Steadfast Installation Guide

This guide will walk you through the installation, configuration and customization for the Steadfast WordPress theme for churches.

Installation

Installing WordPress

We won’t cover the installation process of WordPress itself here, but if you need help, you can check out this article on the WordPress Codex.

Installing Steadfast

Log in to the WordPress admin and browse to Appearance → Themes. Click Add New then Upload Theme. Upload the .zip file of theme you were given at checkout. Once uploaded, activate.

Required Plugins

Once activated, you’ll be presented with a notice in the WordPress admin that lists plugins that are required and recommended for the theme.

Church Theme Content adds the Events, Locations, People and Sermons content types
Envato WordPress Toolkit will allow you to automatically update your theme every time we release a new version.
Image Widget adds a new widget to WordPress that displays an image with an optional title and description. These work especially well on the home page.
Subtitles allows you to add subtitles to your pages.

Install and activate each of the plugins.

Jetpack

Several of Steadfast’s features are powered by Jetpack, a plugin that extends and enhances the functionality of WordPress. If you do not already have Jetpack installed, a notice will appear in the WordPress admin that will guide you through installing Jetpack and activating its features that are used by Steadfast. Follow the on-screen instructions.

WordPress Configuration

Enable Pretty Permalinks

Browse to Settings → Permalinks. Select Day and Name and save.

Content Configuration

Pages

We now need to create pages for the front (home) page, posts (blog) page, events, locations, people, and sermons. To create these pages, browse to Pages → Add New in the WordPress admin. These pages can have whatever title and (optional) subtitle you want.

Here’s how to configure them:

Page	Content	Template
Front	A short blurb welcoming visitors your site	Home
Posts	empty	Default
Events	empty	Events
Locations	empty	Locations
People	empty	People
Sermons	empty	Sermons

Menus

Browse to Appearance → Menus in the WordPress admin. From here you can create menus with pages, post categories, custom links, or really any type of content you like. Create two menus:

Main Menu: This will be displayed in the header of your site and as expanding dropdown from the top on mobile. Enable this menu on the Main Menu theme location.
Social Menu: This menu powers the social icons and should be comprised of custom links linking to your social networks. For example, for a Twitter icon you would add a custom link to this menu with the URL http://twitter.com/username and the link text “Twitter.” Enable this menu in the Social Menu theme location.

Note that the Social Menu requires Jetpack be activated and correctly as per the instructions above.

Widgets

Browse to Appearance → Widgets in the WordPress admin. Here you will find a number of available widgets alongside a list of available widget areas. Steadfast features two widget areas that only display on the Home page and three widget areas that are always displayed in the site footer.

You can configure these however you like, but we’ve found that Home page widget areas look great with a single Image Widget in each. The footer widget areas are great for basically anything you want to put in them. Experiment and find a combination you like.

Theme Customization

Now it’s time to customize Steadfast. To this, browse to Appearance → Customize in the WordPress admin. Here you’ll be presented with a list of customization options alongside a live preview of the site, so you can see how your changes affect the site before saving.

Site Title, Tagline, and Logo

From here you configure the title and tagline of your site, as well as the logo and icon. If uploaded, the custom logo will replace the text version of your site’s title in the header. The site icon will be used a favicon and mobile touch icon.

Note that the logo option requires Jetpack be activated and correctly as per the instructions above.

Colors

You customize Steadfast’s color scheme from this panel.

Header Image

From here you can customize the image that will be displayed as the header background on pages that do not have a featured image set.

Background Image

This setting allows you to upload a custom background image for the page.

Static Front Page

This panel is important — it’s where you configure your front (home) page and posts (blog) pages. Under “Front page displays” check A static page. Under “Front page” select the Home page we created during the Content Configuration step. Do the same for the “Posts page” option.

Typography

Here you can your site’s typography by choosing from a selection of dozens of high-quality Google webfonts.

Theme Options

This panel has a few additional settings. They are:

Full Width: This allows you to “unbox” the site from its constrained width and make it the full width of the browser window. Note that enabling this will effectively hide any background color or image settings you may have configured.
Sermons: Show feed link: This will enable the display of a link to the sermons podcast feed link on the Sermons page.
Sermons: iTunes URL: If you have an iTunes podcast setup for your sermons feed, you can paste the URL here and a link will be displayed on the Sermons page.