A guide to the News theme

# News WordPress theme

News is a theme that was designed to answer many of the problems that other "news" themes have in the WordPress community. Rather than simply slapping a big featured slider above a list of posts and calling it a news theme, we spent time looking at what makes news sites work and translated those features into a WordPress theme.

The theme has multiple sidebars, extra custom templates, theme-specific widgets, slideshows, and many other awesome features. It was built to actually handle the presentational aspects of a real-world news site.

## Child themes

Since News is a parent theme, you'll want to create a child theme if you plan on making any customizations. Don't know how to make a child theme? It's relatively simple. Just follow the below steps.

- Create a theme folder in your `/wp-content/themes` directory called `news-child`.
- Then, create a `style.css` file within your theme folder.
- At the top of your `style.css` file, add the below information.

    /**
     * Theme Name: News Child
     * Theme URI: http://link-to-your-site.com
     * Description: Describe what your theme should be like.
     * Version: 0.1
     * Author: Your Name
     * Author URI: http://link-to-your-site.com
     * Tags: Add, Whatever, Tags, You, Want
     * Template: news
     */

This will give you a blank design. If you want to import the News parent theme style, simply append this code after the above information:

    @import url( '../news/style.css' );

    /* Custom code goes below here. */

Note that child themes are now the officially-supported way of modifying themes in WordPress.

## Notes

### Upgrading from version 0.1 or 0.2?

When this theme was originally developed, some code was added to it that I didn't think belonged in a WordPress theme. Unfortunately, I was overruled by the rest of the development team. However, I now control the development of this theme, which means some things have changed.

Slideshow and Video post types: These things are no longer a supported part of this theme. I have included a plugin called "News Post Types" for those of you who wish to continue using these features. To use this plugin, follow these steps:

- Open your `news` theme folder.
- Copy the `news-post-types` folder (and its contents) from the `plugins` folder within your theme.
- Place the `news-post-types` folder within your `wp-content/plugins` directory. From that point, you'll treat it just like a regular plugin.
- Now, copy the `slideshow.php`, `video.php`, `sidebar-slideshow.php`, and `sidebar-video.php` files into your child theme folder. Not using a child theme? Follow the steps outlined above.

Note that these features will be removed from a future version of this theme. If you want to use them, you definitely need to follow the above steps.

## Theme support

Support for the News theme is not offered on the WordPress support forums. There is a community called Theme Hybrid where support is offered for this theme. You are encouraged to sign up to the site to use its support forums and become a part of the community.

## Fonts and JavaScript

Several fonts and scripts were used in this theme and have additional, GPL-compatible licenses.

Each font is licensed under the OFL:

- League Gothic
- Lobster

Each script is licensed under the GPL and MIT license:

- Superfish
- jQuery Cycle
- clueTip
- jQuery UI Tabs
- jQuery UI Widget

## Copyright & license

News is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL).

This theme is copyrighted to Justin Tadlock and Tung Do.

2010 – 2012 © Justin Tadlock, Tung Do