This documentation is provided for our Simple Non-Profit WordPress Theme. You may also be interested in the other free WordPress themes that we offer.
This documentation will take you through the steps of setting up your site using the Simple Non-Profit WordPress Theme.
Title the page “Home” and under “Page Attributes” select “Home” as the template. Then enter some text for the Welcome section of the homepage. Then click “publish” when you are done.
Then click “add new” again and add a page title “Events” and select the “Events” template. No content/text needs to be added to this page. Click publish when you are done.
Then click “add new” again and add a page title “News” and leave it as the template. No content/text needs to be added to this page. Click publish when you are done.
Then click on “pages” in the left sidebar again. This will list the pages that you have created plus a sample page that comes by default with your WordPress installation. Since you don’t need the sample page, click “trash” under the title (you will need to hover your mouse over the title to bring up the “trash” link).
To set up your blog, create a new page titled “Blog”. No content/text need to be added to this page, and no template should be selected. Click publish when you are done.
Then check the radio button to display a static page as your front page, and select “Home” from the drop down.
Also in the “Reading” settings, select your “Blog” page from the dropdown next to “posts page”. Then click “save changes”. Now when someone visits your blog page they will see excerpts of your most recent posts.
You can also add whatever additional pages you like. All you have to do is click on “add new page” under “Pages” in the left sidebar, and then title your page and add content.
This theme gives you the option to choose from 7 color schemes. From the dashboad click on “Theme Options” in the left sidebar, and then click on “General Settings”.
You’ll then have the option to choose the color scheme from a drop down menu. The “default” color scheme is dark gray.
Of course, you’ll want your website to feature your own logo. If you have a logo file ready (we recommend .png format) you can easily upload it through the theme options dashboard and it will be applied to the header of all pages on your site. The logo file should be no larger than 700 pixels wide and 100 pixels high. Larger sizes will cause issues with the layout.
Click on “Choose File” and find your logo file on your computer. Then click “Upload”, and then “Save Changes”. Your logo will now be shown on the header of all pages on the site.
If you do not upload a logo, which is optional, your organization name will be displayed as text in the logo area.
Still in the “Theme Options” click on “Common Options”.
Here you will see a box to enter the organization’s address. This will be used to display the address is the website footer.
You will then also be able to enter a URL for your organization’s Facebook page and Twitter profile, if applicable. If you enter a URL here it will result in Facebook and/or Twitter icons showing up in the site footer with links to your pages/profiles. If you don’t enter anything here, the icons will not show up. When you’re done, click on the “Save All Changes” button.
The homepage of the Minimal Non-Profit Theme features a slideshow that allows you to add your own images, and you can link each image to any page if you’d like. You can use this area to welcome visitors to your website, promote upcoming events, promote the current sermon series, highlight some of your ministries, or even to link to your page on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
To add items to the slideshow click on “Slides” in the left sidebar of the WordPress dashboard.
Click on “add new slide”.
Now a page will open for you to enter the slide. Give it a title (for admin purposes only, the title will not be visible on the site), and click on “set featured image” in the right sidebar.
This will open a window that allows you to insert your image for the slideshow. You can either upload the image from your hard drive by clicking “select files” or click on the “From URL” tab if the image is already online and you can enter the URL for the file.
The image you are uploading should be at least 610 pixels wide by 315 pixels high. If it is larger it will be re-sized and cropped automatically. You can use any image editor like Photoshop, or a free option like the online version of Photoshop to re-size and crop your images. If your image is smaller than 610 pixels by 315 pixels it won’t fill the area and will look awkward.
Select “full size” and then click “use as featured image”.
Then close out of the window or click “save changes”. When you are done click “publish”.
Repeat this process to add several slides. Now you’ll want to make sure the slideshow is active on your homepage, so go to “Theme Options” and the click on “Slideshow Options”. Where it asks “Do you want to display a slideshow on the homepage?” select “yes”. You can also change the transition effect between slides if you’d like, or just leave it set to random. Then click “save all changes”.
You now have a working slideshow on your homepage!
You can drag items up or down to change the order in which they are displayed (to drag, click and hold the mouse button while moving the mouse up or down). If you want to make certain links appear in a dropdown menu, move the item slightly to the right. For example, we want “Name of Program #1”, “Name of Program #2”, “Name of Program #3” and “Name of Program #4” to be used in a drop down under “Our Programs”, so we will move them slightly to the right under “Our Programs”.
We’re also going to set up a second menu that will be used in the site’s footer. Back in the WordPress dashboard, click on the “+” sign to add a new menu.
You’ll go through the same process as with the header menu, except name it “Footer” and then select it in the dropdown for “Footer Menu”.
Then you’ll add and arrange your menu items for the footer just like you did for the header. The one difference is that the footer menu is not designed for dropdowns, so don’t add secondary pages to the main menu items.
You’ll then have a working menu in the footer of your site (will be on every page of the site).
Give your page a title and enter the text for the page. You can save it as a draft if you’re not ready to publish it yet, or you can go ahead and publish it. You can give any page a parent page if applicable. An example would be pages that you create for specific programs. You could create pages for any program and select “Programs” from the drop down as the parent. The parent page must already be created and published in order to be available for selection.
Please note that creating a new page in WordPress will not automatically add that page to your navigation menu. If you want to make the page accessible from the menu it must be added as shown in the previous section about editing the menu.
Your website also includes a blog. To create a blog post click on “Posts” and “Add New”.
Every useful organization website includes relevant information about upcoming events so visitors can get all the necessary info right from the website. This WordPress theme includes functionality that allows you to easily manage your own list of upcoming events. The events page will display the upcoming events according to date. As the date of an event passes, it will be automatically removed from the list on the events page.
To enter a new event click on “Events” and “Add New Event”.
Enter the title of the event, a description with all the needed information, and the location.
The next step is very important. In the right sidebar you’ll see “Event Date”. Here you will want to change the date to the date and time of the event. This is what will be used to display the event date and time on the site, and it will determine how the events are listed and when the event will disappear from the events page (after the date has passed). To change it, click on “Edit” and select the date and time of the event and click “ok” when you are done.
When you’re done and ready to publish it to the site, click on the “Schedule” button.
If at any time you need to edit the details of an event, such as if the date or time is changed, click on “Events” in the WordPress dashboard and click on the title of the event that you want to edit.
Most non-profit organizations frequently have announcements or press releases that are used to communicate with supporters or the media, so we have incorporated functionality into this WordPress theme to publish those news items right on your website.
Headlines of the most recent news items will be displayed on the homepage, with links to the full text. Also, the News page template is set up to archive your news items, with the most recent being displayed first.
To enter a news item, from the WordPress dashboard click on “News” in the sidebar.
Then click on “Add New News”.
Next, enter the title and text of your news item.
Click the “publish” button when you are done.