Features
The Tradesman Theme has a number of built in features that will hopefully provide you with everything you need to showcase your work and promote your business. This is quick guide to some of the theme features.
Site Setup
The theme has a feature that runs a number of setup features on activation. You don’t have to use this but if it’s a new site it can save you some time. Details on the setup process.
The Homepage
The default homepage displays a grid of images that link to your posts along with the featured image for each post.
Contact Forms
There is contact form built into the theme. You can add it to any of your posts and pages and widgets. All the options for the form are in the Theme Settings. To access these go to Dashboard > Appearance > Theme Settings > Contact Form.
The contact form has an autoresponder and keeps a record of all messages in the database.
See an example of a contact form
Testimonials
Testimonials are an excellent way to demonstrate your competence. This theme has a built in set of tools letting you create, edit and display testimonials as well as an option to let your clients add their own testimonial.
Search Engine Optimisation
Optimizing a WordPress site for the search engines isn’t that complicated. Most of the key components are built into the application already, the only thing that’s missing is ability to edit the page titles and descriptions. And this theme does that for you.
You could install a plugin but that’s a bit of a large sledgehammer to crack a very small nut. Which is why this theme has got SEO built into the core. All you need to do is activate the options in the Customizer and every post and page will have an editing box to add your page titles and descriptions.
Analytics
If you want analytics (to track your visitors) go to the Theme Settings and click the Analytics tabs. Paste your analytics code into the box and select the location. I use clicky.com and they want their code in the footer. Google prefers their code in the header.
Toggles
There may be occasions when you just want to display a set of headers on the page and have people click or touch to reveal the content.
How to add toggles to your site
Recent Posts
Sometimes useful to show recent posts on a page. You can do this with a shortcode or a Gutenberg block. Demo here.
Social Media
Everybody likes social media. And lots of people like to see what you put on your social media pages. There are plenty of plugins you can use but if you want a simple way to display SM buttons on your site then this theme can do it for you.
It’s all done in the Customizer. Just go to the Social Media panel and choose the type of button you want. Then add the URLs of your SM pages and save.
To add the buttons to a widget area or sidebar site use the Widget. To add the buttons to a post or page use the [[social]] shortcode to get this:
[social]It doesn’t get much simpler than that!
The Homepage Widget
You can add widget area on the top of the homepage. Put whatever you want in the widget but experience has shown that a short introduction with some key links is the best option. The colours and background image are set in the customizer.
The Call to Action Widget
Another useful widget that you can add to your site. You can see an example of this on the homepage or a the bottom of every page. You can edit the text and add a link for the button. The colours are set in the customizer. The widget is set to display on the right of the widget area. For this to function correctly make sure the CTA widget is the first widget in the widget area.
The Page Bottom
This is a widget area you can add to the bottom of every post and page. Useful as a call to action.