Firstly, all demo packs live in “the cloud”. By saying this, we mean that all the images and configuration files are actually being downloaded from different servers to your site and then processed, so if you are using a local install with development purposes and your internet connection fails or has a micro-cut, then the demo import process can finish without success.

Secondly, the demo import process consumes server resources, because it gets files from the cloud (like images, configuration files and more) and processes them in order to perfectly match your new site like the one on the actual demo site. And this consumes server resources, so if your site is on a shared server with limited resources it can also fail.

One Click Demo Import

Requirements

The one click demo importer need to meet the following requirements in order to work correctly. Please have in mind that you can check these by going to your system status page. If you don’t meet the requirements you will need to contact your hosting provider in order to make the changes.

• WordPress 4.8 or higher
• MySQL 5.6 or higher
• PHP 5.6 or higher
• PHP Memory Limit: 256 MB or higher
• PHP Time Limit: 300 seconds or higher
• PHP Maximum POST Size: 32 MB or higher
• PHP Maximum Input Variables: 3000 or higher
• PHP Remote GET: Enabled
• Xdebug: Disabled

Troubleshooting

If you meet all the requirements and you are pretty sure there are no micro-cuts on your internet connection, please be sure that the mod_security Apache module is not enabled. You can ask your hosting provider about it.

The other option, when you already tested all the solutions above is to manually import the demos.

Manual Import

If you still have trouble installing the demo with the one click importer you can try to do it manually. Please have in mind that you will need to have the required plugins installed and active. After that, all you need to do is to follow these simple steps.

Import The Demo XML file and The Theme Options.

1. On your WordPress Dashboard, go to Tools → Import → WordPress.
2. Install the WordPress Importer.
3. Browse for the XML file and import it.
4. All of the demo content should now be uploaded to your site and ready to use.

Import Theme Options

1. On your WordPress Dashboard, go to Smart → Theme Options
2. Click the “Cloud” button, located beside the “Save Options” button.
3. Browse for the JSON file and import it.
4. All of the demo options should now be uploaded to your site.

Set Up the Front Page

1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard → Settings → Reading panel.
2. Set ‘Front page displays:’ to ‘a static page’ and choose the home page.
3. Save changes.

Configure The Navigation Menu

1. Go to your WordPress Dashboard  → Appearance  → Menus
2. Assign the navigation menu to a theme location. This is really important because it will be the location in which the menu you’ve created and edited will be appearing.
3. Save Changes.

XML Demo Packs

The following ZIP files contain both the XML files and JSON for the site contents and configuration.

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Page Builder

Smart is a powerful, stylish and completely customizable multi-purpose WordPress theme. It comes packaged with an implementation of an extremely flexible and popular WordPress Theme Page Builder and an extensive and powerful set of features and functionality.

It has an advanced drag-and-drop page builder together with a robust collection of elements that let you create truly unique and dynamic pages from the ground up, giving you complete control of the layout and design of your site without needing to learn code.

There are no limitations as to how builder elements can be customized and arranged, giving anyone the ability to create truly dynamic websites with ease.

Demo Importer

The Demo Importer let you the any of the Smart packed demo content and choose from a selection of hundreds of amazing pre-designed layouts.

The theme gives you complete creative control to build countless layouts any type of mobile-friendly website you want. Even for navigation layouts.

WooCommerce Integration

It also comes with Ecommerce Integration, including WooCommerce support, a couple of premade store layouts, and special functionalities to create a unique and complete web shop in minutes.

Responsive & Retina Ready

Responsive Design is crucial these days. Smart is responsive and the layout has been designed with mobile devices in mind. No matter how you use it your website will be accessible and readable on all devices.

Theme Options Panel

The powerful and intuitive theme options panel will let you customize your entire site style with a few clicks. The Theme Options Panel allows you to toggle on and off features, adjust your layout,  control colors, optimize for search engines, performance and more.

Thousands of Features

With unlimited options, and hundreds of features (like picking your own fonts, CSS animations, thousands of icons, translation and RTL support), Smart is your best ally to create a fantastic WordPress website.

Start creating with Smart

The post Meet Smart, The Most Versatile WordPress Theme Ever appeared first on NiceThemes.

At the same time we’ve been including some new features with a renovated look. We hope you like them!

Stay tuned for some awesomeness coming soon

The post Hello New Site! appeared first on NiceThemes.

Distraction Free Writing Mode

Focus on your writing, and nothing else. This new feature enables efficient switching between normal writing mode and distraction free editor for WordPress bloggers to ensure hassle-free and productive blogging capabilities. It’s something similar to the current full screen distraction free writing mode, which lacks the necessary features and tools such as quick access to all meta boxes within a single toolbar included in this new “Distraction Free Writing Mode”.

WordPress 4.1 Distraction Free Writing Mode

Twenty Fifteen – The New Default Theme

The nicest WordPress default theme so far. Perhaps the most significant leap toward beautifying the WordPress platform for end users is the inclusion of the Twenty Fifteen theme by default in the 4.1 release. The blog-focused theme is developed with a particular attention to the typography, with the main navigation menu and logo within the sidebar, further emphasising on the content. It comes with a variety of different color schemes and it is really flexible when it comes to customisation. You can change colors, backgrounds for different sections and much more.

The Twenty Fifteen theme, customised with a nice background image

Twenty Fifteen comes with a variety of different color schemes

Select2 inclusion for Drop-down lists

WordPress 4.1 will offer to include Select2 directly from core. Select2 is a popular script to create drop down lists that supports searching, remote data sets, and infinite scrolling of results. If you’re a WooCommerce user, you may have seen this popular select tool within the options panel, or during checkout for the country selection. One of the good features of this module is that the contents for the drop-down list can be loaded to the browser only when required and will therefore save chunks from the overall weight of the website. This new feature might be invisible to users, but for sure will benefit both: developers and users.

Install New Language Packs from the Dashboard

2014 has been the year in which non-english WordPress downloads surpased english downloads.WordPress adoption is expanding exponentially across the globe, and the upcoming iteration will include additional language installation packs available via dashboard. This functionality will further shrink the language barrier to WP adoption in a bid to improve convenience for end users. With the 4.1 installed, you can select from a range of language options available in the Site Language section of the Admin area.

You can install new language packs directly from the dashboard

Automated Image Formatting

Another step forward on the quest for simplifying the process of writing for everybody. Often, WordPress newbies find formatting images an arduous task due to the complex image alignment functionality for earlier versions of the platform. WordPress 4.1 boasts inline image editing capabilities to automate the process of image formatting and alignment with a few quick clicks and without having to open the image editor, but inline.

WordPress 4.1 Image Formatting Tool

New Session Management Options

In context of the ongoing security concerns haunting WP users, the WordPress 4.1 version will introduce a new session management function to monitor and keep track of user session activities. The system will show valuable information such as log-in time, originating IP address and session expiry date and time. Users can also log out all session from a single interface in the new beta version.

WordPress 4.1 Session Manager

If you are willing to test the new version, you can use the Beta Tester plugin to install WP 4.1 Beta before the final release, which is planned for December 16th. The upcoming iteration promises new capabilities and features that are relevant to average WordPress users, developers and should improve productivity with the most popular CMS and blogging platform.

The post What’s new in WordPress 4.1? appeared first on NiceThemes.

You must install WordPress before installing the theme.

WordPress.org Benefits

• It’s free and super easy to use.
• You own your data. You are in full control. Your site will NOT be turned off because someone decides that it is against their terms of service (as long as you are not doing something illegal). You are in control.
• You can upload and use plugins.
• You can upload custom themes. Modify theme files (not just styles) if needed.
• You can make money from it by using your own ads and doing things your way.
• Custom Analytics and Tracking

About WordPress.org

On this site, you can download and install a software script called WordPress. To do this you need a web host who meets the minimum requirements and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. There is also a service called WordPress.com which lets you get started with a new and free WordPress-based blog in seconds, but varies in several ways and is less flexible than the WordPress you download and install yourself. Our products are not compatible with WordPress.com

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In this section, we will cover how to create these type of contents (along with Portfolio Projects) and at the same time, we will also explain the entire array of extra options you have access to with Smart.

To get started adding a new page to your WordPress site, find the Pages menu in your site Dashboard navigation menu. Then click “Add New”. The WordPress editor for pages looks almost identical to the post editor and the portfolio projects. Except for a few different fields.

1. Find the Pages/Posts/Portfolio menus in your Dashboard navigation menu.
2. Click the “Add New” option.
3. Insert any title, select the attributes, and the different contents you would like for your page/post/portfolio. If you want to use the Page Builder, click “Backend Editor”.

Creating a New Page

The post Creating Pages & Posts appeared first on NiceThemes.

We would like to present Flatbase, the perfect theme to provide Support and interact with your customers.

It combines a Knowledge Base, FAQs, Forums (bbPress integration) and a ton more great features.

A nicely crafted all-in-one solution to create your own support platform. Its clean and detail oriented design is the perfect frame to provide support knowledge, informing and teaching your users how to master your product.

It is plenty of features:

KNOWLEDGE BASE

A nicely crafted Knowledge Base to help users find solutions.

BBPRESS INTEGRATION

A community forum powered by bbPress, perfect for your interaction with customers.

AJAX BASED LIVE SEARCH

Get answers to your users fast with the built-in live search feature.

FAQ PAGES

Add accordion style FAQs or list style FAQs to your site.

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE

Create your unique style with the extensive design options and features.

LIVE CUSTOMIZER

Preview your customization with the live customizer.

DIFFERENT LAYOUTS

Flatbase includes two different layouts: boxed and full width.

FONTS

Preview and pick your own fonts, including google web fonts.

TRANSLATION READY

Translate your theme by using Poedit

RESPONSIVE LAYOUT

Flatbase is fully responsive, so it looks great on any device.

RETINA READY

Your site will look amazing and fresh no matter the display your user is on.

OPTIONS PANEL

Take advantage of the robust options panel and easily create your unique site.

GALLERY

We have incorporated the gallery template for this theme. It’s amazingly neat, powered by the famous script fancyBox.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZED & CLEAN CODE

This theme was crafted, taking great care on coding. Search engines appreciate this.

Resuming:

• FAQ Templates – Accordion and List style
• Live Search on HomePage
• Knowledge Base.
• Reading time – Display the time that it gets to read an article.
• Likes – Your users will be able to like your articles.
• Dynamic Widgetized Spaces
• bbPress Support
• Unlimited Styles
• SEO Optimized
• Blog Masonry
• Ajax Contact Template
• Full width or boxed layout
• Dynamic Widgetized spaces.
• Fabulous Options panel
• Responsive Design
• Retina Ready
• Live customization
• Translation ready
• Various Custom Widgets

Customization has never been so easy with the live customizer integration.

The post Flatbase, a Knowledge Base & FAQ WordPress theme. appeared first on NiceThemes.

On our previous theme releases – since the framework version 1.0.5 – we’ve included an option to pick the WordPress native image functions to handle images, instead of the timthumb script. The intention of this was to prepare the field for our next step, which will be removing timthumb from all our themes.

So we highly recommend that, in case you’re still managing images with timthumb on your site, you update the option to the WordPress native functionalities in order to prepare for the upcoming changes in both theme and framework versions.

To achieve this, first make sure that your theme is up to date. Then, just go to your Theme Options Panel and find the “Images” section on the left hand menu.

Pick the WP Dynamic Resizing and the Image cropping option.

If you get to see that your site’s images look awkward, you must regenerate the thumbnails. You can simply get this done by using the “Regenerate thumbnails” plugin.

The post Upcoming changes, goodbye Timthumb appeared first on NiceThemes.

Excerpts allow users to display more content in less space. It is particularly useful for content rich websites such as news or magazine sites where the website owners would want to showcase more content on the front page with links to full articles. Examples of places that generally use these are RSS feeds, archived pages, and search pages. They can also be automated depending on the way they are used. Automated excerpts generally take part of the post with the specified limit of the number of words within that post. The default limit is 55 words, but this can be changed. Generally, if one has not been manually supplied for a post, one is automatically generated with the default word limit of 55 words.

In summary, there are three types of excerpts: Manual Excerpt which is entered into the post separately, Automated Excerpt which is generated from post content, and <!--more--> tag excerpt which uses the content up to the specified part where the tag is inserted.

The Excerpt Box

What if I don’t see the Excerpt Box?

Be sure that you have it active in your “Screen Options” section. Look at the top right part of your page, toggle the Screen Options Panel by giving a click and see that “The Excerpt” checkbox is checked.

Screen Options Settings for Posts. The Excerpt must be clicked.

Source: WPBeginner.

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Smart Settings When Editing a Page.

When creating or editing a single page/post/portfolio, at the bottom (below the content box) of the admin page you will find the “Smart Options”.

These are mainly the same options that are in the general Theme Options, and they are available for that specific individual page/posts/portfolio you are currently adding or editing.

So, by changing these you will be only affecting that specific page/post/portfolio.

When you set an option to “Inherit” or “Default”, it will be inheriting or having the default behaviour set in the Theme Options Panel.

Options

There are 5 groups:

• Header: You will find all the Header & Navigation related Options.
• Title Bar: You will be able to customize the way the Title Bar Works for that specific page/post/portfolio.
• Content: Redefine the layout and the way the content looks.
• Sidebar: Select if you would like to have a sidebar, its position and which one.
• Footer: You will find all the Footer related options.

IMPORTANT: The Content and sidebar options will only respond if you’re building the page with the WordPress editor and not a builder like Visual Composer.

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