The Ministry Theme includes a file called “links-page.php.” This file automatically calls up the links you’ve cataloged, divides them by category, and displays the description you’ve typed in. To set it up…

1. Create a new page and title it “Links” or something that will look good in your top menu.

2. Leave the content area blank.

3. Scroll down and click on “Page Template.” You’ll see an option to select the “Links” template.

4. Publish the page.

5. Start cataloging links. That’s it!

To use the featured areas on the front page, you’ll use the Custom Fields feature of WordPress.

To use the main featured area (the wider area at the top)…

1. Create a category with any name you’d like, such as “Featured Articles.”

2. Under Admin > Manage > Categories, you will see your new category listed. Mouseover it and in the status bar of your browser, you’ll see a long URL that ends with ID=#, where # will be the unique category id.

3. Under Design > Theme Editor, you’ll see a list of files on the right. Select home.php from the list to edit it.

4. Add your featured category’s id as shown below…

5. Click “Update File.”

Add an image to your Featured Post

The square image to the left of the featured content on the front page is created using the Custom Fields feature. It’s very easy…

1. Upload an image, either using the “Add media” feature (you can insert the photo into your post, but adding it to the front page is still a separate process) or an ftp client.

2. Get the full URL to the image.

3. Under Custom Fields in the post editor, type in a Key of “Featured.” (You’ll only have to do this one time, Featured will be an available option in the drop down menu from then on.)

4. Add the URL to your image in the box to the right.

Configuring the Smaller Front Page Featured Areas

The two boxes shown on the demo are adjusted in a very similar way as the Featured Box. Decide which categories will be used in these boxes and add their category id’s in the home.php file.

The difference is that to generate the thumbnail, you’ll still use the custom fields, as above, but this time your “Key” will be “Thumbnail” instead of “Featured.” Again, you only have to enter this word once and then it becomes available in the dropdown.

1. Unzip/unpack your theme files.

2. Access your site with an FTP client.

3. Upload all theme files into the theme directory of your site, usually… www/wp-content/themes.

4. On your server, open the directory in the theme titled /plugins.

5. Move these files (1 folder and 1 file) into the plugins directory of your site, usually www/wp-content/plugins.

6. In your administration panel, go to Design and choose The Ministry Theme as your theme.

7. In your administration panel, go to Plugins and enable the 2 plugins called WPListCal (optional, but it offers a nice and easy event management tool) and Limit Posts.

That’s it. Just make sure to replace the logo – you can use our cross emblem but you’ll need some kind of graphics program to overwrite the name.

Under Settings…

1. We change the site and blog url’s to include from http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com so that it will be more compatible with many linking and directory sites. WordPress handles redirects well either way, but we like the standard www., especially since it’s probably on your business card!

2. We change the server time to reflect the local time. For us, it’s usually -6, which means that our site’s server time will be adjusted six hours behind the Greenwich meantime or, Central Standard Time.

3. We set the first day of the week to Sunday. It’s rare to see the old post calendar in a sidebar anymore, but just in case, we like Sundays!

4. We change the permalink structure. Most of the time we go with the day and name based url’s as opposed to the ?=# structure. This is important for search engines and offers a practical and nice way to catalog content by date. There are other options, but be careful to watch out for certain file names in WordPress’ system. Always have /%something%/%postname% rather than just the postname.

5. We set up certain helpful plugins. Among the standard for us:

• WP Super Cache, which creates static html versions of your pages to speed up load time.
• WP Stats, for great stats tracking (you’ll need an account at WordPress.com with an API Key).
• The All-in-One SEO Pack, which allows you to easily change the titles of pages and posts, and also allows you to “noindex” your tag, category, and archive pages. This all helps with your search engine rankings.
• XML Google Sitemaps, which creates a sitemap for Google. Sometimes we also link to it from the frontpage, but the great advantage is that the plugin submits your site to Google upon each update.
• Akismet, which filters out spam comments, which can really be harmful on a church or ministry site.

There are others we find extremely beneficial depending on the site we’re working on and we’ll blog about those on this site, but these are the plugins we consider essential.

1. Log into your domain’s control panel, usually at www.yourdomain.com/cpanel.

2. Scroll down until you see Fantastico and click it.

3. Select WordPress in the left sidebar and follow the on screen instructions for the installation process.

Other hosting providers often have fast install methods as well, but cPanel is one of the most common. If you don’t have or want to use Fantastico’s single-click install, WordPress is still extremely easy to install.

Begin by Downloading WordPress…

Then follow WordPress’ handy 5-minute install guide.

We’re directing you there because the instructions may change a bit over time. If you need help with the install, contact us. We offer WordPress installation for a $45 charge on servers already equipped with PHP, and $75 if you need the base LAMP software installed as well. But really, you can do this!

The Bible Scholar WordPress theme is a free theme designed for bloggers. It’s clean and white with green accents. It has some pretty nice features for a free theme, including a links page, an archives, page, flexible sidebar layouts, widget ready sidebars, and it’s easily skinnable with a new header, logo, color changes, etc.

View the Online Demo

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If you need customizations or just want to tell us how you’ve used the theme, contact us.