The WP Advocate theme is a entirely corporate design suitable for professional services businesses such as accountants and law firms.
Upload your own logo, choose one of the bundled background textures or upload your own rich imagery to brand your site.
The dedicated home page template can also slide a range of brand images in the background, powered by a native WordPress gallery.
The Advocate theme also comes bundled with an optional plugin to add a custom post type for staff profiles.
Combined with the bespoke profile template this makes it easy to highlite the most important part of your business, the people!
Thanks to Thierry Francois, we now have a French translation for the Advocate theme updated to latest version of the theme (2.2).
If you have been charged with setting up your first website please read our beginners guide to starting a blog, and before you set anything up, make sure you’ve browsed our comprehensive hosting performance comparisons for popular hosts like Siteground, Bluehost and GreenGeeks.
Charles,
Just setting up the Theme. Loving it so far but have a long way to go to customize it full for me. The BIG question – I set a static page for now and a blog page for posts. How do I either create a custom excerpt or posts or better yet, display the full post?
Robert
Hi Bruce, sorry for the slow reply. It was slow in part because I didn’t have a simple answer ready. Changing the way the blog page template works isn’t especially hard, but does require some PHP code changes which isn’t ideal.
I think the best solution is for us to update the theme and release a new version which changes the way it works, because I think what you want would be more flexible for everyone. I can’t promise when it will go live (subject to WordPress theme review), but we’ll make a change which will displa ythe full post content by default, leaving you free to limit the content that appears on the blog home page and archive pages by using the usual “read more” function in the WordPress post editor.
Sorry it isn’t an immediate fix, but I think having the update in the core theme code will be best long term rather than hacking your own version.
HI, thank you for a great theme.
The logo is positioned to the left, how do I put it in the center of the header?
Download Simple Custom CSS WordPress plugin then go to Appearance -> Custom CSS and add this code,
#site-heading, #social-media{width:100%;display:block;text-align:center;}Okay so figured it out and just used the new custom css plugin and put medium in where you had insert size and I took out the asterisks and the slashes and it works – it does, however, look a little jumpy – are there other words I can put in to make it stand out on hover or anything else you think I can do to make the links expand? Thanks!
Try this,
nav[role="navigation"] .menu ul li a:hover{color:fff!important;background:#fff;}Thanks Kris – that gives me enough to go on – last question – any idea why my ability to insert shortcakes would just stop? I tried the shortcakes ultimate forum and have no replies…..? I click on the insert shortcakes button and nothing happens – no code input anywhere.
Actually, now, none of my inserts are allowed – shortcakes, media, nothing
I actually found it – was MouseOver Free plugin but still lost a plugin or something I had where I could edit my page title with shortcodes?
Hi Grant, there are a number of short code plugins out there so I couldn’t guess at which one you were using. I suggest searching the WordPress.org plugin directory and seeing if anything there seems familiar.
Got it – thanks Charles
Any way to addd simple html so the menu links at top of my page expand or change color when hovered over?
Try this,
nav[role="navigation"] .menu ul li a:hover{color:blue!important;}Actually I just went in to the style sheet and put it at the top of the navigation section and it worked! I have been trying to solve that all weekend!
Also, I had some plugin of the half dozen or so I tried that allowed me to actually paste some shortcodes into the title of my pages and add boxes and buttons but had to delete some when things got screwed up but now I can’t add shortcodes anywhere – not in the title or body of my pages! Any idea what I might have deleted?
Also, one more question if you don’t mind – is there code I can also add to make the title text expand when hovered over (in addition to changing color).
Thanks!
Download Simple Custom CSS WordPress plugin then go to Appearance -> Custom CSS and add this code,
nav[role="navigation"] .menu ul li a:hover{color:blue!important;font-size:/*insert size here*/;}How and where did you add the shortcode?
This is the full message of the Fatal Error:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 41943040 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 7680 bytes) in /data/0/1/41/64/1530227/user/1647100/htdocs/wordpress2/wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/admin/api-libs/oauth/class-oauth-request.php on line 27
Hi Megan, that error message seems to relate to another plugin, Google Analytics For WordPress. Have you already installed this, or are you getting the same type of error when trying to install that as well?
Hi! I am doing my best to follow through this thread and not ask questions but i am stumped. I have installed the Image Plug-in and it has installed successfully. However, when I try to drag into Alt-sidebar menu, i get this message: Fatal error: allowed memory size…exhausted…
I also noticed that it says it has not been tested with my current version of WordPress. I am running 4.1 and your info page says you are only tested up until version 3.9.2
Will you be updating this plug-in? I feel like i’m so close and it would be a shame to start over!
Hi Megan, the plugin is not actually our plugin, it’s just one that we used for the demo so I can’t comment about it specifically. I can say that it is working on our demo installation which runs the latest version of the theme and WordPress. The error you are getting sounds more like a hosting configuration error of some sort. Have you been able to install other plugins? Have you tried manually installing the plugin via FTP?
Is there a way to just load the site the way you have it in the Demo? I hate that I find what I like and it just doesn’t load that way. I just want to go in and change the content and pics.
Hi Alexis, I hear you. It is one of those scenarios where we have to trade off ease with flexibility and the varying requirements of different users. Thankfully it is very easy to set the site up like the demo…
Hope that helps.
This might have already been asked, but I haven’t been able to find it. Can you tell me how to change the background color of the menu bar and the individual page backgrounds? I looked in Appearance\Customize and there doesn’t appear to be a place to customize this color. I’ve looked through the style.css code and have not been able to find where this is specified. Can you give me some guidance on this?
You can download Simple Custom CSS wordpress plugin and go to Appearance -> Custom CSS then add this code,
nav[role="navigation"]{background: /*place color here*/;} body.page{background: /*place color here*/;}Hi Charles!
Thank you this lovely theme.
I have only one thing:
I would like to set a link in the Alt_Homepage intor text.
It seems the them cuts out any html.
Any idea how i can do this?
Thanks in advance
This is how excerpts works but to solve this go to the theme folder and open content-intro.php and on line #17, change the code with this,
<?php the_content(); ?>Hello,
How can I change the transparencies (the ones behind the texts) opacity, color and the text color (to something similar to the ones on the sample on the top of this page)
Thanks!
Harris
What area are your referring to? The transparency being applied on the top of the homepage is a background image. The purpose of using background image is to support IE 8 and below browsers.
First of all thank you for a great theme 🙂
I like it very much, but I’d like to do some slight customization. The one thing I cannot deal with is how to make the selected menu coloured.
What I have achieved is that the child menu selection (the one my pointer is on) is being coloured. But at the same time I’d like to have the parent menu position coloured as well.
Can you point me to the style.css line where I need to make a modification?
If you are modifying CSS codes, create child theme first in order your custom CSS codes will not be gone if there is a theme update or you can download Simple Custom CSS wordpress plugin and add you CSS code.
Anyways, here is the CSS code,
nav[role="navigation"] .menu ul li.current_page_item a{color:!important;} H, I love this theme and used it earlier this year for the first website I’ve worked on in more than two years… 🙂 Thanks so much. I didn’t know anything about ‘child themes’ so unfortunately just worked through customizing and creating the site without really knowing what I was doing and just enjoying the experience. Now however there are 6 months of updates… and I’m not really sure what the impact will be if I do updates. Website is http://topediting.co.za/ …I’m also starting with another website and want to use the theme, do you recommend I do a child theme? Thanks so much.
Hi Mands, I do always recommend a child theme if you plan to make adjustments to the theme templates or styles. That said, if your site is working now then you don’t necessarily have to update to the latest version of the theme. It’s not really possible to know what might change with out knowing exactly what you’ve adjusted in the code. My feeling is don’t update the theme if it is still working ok.
Now, if you are actually talking about core WordPress updates (not theme updates), then you must update immediately. It is very important to stay up to date with the latest version as there are often security fixes and such that you really do want. Updating the core WordPress application *should not* have any impact on changes you have made to the theme so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Hi Charles, thanks so much for your response. I did all the WP updates and everything was fine… so I did the plugin updates and all is great. (If anyone else needs to know) I have version 1.0.7 of Advocate installed. With an Update to 1.0.8. that I haven’t done. I need to move the domain to our new Unix server, so will leave it as it is, until I do the move… hopefully I can backup the site and then re-install on the new system without any problems. I think the only significant changes I did, were to the fonts… and I can’t remember how I did that… at all. 🙂 I’ll run the experiment just before we move the domain… just for interest.
Thanks for a great theme.
I got help and have a child theme for my new project, so I’ve started and just have one question please.
Is there anyway to make the pages and posts of the text boxes just slightly transparent, like the heading blocks of the widgets?
Thanks so much.
Hi Mands,
I’m not following. Pages and posts do have a transparency.
Indeed, the theme is outstanding and so is your site. I am having issues getting my background to rotate images. I have 1 image loaded but cant seem to load others. Although I have been in webdev for many years I have gotten a taste of wordpress and can’t leave it alone. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Hi Negus, the theme only has one template that will rotate background pictures. We did this because we thought it would be annoying for users to have rotating background pictures on all pages. Anyway, if you apply the alt-homepage template to the home page and then embed a standard WordPress image gallery into the page content the theme will use these images as the background on that page. Hope that makes sense.
What image gallery would you suggest?
You don’t need to install any 3rd party gallery plugins or anything. Just use the built in WordPress gallery feature. If you need help with that you’ll find many how-to videos on YouTube.
Thanks a million Charles. That worked for me (WP image gallery) 🙂
Thanks for the wonderful theme and I love it a lot. I wish to add two logos to the footer of the static front page, and add one logo in the header. Yet I cannot find the way. Could you please kindly help me with it? Thanks so much.
For the header logo, go to Appearance -> Customize and add your logo under site logo section. For the footer logo, this would require some customization of the footer.php template.
Hi, thanks a lot for this wonderful theme. Can I know how to add some widgets to the footer, or simply add some texts to it? Right now the footer only reads “© Blog Title” or “Blog Title Powered by WordPress. Theme by WP Dev Shed”. Thanks!
Hi Clement, the theme doesn’t support widgets in the footer as it is. You’d need to edit the footer.php template file to add text there.
1) How do I remove the default category, latest posts, archives, popular posts and reply comment box from the pages?
2) How can I control what and when these are to be displayed?
Thanks for your assistance.
Do you mean the widgets on the sidebar area? Just go to Appearance -> Widgets, then you can add or remove widgets from pages. For the comment box, go to pages and hover on a page then click quick edit and uncheck allow comments.
Despite supporting the basics of the People Profile CPT plugin, there isn’t default support for showing individual People Category pages in a way that matches the custom People template that comes with the theme.
I resolved this in a child theme and posted the three required files in a gist for others to use: https://gist.github.com/mrwweb/8330875573758f85f108
Eventually, it really feels like there should be support built into the theme (particularly the taxonomy-people_category.php template file).
Hello. Great design template. I will create a website for this template. I’ve set a theme for WordPress but do not know how to set up the slider background. What should be done with the file alt_homepage_bg_slider? I’m from Russia, so please respond in accessible English.
Hi, to set up the slider like the demo follow these steps:
Hope that helps.
Hi. I found another bug.
The “People Profile Template” only shows a maximum of 10 people and does not show paging.
I chose to fix this by setting page_per_post to -1 in my child theme on the custom WP_Query in that template file. I don’t know if the paging function works or not. For now, it only appears on is_home, is_archive, is_search, or is_single, none of which are is_page!
Also, I noticed a fair number of posts on the People Profile CPT plugin repo support forum and a few on the WP Advocate theme repo support forum. It would be nice if you, as the plugin author, threw up a sticky forum post clarifying what, if any, support you offer for both and where to find that support.
Hi Mark, the profile template will show any number of profiles according to the ‘posts per page’ setting under Settings > Reading, so increasing that may also be a ‘fix’. It doesn’t have paging on that template which could be considered a bug, or perhaps just not a feature it supports 😉 Indeed I never imagined an organization of more that 10 or so people would ever use the theme. Will definitely look at this though, as it would be handy. Thanks.
Funny. The site I’m building has 11. So close!
Howdy WP Dev Shed,
I’m back with a few more notes on WP Advocate after completing my review of it.
1. I see the need for rewind_posts() in author.php but I’m not sure it’s needed in tag.php or archive.php. It looks like it might have snuck in there.
2. There’s at least one long block of empty CSS selectors in style.css. (Here’s another shorter one.) No reason for those.
Next are two accessibility issues…
3. The Skip Links link has two issues:
a. It doesn’t appear when given the :focus state. It should.
b. It comes after all the social media links. On a site using a lot of social media links, this negates part of the usefulness of the link since a user must tab through all those on every page to “skip the links.”
4. The theme uses some title attributes which are neutral-to-bad for accessibility. Particularly for the “Learn More” links, it’s much better to use the accessible “read more” link recommendation in that article.
5. I was surprised to see no visual hover states in this theme. While they obviously don’t apply to touch devices, I still think they’re a really good usability affordance on desktops. Particularly since a lot of people don’t know that the first item of a hover-triggered drop-down aren’t links, adding a hover can do a little bit to improve that.
6. On my fairly wide monitor I’ve notice a bug where the sidebar layout gets messed up. I haven’t spent any time trying to track down why. In Chrome, load a page with the sidebar. Make the window narrow and then expand it out. Around a viewport width of 1725px, the sidebar gets kicked down below the body. Reloading the page at that width resolves the layout bug which suggests to me this is a JS issue.
7. Since WP Advocate seems to have good hAtom support, I was bummed to see that the People Profile CPT plugin doesn’t seem to support hCard or schema person markup. You might get on that plugin developer to improve that!
That’s all for now. Overall, this looks like a cleanly-coded theme without many issues. I look forward to implementing it on a client site and customizing it with a child theme. Hopefully there’ll be a 1.0.9 release that can resolve some of the above issues as well as the Theme Check warnings I mentioned earlier.
Thanks for the feedback Mark. Definitely a few oversights made in haste.
Glad you found it useful, Charles. I hope it can lead to some improvements for the theme in the [near] future!
I’m reviewing this theme for possible use on a client site and ran it through Theme Check. While there’s nothing major (well done!), it would be great if the minor issues it did find were addressed in a new version.
Espectacular! Thank you very much!!!!
This theme is awesome. i am using it for a client and he would like to add a video to the home page on the alt theme page. he wants me to put it in between the text and the widgets. is there a way i can do this or do i need to modify the code itself to add it there? if i need to modify the code can you give me a hint as to where on there i can do so to embed the video?
You need to modify some code. Just locate alt_homepage_bg_slider.php inside the theme folder and place the embed video code.
I was looking in that page to start off with but i did manage to find the spot to put it thank you very much for your reply
Hello, I am trying to create a child theme for my website but it keeps on telling me: “The following themes are installed but incomplete. Themes must have a stylesheet and a template.
Name Description
child_advocate The parent theme is missing. Please install the “wpadvocate” parent theme.” even though the theme is installed… I have tried a bunch of different names but it doesn’t want to work… Help would be appreciated 🙂
How did you create the child theme? Here is an example that works for me,
/*Theme Name: WP Advocate
Description: Child theme for the WP Advocate
Author: Author Name
Template: wp-advocate
*/
@import url("../wp-advocate/style.css");
Hello. Thank you very much for this template! Please tell me how to make it so that people did not appear in alphabetical order? I’m just not very good at php.
Hello,
Inside people-post-type-main.php in wp-advocate theme folder, just comment out this code,
'orderby' => 'title','order' => 'ASC',I’m not seeing anything in the theme for the social icons you have in the Logo header opposite the logo.
Am I missing something?
Thank you!
Yep, go to Appearance > Customize.
Geez… its always the thing right in front of you, you overlook. Thank you for the assist!
For whatever reason the Google+ link for my people post is not working. I have used just the Google+ ID as well as the full URL:
https://plus.google.com/118008599483274837025
Does the post Google+ input box want it in some other format?
I’ve very tech lit, so geek it up if needed 🙂
Hi David, you’ve found a bug! Will address this and release an update to fix. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Can you give me a general idea of how quickly you release bug fixes? Just want to manage my expectation. Or if you know what needs to be changed, you can email me the code and I can drop it in myself.
Thank you!
Hi David, a fix for this is probably 2-3 weeks away, not because it is especially complex just that I’m busy with the day job at the moment. If I get to it sooner I’ll drop you a note with the code.
Hi, can you please tell me if there is any way to make the dark-black transparent area more transparent? Also, what is the recommended sizing for the background slider images? My images are all showing up rather blurry. Thanks
Hi Danielle, transparency is actually achieved with an image which you can find at …/wp-content/themes/wp-advocate/library/images/trans-b.png – you’ll need to replace that to change the transparency. If your images are showing up blurry it likely means they are too small and the theme is stretching them to fit. You need to upload an image that is big enough to work on the larger screensizes. You probably want something 1000px+ though you’ll also want to optimize it for the web.
Thanks for a great theme!
How to make different categories of “people” were displayed on different pages?
Hi Oleg, glad you like the theme. There is no simple way to split out categories of people on to different pages I’m afraid. That would require some non-trivial customization of templates. You might try Elto if you need professional help with this.
One more thing, the widget boxes are way bigger than I’d like…I want them to accent the pages not be competing with the content. Can you guide me to how to adjust that?
Thank you for your time!!!
This take a bit of time as you have to update all related files, index.php, page.php, single.php, category.php and etc. you’d like to update
So what you need is the ff.
e.g. in page.php if you notice the “col620” class and “col300” in sidebar.php file that means we add 620px in main and 300px in sidebar.
You just have to update those classes, there are available classes in style.css at line #482 – 574
Hope that helps
Love this theme…need help customizing a couple of things…I know just enough editing to be dangerous ;). I have attempted to edit the intro excerpt from 40 to 80. and while it did allow for more words, it’s not as many as I need. Where do I go to change that? I saw that another user figured out a function to fix it but I don’t understand where he entered that function. Also, is there a way to lighten the semi transparent color? I love it, but would love it more if it was a bit lighter…especially at the top of the site.
Thank you so much for the help!
Hi @tricia,
You can increase excerpt content in content-intro.php file at line #17, and about excerpt opacity it’s a background, you can locate it in style.css at line #2626 or in .intro-copy-box-wrap, .intro-copy-box-wrap-nobg selector, you can update image opacity instead.
Hope that helps