Asona WordPress Theme Documentation

Welcome to Asona documentation. Asona is a Creative Minimal Blog and Magazine WordPress Theme.

This theme is extremely begginer friendly but if there is something that isn't in the documentation or isn't clear to you go to theme support tab on themeforest.net. and ask your question.

Demo site https://demo.apalodi.com/landing/asona/

Theme Setup

Theme Installation

Downloading from ThemeForest and unziping it, you will find the following files:

There are two ways to install the theme:

  1. Uploading the theme into wp-admin
    • Login on your admin panel.
    • Go to Appearance -> Install Themes
    • Upload -> and "Select file" which will open the File Upload dialog window.
    • Browse to the folder where you have asona.zip and upload it.
    • Now you can activate the theme.
  2. Uploading the theme on custom hosting (FTP)
    • Connect to your FTP using a FTP software, example Filezilla.
    • Unzip the asona.zip file on your computer.
    • Upload the extracted asona theme folder into wp-content / themes in your wordpress installation.
    • Login on your wordpress admin panel.
    • Go to Appearance and activate Asona.

Child Theme

Note: the main theme needs to be installed first.

If you are planning to do several CSS changes or templates changes, it is highly recommendable to do these changes inside a Child Theme, so you will never loose these changes. Child Theme makes the updates easiers.

To change a template copy template from parent theme to child theme folder templates. Child theme templates override parent theme templates.

Child Theme is installed the same way a normal theme is installed.

Note: The customizer settings are saved for the theme. If you are making changes in the parent theme and then install the child theme you will need to do the customizations again.

Install Required Plugins

After you have installed the theme you will notice a box on the top asking you to install some plugins. These plugins are needed for you to get all the features this theme offers. These plugins are optional and you don't need to install them.

Select all plugins, choose the bulk option "Install" and click "Apply".

When all plugins are installed you will need to go back to the list and activate all the plugins.

When you are done click "Return to dashboard".

Import Demo

This step is fully optional, if you already have a working site don't import this demo content.

If there are some problems with import you should update to the latest theme version or maybe our site is down.

To import the demo data it is required that you have already installed the plugin "One click Demo Import" from the last step.

Click the button. Import process can take a couple of minutes. It takes some time to download all images.

Theme Updates

You will need to install the Envato Market plugin first. See install required plugins. When the plugin is installed a new option will be added to your admin panel.

You will need to generate a personal token, insert it and save it. After that you will get a list of your themes and plugins you bought. When there is a new version available you will be notified.

Customizations

Theme Options

Note: The customizer settings are saved for the theme. If you are making changes in the parent theme and then install the child theme you will need to do the customizations again.

All the theme customizations are done inside WordPress customizer.

Theme options are under "Theme Options" section.

Change Colors

To change the accent color go to "Color" section and then just pick your color.

Social Icons

To add Social icons go to "Theme Options" and "Social Icons" section and add new icons.

Share Buttons

You will need to install the AP Share Buttons plugin first. See install required plugins. When the plugin is installed a new option will be added to the customizer.

To add share button to your posts go to "AP Share Buttons" section and select the buttons.

Features

Featured Posts

When you have installed the "AP Featured Posts" plugin you will get the option to feature some posts. This option works similiar to sticky option but it's better.

You can feature unlimited number of posts and we are going to load only the last few (you don't need to go back and unfeature posts). We can make better and faster custom queries with these featured posts. They work on categories and tags meaning we can load featured posts from only a specific category.

Just by installing the plugin the featured posts are shown in featured section on homepage and below single posts. Also there is a widget which you can add in sidebars.

Popular Posts

Installing the "AP Popular Posts" plugin you will get the option to show your most popular posts. They work automatically by saving your posts views and then calculating which posts has most views in some period (1day, 3 days or 7 days).

Just by installing the plugin the popuplar posts are shown in featured section on homepage and below single posts.

There are also some settings for the popular posts. E.g. do you want to trigger view with ajax (if you have some cache plugin you need to enable this option).

Newsletter Subscription

Note: You will need to have MailChimp account because you will need to enter your API key for this to work.

You will need to install MailChimp for WordPress plugin first. Then under settings create a new form.

Copy this code to make the form look like on the demo. Please note that you need to change the url for terms page.


            <p>
              Get the latest news from lifestyle, technology, business and travel.
            </p>

            <p class="mc4wp-form-row">
                <input type="email" name="EMAIL" placeholder="Your email address" required />
                <input type="submit" value="Subscribe" />
            </p>

            <p>
                <label>
                    <input name="AGREE_TO_TERMS" type="checkbox" value="1" required=""> I have read and agree to the <a href="https://example.com/terms" target="_blank">terms & conditions</a>
                </label>
            </p>

After that ad the widget to the Posts Sidebar

Adaptive Images

By default the theme generates in the background several image sizes only for the featured images. Width: 1916px, 1520px, 1125px, 728px, 480px

Your featured images should be at least 1916x1150 for best quality on all devices

By generating several sizes we don't load the 1520px wide image on mobile devices. We are loading the 480px or 1125px on some bigger devices with higher pixel density and that is making the site loading faster.

Lazy Loading Media

This theme is using it's own lazy loading script and it's not advised to have other plugins for lazy loading. You should disable them or just the feature for lazy loading.

If you want to use some other plugin for that you can disable theme lazy loading by going to the "Customizer" > "Theme Options" > "Media" and disable lazy loading.

Performance

This theme is using internal caching system to speed up some parts of the site to lower the number of SQL queries.

To speed up the frontend we are lazy loading images on user scroll.

And with the help of AP Performance plugin (included with this theme) we are deferring javascript scripts and disabling some unnecessary scripts.

You can disable emoji and embed scripts if you don't need them.

Tagmap

To show the tagmap on a page you will need to set the "Page Template" to "Tagmap".

Posts Excerpt

To add excerpt below post title you will need to fill the "Excerpt" option on posts or pages.

Change the theme texts

To change the theme and WordPress text you can use some translation plugins like.