Branco is a responsive, highly customizable WordPress theme created for interior designers/bloggers. Its clean and polished design will make sure all your posts are the stars of the show. It also comes with custom color choices and numerous typographic customization options. With Branco, people will forget about the interior design magazines; your blog is going to become a go-to source of information for anyone interested in interior design.
Learn how to customize the theme to get the most out of it with the Branco WordPress theme documentation.
Branco WordPress theme documentation, step 1: Theme installation
The theme can be installed through the WordPress Admin panel.
- Log in to the WordPress Admin panel.
- Go to Appearance -> Themes.
- Click on the Add New button, at the top of the screen.
- In Add Themes screen, click on Upload Theme.
- Click on Choose theme, and then browse for theme file on your computer.
- Click on Install Now to start the install process.
- After the installation is done, click on Activate theme.
A detailed video for theme installation is available here: https://help.themeskingdom.com/how-to-install-and-setup-the-theme.
After activating the theme, you will be prompted to install the required plugins. Required plugins in the Branco WordPress theme documentation are:
JetPack
JetPack is the world popular plugin that extends WordPress features. In the Branco theme, it is used to extend galleries’ features and protection. The official documentation is available here: https://help.themeskingdom.com/jetpack-plugin/.
Kirki
Kirki is a plugin that enhances theme experience by adding useful elements in the Customizer, like image position picker, font settings and such.
Branco WordPress theme documentation, step 2: Theme demo
To set the theme as presented in our demo, you can import the demo file.
Branco WordPress theme documentation, step 3: Theme setup
Branco is set to present a blogging/magazine site.
To set up the theme, please follow the next steps:
- First, create several posts and set a featured image for each post. Group the posts in categories.
- Create some pages – go to Pages -> Add New and create two new pages – About and Contact. About and Contact pages are using the Default page template. The About page in our demo is containing larger capital letters in the two-column block. To create the same effect (this can be used with any text block), enter your text, and then switch the editor to the HTML mode. Wrap your text in an element with the class “has-drop-cap”. The first letter will be displayed larger. This can be used in posts and pages. Refer to the image below for the code. In the Contact page, you will need to insert a contact form from the JetPack.
- Leave the theme reading as is – Branco theme is displaying the latest posts on the homepage.
- Create a Primary menu: Go to Appearance -> Menus. Create a new menu with the title e.g. Primary. Add all your pages to it. To create the Follow item, add Custom Link menu item with the title Follow, and # for the link. Add links to your social profile as subitems to the Follow item. Mark the menu as Primary.
- Finally, you need to add some personal touch to the theme. Go to Appearance -> Customize.
- In the Site Identity, set your logo or add site title, and a favicon.
- Content Options: Set a blog to display excerpt, and leave other options turned on.
- Theme Settings: Set Blog layout to Shuffle.
Branco WordPress theme documentation, step 4: The Customizer
The Customizer in the Branco WordPress theme documentation allows you to modify theme visuals and settings easily. Here are the customization options in the Branco theme:
- Content Options
- Widgets
- Homepage Settings
- Theme Settings
- Color Settings
- Featured Content
- Footer Settings
- Additional CSS
- Font Settings
Site Identity
The Site Identity panel is used for setting up basic site identity:
- Logo: Site logo is an image in a .jpg, .jpeg or .png format. Suggested logo image size is 210 x 40px.
- Site Title: The name of your site. Ideal length should not exceed 20 characters. If the Site Title is longer, it will be displayed in two (or more) lines.
- Tagline: Tagline is a short description of the site, or simply a punchline of your business.
- Title and Tagline Visibility: If Display Site Title and Tagline is checked, both Site Title and Tagline will be displayed.
- Site Icon: Site Icon will be displayed in a browser tab, bookmarks or in the WordPress mobile app. The icon should be squarely-shaped, and the recommended icon size is 512 x 512px.
Header Media
Header Media in the Branco WordPress theme documentation allows you to set the video in the header instead of the featured content slider. Video is displayed in a full-screen mode. It can be either locally hosted or pulled from YouTube. Local video can cause longer loading time, because the site will load the whole video, so you will need to keep video size on optimum size. Recommended video size is 1920x1080px.
Header image will be displayed before video loads and on mobile devices – on mobile devices, video header is by default turned off by WordPress, but it can be enabled.
Header text is displayed over the video or image, and you can use HTML to style it.
Background Image
Depending on the use case, some users need to set a background image on the site. In the Background Image panel, you can set a background image. After choosing an image, you will be able to set the background behavior.
- Preset: Defines image size – Fill Screen will stretch the image to fill the whole site, Fit to the screen will cover the only visible part of the site, and Repeat will keep original image proportions, but it will repeat the image. The Custom option allows you to set background parameters manually.
- Image Positions: Tool used to define what is the starting position for the image.
- Scroll with Page: The option available only if the background image is set to Repeat. If checked, the background will scroll together with the page content.
Menus
The Customizer menu option in the Branco WordPress theme documentation allows the user to manage available menu locations, and add and remove menu items. Branco theme has two menu locations available – the Header menu, which is mostly used for the primary menu, and the Social menu. Menus can be managed from Appearance -> Menus, as well.
Content Options
The Content Options panel allows you to control the visibility of posts metadata. By enabling or disabling the options, you can show or hide dates, categories, tags, and the author for all posts. You can also control how posts will appear on the Posts page – with full content, or just as the excerpt.
Widgets
Widgets in the Branco WordPress theme documentation are useful extensions for content, which you can add to your sidebar or other widget areas. In the Widgets option in the Customizer, you can see available widgets area in the currently active theme.
Homepage Settings
Homepage Settings work the same way Reading settings in Settings -> Reading does. Homepage settings allow you to set the theme to use static homepage, or to display the latest posts.
Theme Settings
The Theme Settings panel in the Branco WordPress theme documentation controls blog layout, which can be displayed in the standard grid, or in a shuffle layout. In the shuffle layout, posts will be scattered, without the precise grid.
In Theme Settings, you can also set the featured slider appearance and autoplay. By default, the slider is displayed boxed, while you can enable the slider to appear in a full-screen.
Featured Content
Featured Content can be used to set a tag that is used for the posts to display them as the slider on the homepage.
- Tag name: Enter the tag name that you have used for the posts that you wish to appear on the homepage.
- Do not display tag in post details and tag clouds: If enabled, the tag used for the slider will not be displayed anywhere.
- Also, display tagged posts outside the Featured Content area: If enabled, posts tagged with the tag used for the slider will be displayed on all post archives pages.
- Autoplay slider: If enabled, the slider will automatically play slides.
Setting up a slider
To set up the slider:
- Go to Settings -> Reading. Select the homepage to display Your latest posts.
- Go to Posts -> Add New. Create several posts. For each post, enter the title, and set a featured image. Tag the desired posts with the same tag e.g. Featured. The tag will be used to identify and display the desired posts as a slider.
- Finally, go to Appearance -> Customize, and under Home Slider Options -> Slider – Featured Content enter the tag used for the posts.
Color Settings
Theme color settings are used to add a personal, artistic touch to the site. Lines color setting controls the color of lines on the homepage. The background color will define background color on the whole site, while other options are used for text color on the site.
Footer Settings
Footer Copyright Text: Text that will be displayed in the footer, as footer credits. You can enter basic HTML elements to create links and stylize footer text.
Branco WordPress theme documentation, step 5: Additional CSS
The Additional CSS section is used for custom CSS classes, without interfering with the theme original CSS files, or creating a child theme. These classes are always loaded first, before other stylesheets. In the Useful CSS Classes section, you can find some of the most used classes.
Font Settings
The Font Settings panel is displayed only if the Kirki Framework plugin is installed and activated. Font Settings are used to set font families and weights for global text elements 一 content, headings, and navigation. Available fonts are from Google Fonts but without the extended variants. If you need assistance on how to integrate additional variants, please submit a support ticket.
