that you’ll need to manually set the setting ALLOW_EXTERNAL to TRUE at /Theme-Name/thumb.php
You can use FTP to do that, see section FTP & File Handling.

Thumbnail Cropping/Stretching

Please note that if the image sizes are lower then needed then:

• TimThumb Disabled: Thumbnails will be stretched via CSS and the aspect ratio wont remain the same.
• TimThumb Enabled: Thumbnails will be cropped to fit the size by zooming the image in and keeping the aspect ratio the same.

Thumbnail Components:

There are several components that generate thumbnails:

• SlideShow (Large Thumbnails)
• Post Preview (Medium Thumbnails)
• Widgets (Small Thumbnails)

How Thumbnails are Generated:

Except for SlideShow thumbnails that in certain themes can be specified in a custom way, all other thumbnails are generated in the following order when they are being pulled from posts/pages:

1. Checks for a video thumbnail, if custom field is present (see below). If not present moves to #2.
2. When you are creating a new post/page or editing one, then you will have a special box that will allow you to upload a thumbnail, this section might be hidden and can be enabled through the top right button called “screen options”.
3. If you don’t use the box in #2 then you can create a custom field with the key name “thumbnail”, and the value as the full URL to the image.
4. If you don’t use a custom field as described in #3, then a first image from your post will be automatically retrieved and used as a thumbnail (assuming that your post/page has images embedded in it).
5. Otherwise if all fails, a default thumbnail image will be displayed.

Video Thumbnails

This feature supports only youtube.com, and allows you to embed youtube videos to act as thumbnails in the following way:

• When you write or edit a post/page create a custom field with the key name video_embed and value as the following ID:If your video would be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkDo…eature=related
  Then the ID would be nGkDouBVoLs
  The ID comes right after v= and after it there can be nothing or a &.
  example: watch?v=nGkDouBVoLs&feature=related

Widgets:

Using Custom Widgets:
In this theme you will find 6+ custom widgets created by AliveThemes.com, you can drag and drop them across the theme. Widgets panel can be found from wp-admin >appearance > widgets. From your widgets panel all our custom widgets are on top of the default widgets and can be instantly spotted. There are 3 main widget areas, Right sidebar, footer sidebar and homepage sidebar. The footer sidebar is divided to left, middle and right columns.

If you use the “follow us” widget you should not forget to setup your twitter, facebook or other social media ID’s, this setup can be done from Apperance > Famous Options > Styling > Global Elements. Other widgets has built in options and can be tweaked directly via widgets panel.

Design Editing:
This theme design is made with PhotoShop, those are the .PSD files. If you have upgraded this theme, then you will get access to the .PSD files
You will need the PhotoShop software to open these files, Visit Adobe.com for more information on acquiring PhotoShop.
If you are trying to edit the logo of the theme, then you have two options, one is to use the default text logo, which is auto generated by the theme. The second option is to choose to use an image logo (do so from the theme options interface) and then you can upload your logo from there.

CSS Editing:
When you are editing CSS files, it’s better to keep the original CSS files untouched, the reason behind this is because when you upgrade the theme, you will override old files with the new ones and your changes will be lost. Instead, copy the lines you want to edit from the CSS file to the file named /css/custom.css in your theme directory. So for example your line would look something like this:
.anything {
Here can be the stuff you’ll be editing.
}
Remember, “anything” can start with a dot, a # sign or other stuff as a prefix; it doesn’t matter as long as you keep the structure intact. It also must start with a “{“ and end with a “}”.

File Structure:
Directories:
MegaFrame: Gigantic (sort of) framework that powers the theme with its own functions, you don’t need to touch this folder except if you want to change core elements.
in it you will find:
/inc folder for functions and classes that operate for the frame on the front end (ajax as well)
/JS: JavaScript files that are used with the theme but doesn’t come with WordPress itself.
/lang for language support
/megapanel all the functions and elements that power the megapanel are in this folder.
/widget this folder contains widget builders for the back end
/xml xml files for elements such as the flash slideshow
global.php the main file that executes megaframe.

/Theme: elements that are executed in the front end and are subject to design changes, for example, the slideshow feature, the toolbar area, popup windows, and also widgets folder for the front end construction of the widgets look.

/CSS: All CSS for easy access, file names reflecting the purpose of the CSS, for example blog.css is a CSS for Blog section only (where applicable – index, archive, single, page, and search).
/Images: All images of the theme, except images for theme options interface. Also has sub folders for skins as skin0 and skin1

Files:
404: Not found 404 page.
Archive: Index page for archives display.
category: Index page for categories display.
Comments: A file that constructs the comments, being called from single.php and page.php (actually this file only builds the comments wrappers and calls for comments class fallback mFrameDisplay > comment.

Footer: A file for the footer section of the theme

Functions: File responsible for theme default options (all options, but also skin options)
Header: The head part of the theme
Home: file for the front page (this is just a redirect file no need to touch it)
Index: The main file for indexing, in our case used for homepage as well (being called from home.php if needed)
Loop: a loop file for post content/excerpt , loaded within index, search, archives, category files.
Page: The template file for the pages in WordPress.
Search: a search index template, used for search results.
Searchform: a file for the search form construction.
SideBar: the template part for the sidebar area
Single: the template for single posts
Style: Nothing in here much except some theme data for WordPress utilization. The CSS files are being auto called by MegaFrame/global.php
tag: same as archive.php but for tags

template-blog.php Page template place holder that calls index.php to display it.
template-home.php front page template, being called also from home.php
template-onecolumn.php full width template for pages.

Sample Data

Latest sample data is at https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/demo/test-data.2011-01-17.xml