This user guide can be viewed online, printed and saved as a PDF or iBook. It is compatible with Reader in Safari 5. Go to www.themeflood.com and click on the support link. Choose Snow from the user guide list.
Introduction
System And User Requirements
This theme is developed and tested to work with the latest version of RapidWeaver. The theme is also backwards compatible with RapidWeaver 3.6. You will need to already have a licensed version of RapidWeaver installed on your computer before installing Snow. It’s assumed that users of this theme have a good understanding of how RapidWeaver works, in relation to aspects such as creating a new projects, changing theme settings, adding pages, changing website settings and publishing sites to the internet. Some third-party RapidWeaver plugins are mentioned in this user guide, but generally no extra plugins are required to build basic websites using this theme.
Theme Compatibility
Plugin Compatibility
Snow has been extensively tested with all of the standard plugins (page styles) included with RapidWeaver. In addition, testing has also been done with a wide range of third party plugins by various developers including Loghound, Cosculture, Yourhead, YabDab, Weaverplugins and SymphonIP. It should be assumed that Snow will work with other third-party plugins as well. However, some third-party plugins do not use valid XHTML or CSS code and may not be compatible with certain web browsers. In such instances, you will need to contact the plugin developer for updates or support or use alternative plugins. Demo versions of Snow are available for free download, so you can test and fully evaluate specific plugins yourself before purchasing the theme. Plugin developers also have access to the demo version.
Theme Style Settings
Colour Settings
Snow has a wide range of theme colour settings, available for use under the style tab in the theme settings. Most main colour settings are listed under the 'Colours' disclosure tab. Other groups of theme settings may also include colour settings, relating to that particular element. Clicking on a coloured square reveals the Mac OS X colour picker window, where you can select new colours using a range of different palette tools.
Body Background Settings
The body (page) background in Snow can be customised with either a solid colour fill, one of several supplied example images or you can embed up to 20 of your own background images for selection. You can either choose to have the same body background image on every page, or have different body background images across different pages to add some variety to your website. Example header images supplied with the theme were all produced by myself, and you are welcome to reuse any of them in your own web site.
Body Margin Settings
These settings control the margin (gap) between the top of the header and the top of a page. By default, a 30px margin is applied above the header. But this margin can be increased or decreased to suit personal requirements. If 'none' is selected, the top of the header will be flush with the top of a page. If the 'None / No Header Margin' option is selected, all margins above the header will be cleared.
Header Background Settings
The container at the top of the theme containing the site title and slogan is referred to as the banner. This container is capable of hosting static background images, Extra Content and content generated by other page styles or plugins. You can customise the image background of this container using any one of the example images supplied with the theme. Or you can import your own images – Snow has 10 placeholders for standard JPG images and 5 placeholders for semi-transparent PNG images. You can either choose to have the same header image on every page, or have different header images across different pages to add some variety to your website. Alternatively there is a solid colour fill option or the possibility of using Flash (SWF) or a slideshow via another plugin. Example header images supplied with the theme were all produced by myself, and you are welcome to reuse any of them in your own web site.
Header Height Settings
Snow gives you a broad range of header height settings, enabling you to carefully customise the banner height. Some users prefer a smaller banner container, whereas others may want a much taller container. Height settings available are specified in increments of 25px. The tallest banner height setting available is 400px. There is also an 'auto' option which will wrap the header to the same height as the title and slogan text.
Heading Font Settings
A choice of 20 web-safe and semi web-safe font face options are provided in the theme. Header font settings are applicable to the site title, site slogan, sidebar title, blog entry titles, photo album titles, video album titles and header tags. A font stack is used for each font setting, ensuring that if a person viewing a site does not have a particular font installed, their web browser will default to a close alternative. For example, if Palatino is not available, Times New Roman will be used instead.
Content Font Settings
A choice of 20 web-safe and semi web-safe font face options are provided in the theme. Content font settings are applicable to all elements of a page not covered by header font settings. Again, a font stack system is used for the font settings, ensuring that if a person viewing a site does not have a particular font installed, their web browser will default to a close alternative. For example, if Palatino is not available, Times New Roman will be used instead.
Note: Some RapidWeaver plugins will force their own font settings into a page. Sometimes these may not match your preferred fonts. In such cases, you may need to change plugin settings or use custom CSS to obtain a more desirable style. Contact the plugin developer for further information. In addition, some web browsers do not permit elements like form fields or buttons to have their font face changed. This is more noticeable in PC web browsers.
@import Via GFD
This theme has support for embedding your own fonts using the Google Fonts Directory service, or your own custom code. Embedded fonts are supported in each set of font settings within the theme (e.g. header and content). Typically embedded fonts have an advantage of looking more attractive compared with some standard web fonts, and can really improve the professionalism of a website. Unlike image text, all lettering can be selected or printed as normal with no detrimental effects on search engines.
Setting up embedded fonts requires some minor modifications to the theme. To use embedded fonts in this theme, open the theme contents and open the css folder within. Open the desired font setting folder (e.g. header-font), depending which set of font settings you want to add an embedded font face to. Open the import.css file in your preferred code editor. You will need to refer to the Google Font Directory online, to choose a suitable font face. On the "Get Code" page, make a note of the font name (short name and full name).
The first stage is to import the font into the stylesheet using the @import CSS declaration. This is somewhat similar to the function in PlusKit, but is designed specifically for importing other stylesheets or fonts (as a result it does not use PlusKit). You can modify the example code already provided. Next you need to add your font name to the 'font-family' settings. Again you can use the existing code as a point of reference and modify it accordingly. Save changes to the import.css file when done. Select the '@import' theme setting to use your newly embedded font face. Please note that you often need to preview or export a website outside of RapidWeaver, to see the embedded font working. It should also be pointed out that using embedded fonts may slow down page rendering.
Content Alignment Settings
These alignment settings are applicable to the main content container within the page. You can change text alignment between a choice of left, center, right or justified alignment. Please note that some plugins like contact form plugins may force in their own alignment styles, and override those specified in the theme style settings.
Line Height and Font Size Settings
These settings allow you to carefully customise the appearance of text within the theme. This enables you to customise text in areas such as content or sidebar. Line height controls the distance between lines of text. Font size controls the height of lettering. Some web designs recommend that light text on a dark background should be presented in a slightly larger font size and line space than normal to help aid clarity. Larger text sizes can look particular effective in some designs.
Logo and Logo Links
Logo images can be inserted into the Site Setup window as normal in RapidWeaver. Logo images will automatically link back to your homepage. The homepage address is the same address you provide in the ‘web address’ box within the Site Setup window. If you need a logo to link somewhere else, open the index.html file within the theme contents and find the logo tags. Change the ‘base_url’ tag to a URL of your choice. Snow supports multiple logo placement options including fixed screen badges, title block and header container.
Note: In Internet Explorer 6, logo images which are placed using the ‘fixed’ options will instead behave as absolutely-positioned elements. This is because this browser has limited CSS support and does not support fixed placement for objects. In addition, semi-transparent PNG logo images are non-supported in IE6 and will be rendered with a solid grey background instead.
Album Settings
This theme is supplied with a set of Album settings which enable you to customise the appearance of iPhoto and Quicktime Album page styles supplied with RapidWeaver. Some of the settings may work across other third-party plugins like RapidAlbum as well. Thumbnail colour settings control the colours found in thumbnail (grid) pages. Photo and video page colour setting enable customisation of singular photos or videos - the ones which open when a user clicks a thumbnail. Colour settings denoted (CSS3*) are only compatible on web browsers which support CSS3 code, such as Safari, Firefox, Opera and Chrome. In other web browsers, these non-supported colours will be hidden. As a result there may be some minor differences in the appearance of video or photo albums across various web browsers.
In addition to the colour settings, there are 3 style settings to control the layout of photo pages. Photo Data Vertical will arrange the photo page in a vertical format with content containers stacked vertically. The float right and float left options will put text and links on one side or a page, and the main image on the other side. Photo wrapper width settings control the width of the box containing your photograph, navigation links and EXIF data. This is only applicable to images being opened at full size. The width you elect to use should be dependant on the size of your photograph. So for example, if under the album settings you opt to scale photographs to a maximum size of 800px, you should use the 1000px or 1100px setting which would provide enough space for your photograph and EXIF data combined. By specifying a correct width, this will help to keep your photo page content nicely aligned in the centre of a screen. You can tell if a photo wrapper is not wide enough, because the image or EXIF data will be cropped and the content will not look centred on a page.
Extra Content Settings
This disclosure contains colour pickers relevant to the Extra Content containers within the theme. For more information on using Extra Content, see this website: http://extracontent.info
Navigation Settings
These settings can be used to change the colour and positioning of page navigation links. Horizontal navigation link colours relate to parent page links presented horizontally at the top of the page. Vertical navigation link colours relate to the subpage links presented in the sidebar. The horizontal links can be positioned either above the header or below the header. Likewise settings exist to group the links together, or opt for an opposed layout which places the currently selected page link on the left.
Sidebar Settings
The sidebar in Snow can be positioned as a block or either left or right of the content container. When the sidebar is positioned either left or right, the width of the sidebar can be changed, to suit the type or quantity of sidebar content to be displayed. All sidebar settings can be accessed under the theme settings. Care should be taken that any wide items inserted into a sidebar or extra content containers do not extend outside the sidebar boundary – which could potentially cause layout problems (container wrapping) in Internet Explorer.
Width Settings
Several theme width settings exist in this theme, enabling you to customise the main container width. Some users prefer narrower widths, whereas others prefer wider page widths to fit more content in. Your choice of theme width should be governed by the type of content you wish to display and plugins you want to use (plugins such as WeaverPix and RapidAlbum require wider pages). When designing your website, remember that quite a large proportion of internet users have screen sizes of no more than 1024px by 768px. This is a trend which has stabilised since the introduction of new devices such as netbooks and tablet PC's. Theme width settings are specified in increments of 50px and a couple of other specialist widths are included for those familiar with the concept of grid systems.
Page Stripe (Miscellaneous Settings)
This setting will apply a 6px horizontal border at the top of a page. This is fro decoration purposes. The colour can be changed under the main theme colours disclosure.
Hide Vertical Navigation (Miscellaneous Settings)
Ticking this option will remove the vertical navigation links from the sidebar. This is a useful setting to use if you have no subpage links to display and wish to close the margin space above the regular sidebar content.
Align Title / Slogan Right (Miscellaneous Settings)
Ticking this option will align the title and slogan to the right of the header container.
Title / Slogan Background Fill (Miscellaneous Settings)
Ticking this option will apply a white colour fill behind the title and slogan text. This can be used to improve the clarity of text when it is presented on a header background image. By default, the fill colour is set to white, but you can change this by opening the theme contents and then navigated through to css > misc > titleslogan-fill.css. Open this CSS file in a code editor and change the background colour fill to whatever you want. Save changes and close the file when done.
Capitalise Horizontal Navigation Links, Site Title, Site Slogan, Headings, Block Navigation and Footer Content (Miscellaneous Settings)
When ticked, any one of these capitalisation options will convert normal text to uppercase using CSS. This can be useful to help increase the boldness of certain page elements. The advantage of using CSS to capitalise text is that the original format of the text is preserved – this is very useful for search engines crawling your website.
Footer Links (Miscellaneous Settings)
Normally breadcrumb links will be placed below the footer content in Snow. But on smaller websites, the use of breadcrumb links may seem rather pointless. Instead, this theme option can be used to replace the standard breadcrumb links with a list of your parent pages. In some websites this may be a more practical solution and give end users another method of navigation -- particularly useful after they have scrolled down to the end of a page.
Splash Screen Style (Miscellaneous Settings)
This theme setting will remove the header, horizontal content, sidebar, footer and navigation bar containers from the theme. This will leave just the banner and content container on display. Splash screens are particularly useful in some websites for creating an eye-catching welcome or introduction page when someone lands on a website. Alternatively the Splash screen style can be used to make a special announcement like the upcoming launch of a new website, product or service. Links from the splash page onto other pages would need to be created manually. Third-party plugins like PlusKit (not included) can be used to import content from other pages into the page like contact forms or slideshows.
Preview Extra Content Containers (Miscellaneous Settings)
Flood has support for several EC (Extra Content) containers. EC is becoming a popular method in third-party RapidWeaver themes for allowing the placement of content outside of the normal editable regions of a page. See details below for further information on how to use EC. This option to preview EC containers offers RapidWeaver users an excellent insight into where EC containers will be rendered. The names and numbers of each EC container are displayed for easier reference.
Theme Configuration
Extra Content
Snow includes basic support for EC (Extra Content). Five EC containers are available in this theme -- their positions and placement can be seen by using the Preview Extra Content Containers option under the theme settings. To embed content within your EC containers, use the standard EC code snippet or the Stacks plugin. Text colour settings for all ten EC containers can be found under the theme colour settings. More information on using extra content (including free snippets and stacks) can be obtained from this website: http://extracontent.info/
Adding icons to external links
Styling Header Tags
The header tags can be styled using CSS. You can ether style individual levels of headers, or style them all collectively as a group. To style individual headers, the CSS code you would use would look like this:
h3 {
text-transform: lowercase;
font: 200% "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;
color: #5e5e5e;
}
This code above would convert all h3 tags to lowercase, increase the font size to 200% and convert the font face to a Helvetica font family with an iron grey colour. If you wanted to style all of your header tags the same, multiple selector names can be used in the CSS code, separated by commas like this:h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
text-transform: lowercase;
font: 200% "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif;
color: #5e5e5e;
}
The text size of header tags will still vary in size, depending on the specific header tag used. But all header tags would have lowercase lettering, a standardised font face and the same colour throughout. This custom CSS code can either go into the custom.css file within the theme contents, or you can enter it in the normal custom CSS box within the page inspector in RapidWeaver.Adding Custom Header Images Using Finder
Header images used by the theme are stored inside the theme contents. This ensures that the images become an embedded part of the theme and can be selected for use under the theme settings. For example, you may want to have a different image displayed on different pages of your website to add some variety.
The theme contents can be accessed by CTRL + Clicking (or right clicking) on the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver (the small picture of Snow which appears in your theme drawer). From the popup menu, select the 'Reveal theme contents in Finder' option. A new Finder window opens which contains a selection of files and folders. Open the folder marked 'images'. Then inside, open the folder marked 'editable_images'. This editable_images folder contains all of the images used by the theme, including placeholder images. Placeholder images are typically blank and named or numbered sequentially like header-01.jpg, header-02.jpg, header-3.jpg for example.
Any of these placeholder images can be replaced using your own images. When you add new custom images, name them so that they replace placeholder images. By replacing the placeholder images supplied in the theme, your custom images will be available for selection under the theme settings. When creating new images, it is advisable that these are optimised for the internet - typically this means that should not have any specific colour profiling applied and be of 72 DPI with a file size no greater that 75KB.
Adding Custom Header Images Using RapidWeaver MultiTool
RapidWeaver MultiTool is a third party application which runs separate to RapidWeaver. Both a free and premium version of this software is available. When open, RapidWeaver MultiTool presents a list of themes installed on your computer. Themes which are compatible with RapidWeaver MultiTool store all of their images inside a folder called editable_images. RapidWeaver MultiTool enables you to edit any of these images. The original images are safely backed-up within the theme so they can be retrieved at a later date if required.
It is recommended you start by editing placeholder images. Placeholder images are typically blank and named or numbered sequentially like header-01.jpg, header-02.jpg, header-3.jpg for example. Using RapidWeaver MultiTool, you can drag and drop new images onto the canvases. Many basic image editing techniques can also be performed on these images and text can be applied. Use the save button in RapidWeaver MultiTool to apply the customised image to your theme. RapidWeaver MultiTool is developed by a separate software company and support documentation is provided on the website.
Adding Custom Background Images Using Finder
Body background images used by the theme are stored inside the theme contents. This ensures that the images become an embedded part of the theme and can be selected for use under the theme settings. For example, you may want to have a different image displayed on different pages of your website to add some variety.
The theme contents can be accessed by CTRL + Clicking (or right clicking) on the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver (the small picture of Snow which appears in your theme drawer). From the popup menu, select the 'Reveal theme contents in Finder' option. A new Finder window opens which contains a selection of files and folders. Open the folder marked 'images'. Then inside, open the folder marked 'editable_images'. This editable_images folder contains all of the images used by the theme, including placeholder images. Placeholder images are typically blank and named or numbered sequentially like bg1.jpg, bg2.jpg, bg3.jpg for example.
Any of these placeholder images can be replaced using your own images. When you add new custom images, name them so that they replace placeholder images. By replacing the placeholder images supplied in the theme, your custom images will be available for selection under the theme settings. When creating new images, it is advisable that these are optimised for the internet - typically this means they should not have any specific colour profiling applied and be of 72 DPI with a file size no greater that 75KB.
Adding Custom Background Images Using RapidWeaver MultiTool
RapidWeaver MultiTool is a third party application which runs separate to RapidWeaver. Both a free and premium version of this software is available. When open, RapidWeaver MultiTool presents a list of themes installed on your computer. Themes which are compatible with RapidWeaver MultiTool store all of their images inside a folder called editable_images. RapidWeaver MultiTool enables you to edit any of these images. The original images are safely backed-up within the theme so they can be retrieved at a later date if required.
It is recommended you start by editing placeholder images. Placeholder images are typically blank and named or numbered sequentially like bg1.jpg, bg2.jpg, bg3.jpg for example. Using RapidWeaver MultiTool, you can drag and drop new images onto the canvases. Many basic image editing techniques can also be performed on these images and text can be applied. Use the save button in RapidWeaver MultiTool to apply the customised image to your theme. RapidWeaver MultiTool is developed by a separate software company and support documentation is provided on the website.
Adding Custom Background Images From A Warehouse
If your images are already scaled to size and stored on the internet, it is possible to import them into the theme using CSS or jQuery Javascript. To use CSS, copy and paste this code into the Custom CSS box in the page inspector:
body {
background-image: url(http://www.example.com/image1.jpg);
}
Change the URL to point to your image stored on the internet. There are other CSS attributes you can add to this code to change image alignment and background repeat. Search on the internet for further details of this.
Making Theme Customisations Using CSS
All elements in the Snow theme have either class or ID names. These names can be used as selectors, to apply custom CSS code to. The best method is to preview your website in a web browser such as Firefox or Safari. With developer tools installed or enabled, right click a particular element and choose to open or inspect it. This will give details of the element such as its selector name and and CSS code already applied to it. From this point, you can use the selector name and custom CSS code to change the style or appearance of an item. For example, padding can be changed, borders applied or background images added onto element. CSS gives you the potential to make many style changes to a theme. Snow has been designed and structured to make this as easy as possible. Some third-party RapidWeaver plugins also come supplied with details on how to modify styles using CSS. A lot of information regarding CSS can be sourced from the internet.
Applying Custom CSS
This theme features a very useful 'custom.css' file within the theme contents. Into this file, you can enter custom CSS code. Unlike the Custom CSS box under the Page Inspector in RapidWeaver, code entered into the custom.css file gets applied to all pages and enables you to edit CSS using a preferred editor like CSSedit or Text Wrangler. These types of editors often feature useful features like syntax colouring, auto-completion and validation, which combined make CSS editing much easier and safer. There are many free resources on the internet which cover CSS in detail. To open the custom.css file, right click (or CTRL + Click) the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver and select 'Reveal Theme Contents in Finder'. Open the custom.css file in your preferred code editor. If you only need to apply custom CSS code to a single page, enter this code under the Page Inspector custom CSS box as normal.
Theme Management
Duplicating Themes
If you are planning on making any modifications to the Snow theme, it is highly recommended that you duplicate the theme -- that means making a copy of the theme to customise, leaving an original version in RapidWeaver unedited. Working from a duplicated theme ensures you can always return back to an original version at anytime. Themes can be easily duplicated by right-clicking (or control and clicking) the theme preview icon in RapidWeaver and selecting 'Duplicate' from the popup menu. Give the duplicated theme a new name and work from that version. Duplicated themes will not be effected by future theme updates.
Saving Styles
Theme Contents
Code, settings, files and graphics required by a theme live inside a package called Snow.rwtheme or similar. If you are planning to modify the theme or add new elements to it, the 'theme contents' (package) is where you normally need to go. RapidWeaver themes are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver/ where "~" is the name of your home directory. But you can also easily access the theme contents from within RapidWeaver. Just right-click (or control and click) the theme preview icon and select 'Reveal theme contents in Finder' from the pup window. The theme contents is revealed in a Finder window, from where you can access all the files which make-up the theme.
Upgrading From Previous Versions Of Snow
The latest version of Snow will install itself alongside any older versions of Snow you already have installed on your computer. RapidWeaver treats each version as a separate theme, so you can gradually migrate individual projects from one theme to another without destructive results. To apply a new theme to a project, select the theme under the theme chooser in RapidWeaver. It is wise to mark all pages as changed and perform a complete re-upload of your website after changing themes. Some users also take advantage of a theme change to delete existing files on a web server using FTP software and starting from afresh again. Saved theme styles are non-transferable to new themes unfortunately. Renewed sets of saved theme styles can be created instead, taking advantage of new features in the theme.
Note: Existing purchasers of this theme can upgrade to the latest version for free at no extra charge. See the ThemeFlood website for details about obtaining your theme update.
Support
Customer Support
You can find links to various resources on the ThemeFlood website. Official RapidWeaver support resources such as the user manual, help desk and forums are available under the help menu in RapidWeaver. For issues relating to this theme or other problems, please don't hesitate to get in contact via the ThemeFlood website. Unlike some other theme companies, customer support is free and is extended to cover themes which have been customised or modified. Facilities are available for you to upload customised themes and RapidWeaver sandwich (project) files. A custom theme and modification service is also available on request.
© Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved. No part of this documentation may be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated or otherwise duplicated on any medium without written consent. Use of ThemeFlood themes, plugins and documentation is subject to the EULA (End User License Agreement) which can be viewed on the ThemeFlood website. All trade names referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.