end user documentation
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Installing and Activating rtPanel
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rtPanel Theme Features
rtPanel is a free WordPress theme framework. Follow any one of the methods below to install it on your website:
Method 1- From WordPress Dashboard (Recommended)
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Logging into your WordPress site as a site administrator, go to Dashboard -> Appearance. All the themes that are installed on your site will be displayed here. Click on Add New.
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Type rtPanel in the search bar to the right and hit Enter. The theme will be displayed in a lightbox.
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Place your cursor anywhere on the theme's lightbox. 2 options will be displayed: Install and Preview. If you want to see the appearance of the theme without installing it, click on Preview. If you want to straight away install the theme, click on Install.
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After clicking on Install, the following page will be displayed:
- As shown above, 3 options are available to you: Live Preview, Activate and Return to Theme Installer.
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If you click on Live Preview, you can see the appearance of the theme without installing it. If you want to make the theme active, click on Save & Activate. Otherwise, click on Cancel.
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If you directly click on Activate, the rtPanel theme will be activated.
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If you click on Return to Theme Installer, you will return to the Add Themes page.
Method 2- From zip file
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On wordpress.org, type rtPanel in the search bar to the right. and click on the Search Icon.
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Click on the first link.
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To the right, you have two options: Preview and Download.
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If you want to see the appearance of the theme without downloading it, click on Preview.
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If you directly want to download the theme, click on Download.
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After clicking on Download, a zip file will be downloaded to your system.
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Logging into your WordPress site as a site administrator, go to **Dashboard **> Appearance. All the themes that are installed on your site will be displayed here. Click on ****Add New ****> Upload Theme. The following will be displayed:
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Click on Choose File. A file uploader will open up. Locate the location where the zip file was downloaded and click on Open.
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Click on Install to install the theme.
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Just like in step 4 of method 1, after clicking on Install, the following page will be displayed:
- Just like in step 5 of method 1, 3 options are available to you: Live Preview, Activate and Return to Theme Installer.
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If you click on Live Preview, you can see the appearance of the theme without installing it. If you want to make the theme active, click on Save & Activate. Otherwise, click on Cancel.
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If you directly click on Activate, the rtPanel theme will be activated.
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If you click on Return to Theme Installer, you will return to the Add Themes page.
rtPanel has a range of features. Let's explore each feature one by one.Logging into your WordPress site as site administrator, go to Dashboard -> **Appearance **-> rtPanel. All of rtPanel's General features will be displayed on this page. Let's break down each feature one by one.
A logo is a powerful visual means to not only establish your site as a brand but also create a connection with your visitors and/or customers. In rtPanel, you can choose between a text logo and an image logo.
- If you want to use your site name as your site logo, select Use Site Title. Then, directly go to steps 5 and 6.
- If you want to use an image file as your site logo, choose Upload Logo. When you select this option, a Choose File button will appear as shown below:
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Click on Choose File. A file uploader will open up. Select the file you want to use as your logo, and click on Open.
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If you want to display this logo on your WordPress login screen, click on the checkbox in front of Check this box to display the logo on WordPress Login Screen.
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Click on Save All Changes.
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Open any page your WordPress website in a new tab. You will see that your logo has been uploaded on the top left of your page.
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If you want to undo all the changes you made, click on Reset Logo & Favicon Settings.
Imp- Ensure that you choose the right image size to use as your logo.
Short for a favorite icon, a favicon is an icon that is displayed to the leftmost in your browser tab. For eg, the favicon for this site is 
Nowadays, most sites have a unique favicon for a variety of reasons. Still, if you don't want to use a favicon for your site, click on Disable > Save All Changes.
If, like us, you want to use your site logo as your favicon, click on **Resize Logo and use as Favicon **> Save All Changes.
If you want to use a new image as a favicon, click on Upload Favicon. A file uploader will open up. Select the file you want to use as your favicon, and click on Open > Save All Changes.
If you want to undo all the changes you made and get back all the default settings, click on Reset Logo & Favicon Settings.
A lot of sites today have a custom search engine integrated on their pages. Since Google is the world's most used search engine, most websites prefer it over other search engines. The advantages of using Google Custom Search are best described by Google itself. As seen below, rtPanel allows you to integrate Google Custom Search in your website.
In order to integrate Google in your website, you need to obtain a custom code by filling in the details here. After you enter your custom code here, your WordPress search results will automatically convert into Google Search.
To maintain the clean look of the site, the option **Hide Sidebar **is selected by default.
You have 3 options: Default Sidebar, **Enable BuddyPress Sidebar **and Disable Sidebar.
You have 3 options: Default Sidebar, **Enable BuddyPress Sidebar **and Disable Sidebar.
You can enable / disable the Footer Sidebar.
Click this if you want to restore sidebar settings to the default values.
You can add your custom CSS styles here. Click on **Save All Changes **after you finish adding your CSS style. If you want to use rtPanel's CSS style, click on Reset Custom Styles.
This gives you the list of all the plugins that we support. Each plugin can be installed, activated, deactivated, deleted and edited from here itself.
rtPanel Settings can be backed up via Export and restored via Import.
Click on **Export **to save current rtPanel options to a .rtp file on your system.
Click on Choose File. A file uploader will open up. Locate the .rtp file you want to import and click on Open > Import.
Remember to click on **Save All Changes **each time you change some setting. If you want to restore all the General Settings to their default values, click on Reset All General Settings.
A post summary is useful when you want to make a page with multiple posts easy to navigate. This option is enabled by default.
This option is visible only if Enable Summary is enabled. The value specified here will determine the number of words for each post's summary. The default word limit is 55.
This option is visible only if Enable Summary is enabled. You can change this field to anything, for e.g. you could change it to Continue Reading.
Post Thumbnail Settings are visible only if Enable Summary under Post Summary Settings is enabled.
This option enables thumbnails to be displayed along with post summaries on your home page and archive pages. Thumbnails can be displayed only if the post has an image set as a featured image.
Specify thumbnail alignment by selecting one of these options: None, Left, Right and Center. Typically, thumbnails are displayed on the right of each post summary. The default value is Right for the same reason.
Specify the width of the thumbnail in pixels. The default width is 150 px (pixels).
Specify the height of the thumbnail in pixels. The default height is 150 px (pixels).
This option ensures that every thumbnail has the exact width and height as specified in the Width and Height fields. Crop Thumbnail is enabled by default.
This option adds a light shadow border around each thumbnail.
Note: If you make changes to Height, Width or Crop Thumbnail, you must use the Regenerate Thumbnail Plugin to regenerate thumbnails on old posts.
Post Meta Settings control how post meta data is displayed. Post meta data generally consists of post author, post date, post category and post tag(s).
This option allows you to specify the format in which you want to display dates on your posts. The selected option is the default option. If you want to use your own date format, specify it in the Custom Field.
Check this option to display the number of posts written by an author. This number is specified to the right of the author's name.
Check this option to display a link to all the posts written by an author.
A post category is a word used to define the subject of a post. You can assign more than one post category to a post although it is advisable to not go overboard. The default category provided by WordPress is Uncategorized.
Post Categories is enabled by default and it is advisable that you keep it this way for two reasons: navigability and SEO optimization.
Tags are more or less the same as categories. The primary difference between the two is that categories are compulsory while tags are optional. Click here to know more about the difference between posts and categories.
Since tags are optional, **Post Tags **is not enabled by default. Enable this option to optimize your site's SEO and to use a tag cloud.
A feature of bbPress, topic tags are tags that are added to forum posts. If you add a new topic tag, it will replace the previous tag. To use multiple tags, separate each tag with a comma.
This option is enabled even if you do not enable it. This is how topic tags show up in a group's forum:
You can choose to display all of these post meta attributes above your content or below your content. The star rating in the above image has been generated via the Rating-Widget: Star Rating System plugin.
Enable this option to access all Pagination settings.
The words **Prev Text **are replaced by the name of the post published immediately before the current post.
The words **Next Text **are replaced by the name of the post published immediately after the current post.
This option specifies how many post links appear on each side of the current page.
This is how a page with all these options enabled looks like:
This option identifies each user of your site with the same profile image across the internet.
Enabling this option will ensure that your comment form is small in size.
Settings 1 and 3 enable you to choose where you want to display the comment form. Setting 2 enables comments to separate comments from pingbacks and trackbacks in order to improve readability.