Ready to get started?
Follow along with this guide to get Tribes 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 Tribes
If you don't have Tribes installed on your site already, this is the first step before you can begin customizing.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to install & activate Tribes on your site:
Tutorial: Install & Activate Tribes
Import the demo site data
Are you launching a brand new site?
Importing the content from the Tribes 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. Tribes keeps the menu closed on desktop and mobile devices, and it can be opened by pressing the menu button.
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 Tribes, 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, position, and resize 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 Tribes, 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 in Tribes are displayed with the menu.
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, Tribes 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.
Tribes places Featured Images neatly above the Post titles on the Blog and 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, all of your Posts will show on the homepage. The page with your Posts can also be referred to as the Blog or Posts Page.
With Tribes, each Post on the Blog will include a 25 word excerpt using the first 25 words in the Post.
Tribes 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
Customize the Post Byline
Below each post title, Tribes displays the author of the post and the date it was published.
You can hide the date and/or author with a simple setting in the Customizer.
Tutorial: How to Edit the Post Byline
Conclusion
You're finished customizing Tribes!
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, check out Tribes Pro for additional options.
Visit our WordPress Resources page to find awesome plugins and tools we recommend, and if you want to try using CSS to customize Tribes, we've got some pre-written snippets for you to get started with in the Tribes CSS Snippets Collection.
Upgrade Today: Want even more features and flexibility for your site? Upgrade instantly with Tribes Pro.