Thank you for purchasing our theme. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to email us via our ThemeForest profile page or visit our Theme Support Forum. Thanks so much!
Before upgrading we strongly recommend that you take a full database backup of your site and also take a full copy of your WordPress files to ensure that you can always roll-back in case of any problems during the install/upgrade!
The theme can be uploaded in two ways:
Uploading via WordPress:
Uploading via FTP:
To create the homepage as seen in the demo you must first create a page and call it e.g. “Home”.
Next, the you must set the correct Reading settings.
For more information on featured image visit WordPress Support who have a detailed article on this.
The slider is based on the jQuery CoinSlider library. If the slider is not working as expected, then the most likely cause for this are JavaScript errors on site preventing the slider from working correctly. Simply check if there are any JS errors (exactly how depends on your browser) and then try and address those problems highlighted by your browser.
The slider has a number of parameters for e.g. speed, preloading image, fade effect etc. which can be set in the theme options. For more details on this please refer to the plugin documentation.
For sites with a large number of posts and pages, it is crucial that you set the correct permalink structure as otherwise you could experience significant performance problems.
For large sites (100+ posts/pages), we would advise you not to use a custom structure such as /%postname%/ as this can have a dramatic effect on page loading times which can result in your site crashing altogether when you have a lot of traffic.
Instead you should consider adding the post ID, (e.g. /%post_id%/%postname%/) as this gets around the problem.
If you use version 3.0+ of WordPress, you can setup custom menus to use with our theme. Compare comes with a ‘Main Menu’ intended as the main high-level navigation.
You can also create additional menus that you can use in the “Menu Widget” which you can then include in your footer such as the example below that we have added to our demo site.
It is highly recomended that you set WPLANG variable wp-config.php in root folder of your WordPress instalation. Open your wp-config.php file in a text editor and search for define (‘WPLANG’, ”);
Edit this line according to language used in your feed, e.g. for the French written feed you must add define (‘WPLANG’, ‘fr_FR’);
Products can be managed in two ways:
Please bear in mind that the spelling and the case of the categories, brands and retailers must be the same for each product or else two different entities will be created (e.g. “Laptop” is not the same as “laptop”)
Please check our FAQ section if you are having problems importing product data.
The Product Mapping
Two (or more) products having the same UID (first column) will be mapped together and appear as a single product with several retailers in the product comparison table. This way, you only need to set product name and description and image once as the system will automatically use these details from the very first product. However, Price, Deeplink and Shipping are required for every product.
Export the Feed
If you have done any changes to a product and/or a retailer directly in WordPress (see section Manage Products In WordPress), you will need to export the feed BEFORE editing the spreadsheet and re-import the products. To export the feed, click on Download in the Compare > Manage Feed > Download Feed section. Copy the content in the text area into your text editor and save as a .csv file.
Warning: If you forgot to export the feed, prior to importing new data then all your modifications potentially get overwrtitten.
Manage products
Products can be managed in the Products section.
Manage retailer
Warning: Deleting a retailer will also delete all associated products and prices for the given retailer.
Manage categories
Categories can be created/edited/deleted within the Products > Categories section.
Manage brands
<div class="tz_ad_widget"> <a href="http://www.awesem.com/compare/" title="IAB Standard Ad 728x90"> <img alt="IAB Standard Ad 728x90" src="http://cdn.awesem.com/images/728x90.gif" /> </a> </div>
Position, Currency Code, Currency Symbol
Example:
right, USD, $
left, GBP, £
Note:
Compare comes with the in-built ability to share posts to various Social Networking. These options enable/disable the functionality and all the user to select which networks to include.
Compare comes with a number of widgetised areas and widgets. They can be found under Appearance > Widgets. Available widget areas are as follows:
This widget allows you to configure and display up-to 6 125×125 Banner Ads.
Compare also comes with 160×600 Wide Skyscraper, 180×150 Rectangle, 300×250 Medium Rectangle, 300×600 Half Page Ad and a 728×90 Leaderboard ad widgets which work similar to the 125×125 ad widget shown above.
This widget allows you to configure and display popular posts (by comment count), recent posts, latest comments and tags. The tab titles can be changed from the widget options.
This widget allows you to configure and display a single video. The widget requires the user to input video embed code taken from either Vimeo, YouTube, or other video sharing sites and can display a description if required.
This widget allows you to configure and display your latest Twitter tweets.
This widget allows you to configure and display a customer testimonial.
This widget allows you to display your client’s testimonial.
This widget allows you to display brands / products on your homepage as an infinite caroussel.
This widget allows you to display product categories.
This widget allows you to configure two blocks of copy on the homepage and add your own icons.
This widget allows you the display an highlighted area that you can use for promotions and announcements.
This widget allows you to display products categories in the sidebar as defined in Products > Categories
A widget that allows to search products using preferable price range, categories and brands.
Compare comes with styles for two popular plugins which you may wish to use. Should you wish to do so, make sure to download latest version of them, install them in your /wp-content/plugins/ directory and activate them in the Appearance > Plugins menu.
In both cases you simply need to activate the plugins and the theme will do the rest.
The Compare theme supports a number of shortcodes for styling purposes.
You can add a tooltip / product bubble to your contextual links by adding [tooltip id="product_id"]Insert text here[/tooltip] to your post, page or shortcode enabled widget. Simply specify the product ID which you can find in Compare > Manage Products > Product Management
You can add a price comparison table for a single product by adding [price-table id="product_id" /] to your post or page. Simply specify the product ID which you can find in Compare > Manage Products > Product Management
To insert a button enter the following into the post or page editor: [button url="your_full_url"]Insert text here[/button]
To insert a highlighted text enter the following into the post or page editor: [highlight]Insert text here[/highlight]
To insert a drop cap enter the following into the post or page editor: [dropcap]Insert letter here[/dropcap]
To insert a toggle area enter the following into the post or page editor: [toggle title="your_title"]Insert text here[/toggle]
To insert a youtube video enter the following into the post or page editor: [youtube id="video_id" height="video_height" width="video_width" /]
To insert a left-aligned pullquote enter the following into the post or page editor: [quote_left]Insert quote here[/quote_left]
To insert a right-aligned pullquote enter the following into the post or page editor: [quote_right]Insert quote here[/quote_right]
The Compare theme comes with inbuilt custom page templates: Homepage, Full Width, Contact, Brands and Retailers. These templates can be used on individual pages to alter the display or functionality.
This template needs to be assigned to your “homepage” page as explained in Setting the Hompepage. You should only assign this template once.
The Full Width template allows the creation of a page without a sidebar. The main content will span the full width of the site. To use the template, simply create a page using the “Full Width” page template.
The Compare theme comes packed with a simple contact form. To use the inbuilt form, simply create a page and use the page template “Contact”. The form will automatically insert below any page content. The form includes jQuery validation to enhance user experience and the recipient email can be configured from the theme options.
The brands template displays all brands on a single page. The page also features “glossary” selectors to display brands with a certain start letter only. By default, all brands get displayed when the page loads. You should only assign this template once.
In the same way as the brands template, the retailer template displays all retailers on a single page. The page also features “glossary” selectors to display retailers with a certain start letter only. By default, all retailers get displayed when the page loads. You should only assign this template once.
Our theme supports the use of featured images. The theme supports auto-resizing of the featured images and so there is only the requirement to specify a single image. Auto-resizing will only occur however when the image is uploaded for the first time, images that have previously been uploaded will not be resized.
To ensure the correct display of images across your site, ensure you specify an image with dimensions of 940×530 or larger.
To upload a featured image, go to Posts > Add New or open an existing post in editing mode. Locate the Featured Image module and click the Set featured image link.
Clicking the link will open up the usual WordPress image uploader where you will upload the image as usual. Simply make sure that it is either the same size or larger than what the final thumbnail will be. Once you’re done uploading the image, simply click the link that says “Use as featured image”.
Once you’re done, a preview of the image should appear in the right-hand box and you are free to insert the image into the post as with any other image.
For more on how to use the WP2.9+ Post thumbnail feature you can view this article – http://en.support.wordpress.com/featured-images/
This theme imports various Javascript files.
We have included four PSDs with this theme:
All PSDs contain styling for all necessary elements including layouts, icons and all custom widgets.
The Compare Price Comparison theme is intended for small price comparison sites with a small number of products that can be managed manually. For larger sites and additional features, Compare can be extended with our Compare+ WordPress plugin which enables you to automatically import affiliate product feeds in XML and CSV format. Please visit our website for more information about the awesome array of additional features available.
We provide basic support for all of our WordPress themes available for sale on ThemeForest via the following two channels:
We love to hear what you think! Feel free to send us your comments, feedbacks and improvement ideas via the contact form on our ThemeForest profile page
Once again, thank you so much for purchasing this theme. As we said at the beginning, we’d be glad to help you if you have any questions relating to this theme. No guarantees, but we’ll do our best to assist.
— The AWESEM team
AWESEMThemes are created by AWESEM – Experts in all things WordPress, we design and build themes and plugins, create bespoke solutions and customize existing WordPress sites. Our approach is no-nonsense and personal.