Ready to get started?
Follow along with this guide to get Tracks installed and fully customized on your site. Every step is explained in detail, so you'll have no trouble even if you're new to WordPress.
Table of Contents
Install Tracks
If you don't have Tracks installed on your site already, this is the first step before you can begin customizing.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to install & activate Tracks on your site:
Tutorial: Install & Activate Tracks
Import the demo site data
Are you launching a brand new site?
Importing the content from the Tracks demo site is a great way to jumpstart your customizations. It can be much easier to customize and tweak the design of the site after you've got some content to work with.
Follow this tutorial to access the demo data download and learn how to import it into your site:
Tutorial: Import the Demo Site Data
Customize Your Menu
By default, the menu will contain all of the published Pages on your site, listed in alphabetical order.
As you publish new Pages, they will simply be added to the menu. You can create a custom menu to change this.
With a custom menu, you get full control over which Pages are included, and in what order. In fact, you can even add links to Categories, Posts, or anything else you'd like.
The tutorial below will show you how to:
- create a custom menu
- reorder menu items
- add submenus
- and more...
Tutorial: How to Customize Your Menu
Add Your Logo
When you installed WordPress, you were asked to provide a "site title". That same site title is displayed at the top of your site, in the header.
With Tracks, you can replace the site title with your logo instead. If you don't have a logo, you can skip to the next section. Otherwise, follow this tutorial to learn how to upload your logo:
Tutorial: How to Add Your Logo
Note: You can edit your site title any time from the General Settings menu, or in the "Site Identity" section in the Customizer
Add Your Social Icons
There are two types of social icons:
- Icons that link to your profile
- Icons/buttons that share your content
Most themes, including Tracks, have a way to add social icons that link to your social profiles. This provides a stylish way to link to your profiles, so your visitors can find and follow you on your social networks. These icons are usually included in the header or in a widget.
Social sharing icons/buttons are added to make it easier to share your content. They are typically added with plugins, like Simple Share Buttons Adder . These icons are usually included before and/or after Post content.
As mentioned, Tracks provides a simple way to add icons in the header linking to your social profiles. Follow this tutorial to add yours:
Tutorial: How to Add Your Social Icons
Choose Posts Per Page
When customizing the blog, you may want to change how many posts are displayed per page on your blog. This option is set to 10 by default, but can be increased or decreased from the settings menu.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to change the post count per page on the blog:
Tutorial: How to Change the Number of Posts on Your Front Page
Add Featured Images
In WordPress, every Post and Page can have a Featured Image. It's simply a way of assigning one image as the primary image for the Post/Page.
Tracks places Featured Images next to the post content on the Blog, and above the post title on Post pages.
If you'd like to add Featured Images to your Posts, follow this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Add Featured Images
Customize Your Post Excerpts
When you first install WordPress, your Posts will show on the homepage. The page with your Posts can also be referred to as the Blog or Posts Page.
With Tracks, each Post on the Blog will include a 15 word excerpt using the first 15 words in the Post.
Tracks gives you a lot of control over what text you want shown in the excerpts. To learn how to fully customize your Post excerpts, check out this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Customize Post Excerpts
Edit the Post Meta Display
Your Posts display some information besides the title, image, and excerpt. They also include the date they were published, the author who published them, and the category they were published in.
This information is called the Post Meta because it tells you more about the Post.
With Tracks, you control what Post Meta to show, and what to hide. For instance, you can hide the author name, but leave the date and category displayed.
If you want to customize which Post Meta information shows, check out this tutorial:
Tutorial: Edit the Post Meta Display
Edit the Post Author Box
When viewing a post, you'll see a box after the content with some info about the post author. By default, it might look kind of empty, but here's what it can look like when completely filled out:
If you want to learn how to customize, or simply remove the author box, follow this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Customize the Post Author Info
Change the Comment Display
Comments are shown on Posts, Pages, and Attachments (image pages) after the content.
The trouble is, the comment section is really tough to hide with WordPress' default options. This is why a feature was added to Tracks to hide comments by page type.
With Tracks' comment control feature, you can hide comments on all Posts, Pages, and/or Attachments. If you'd like to hide comments on one of those page types, follow this tutorial:
Tutorial: Change the Comment Display
Add Widgets
Widgets can be used to add any type of content you want to your site. WordPress includes a handful of default widgets, such as categories, most recent posts, and tags. However, there are thousands of other widgets available.
You can add any type of content imaginable with widgets, like Youtube videos, weather forecasts, product reviews, tweets, and more.
Note: widgets are added to your site as "plugins". You can add new widgets through the Plugins menu in your dashboard.
In order to add a widget to your site, it has to be placed into a "widgetized" area of the site. Tracks has three widget areas:
- After Post Content
- After Page Content
- Footer
Follow these tutorials to learn how to add widgets to the widget areas in Tracks:
Tutorials: Add Widgets to Posts & Add Widgets to the Footer
Edit Your Footer Text
The footer text is the text found way at the bottom of the site. By default, it reads, "Tracks WordPress Theme by Compete Themes".
While we appreciate the link to our site, you are free to replace the footer text with whatever you'd like. Follow this tutorial to change the footer text:
Tutorial: How to Change the Footer Text
Conclusion
You're finished customizing Tracks!
If there's anything else you want to change about your site that wasn't covered, check for an article about it in the sidebar to the left. Otherwise, there's probably a free plugin available for it on wordpress.org .
Check out our WordPress Resources page to find awesome plugins and tools we recommend, and if you want to try using CSS to customize Tracks, we've got some pre-written snippets for you to get started with in the Tracks CSS Snippets Collection.
Upgrade Today: Want even more features and flexibility for your site? Upgrade instantly with Tracks Pro.