Documentation

Sivan. Personal & Lightweight Wordpress Blog Theme

Thank you so much for purchasing our item from ThemeForest.

No doubts, you will join our happy customers community in seconds! You won’t make any mistakes here, because our detailed documentation will guide you. Please be sure to check it out before getting started. We have outlined all kinds of the necessary information and keep them easy to read and follow. Our theme is based on the WordPress platform, so we assume that you already have WordPress installed and ready to go.

If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, Please feel free to email via the Item Support Page.

Theme Requirements

To use this theme, you must be running WordPress 6.0 or higher and PHP 7.4 or higher.

  • Check to ensure that your web host has the minimum requirements to run WordPress.
  • Always make sure they are running the latest version of WordPress.
  • You can download the latest release of WordPress from the official WordPress website.

Recommended PHP Configuration Limits

Many issues that you may run into such as: white screen, demo content fails when importing, empty page content and other similar issues are all related to low PHP configuration limits. The solution is to increase the PHP limits. You can do this on your own, or contact your web host and ask them to increase those limits to a minimum as follows:

  • max_execution_time 300
  • memory_limit 256M
  • post_max_size 32M
  • upload_max_filesize 32M
  • max_input_vars 10000

Theme Installation

There are two ways to install the theme. Once your theme is installed, you will be able to customize it by yourself from scratch, or use our Demo Content (see more about it in the relevant chapter).

  1. Upload via WordPress admin panel.
  2. Upload via FTP directly to your server.

This guide assumes that you already have a WordPress installation ready.

1. Upload Theme via WordPress admin panel

  1. Download the zipped theme package from ThemeForest and extract it to a folder on your local computer.
  2. Login to your WordPress admin panel
  3. Click on the Appearance -> Themes
  4. Now click on the Add New button.
  5. Click on the "Upload Theme" button, "Browse" for a file called Sivan.zip In the extracted folder and select "Open".
  6. Click the "Install Now" button.
  7. Activate the theme from this page, OR "Return to Themes Page" and activate from there.

2. Upload Theme via FTP

  1. Download the zipped theme package from ThemeForest and extract it to a folder on your local computer.
  2. In the extracted folder you will find Sivan.zip. Extract this file.
  3. Connect to your FTP using FTP software, for example Filezilla.
  4. Upload the extracted Sivan theme folder into the wp-content/themes directory provided by WordPress.
  5. Login to your WordPress admin panel
  6. Go to Appearance > Themes, and activate the Theme.

Plugins Installation

After activating the theme, you will see this notice:

Click Begin installing plugins. You will be navigated to the Install Required Plugins page.

Simply check all of them (or all of the required plugins and some recommended plugins you like) and from the drop down select Install, then hit Apply.

NoteIf you have switched to our them from any other themes, it is recommended to regenerate your thumbnails. Regenerate Thumbnails Plugin

Demo Installation

Our demo data import lets you have the whole data package in minutes, delivering all kinds of essential things quickly and simply. All you need to do is to navigate to Sivan > Import Demo Data. Hit Import Demo Data and then Continue & Import. Have a cup of coffee. The process is within minutes. It will install the demo for you.

Theme Usage

Working with our theme is easy. here you will learn how to play with it :)

Setup The Custom Width For Site

You can set the custom width for your site.

  • Go to Sivan > Theme Settings > General and change the Site Width.

Setup Menu

To Manage your menu:

  • Go to Appearance > Menus.
  • Create a new menu by clicking on the create a new menu or edit an existing menu. You can simply manage your menu items by drag and drop.
  • Check the Primary menu position at the end of the page to set this menu for your default header.
  • If you are using a custom layout for the header, you can select a menu in Elementor widget.

NoteIf you have many items in the header menu, you should hide the menu on tablet and mobile for responsive design. In Elementor widget settings > Advanced > Responsive section, hide widget in tablet and mobile.

Setup Mobile Menu

To Manage your menu:

  • Go to Appearance > Menus.
  • Create a new menu by clicking on the create a new menu or edit an existing menu. You can simply manage your menu items by drag and drop.
  • Check the Mobile menu position at the end of page to set this menu for your mobile menu.

Setup Mega Menu

You can have Mega Menu item in your header menu. Follow these steps:

  • Go to Appearance > Menus and edit your menu.
  • Click on the right arrow of your menu item that want do add mega menu to it.
  • In Mega Menu Template section you can select a Rivax Template as mega menu or simply select 3 or 4 columns mega menu.

Setup Home Page

You can design your pages beautifully and simply with Elementor. To setup your home page:

  • Go to pages. Create a new page or edit an existing page with Elementor.
  • You can find Rivax Widgets in the Elementor edit panel.
  • Create and design your page with Elementor.
  • Then go to Settings > Reading and set Your homepage displays to a static page and select your page.

Setup Archive Page

In this theme, you can create your custom template for your archive pages (Category Archive, Tags, Author, ...).

If you skip it, the theme will use the default template for archives.

To create the custom archive template follow these steps:

  • Go to Sivan > Rivax Templates and click on the Add New to create your custom template.
  • You can find Rivax Widgets in the Elementor edit panel.
  • Add a Rivax blog widget to your page and configure it with your custom design. Don't forget to enable pagination for it!
  • In widget settings, go to the Query section, and set the Posts Source to Current Query.
  • Create and design your template with Elementor. Also you can have a sidebar by dividing the section into 2 columns and putting recent posts in the second column.
  • Then go to Sivan > Theme Settings and in the Blog Archive tab select your template in the Blog Archive Template section.

Publish Posts

The base of wordpress knowledge is working with posts and pages. You should be familiar with it. If don't, just search on youtube and watch wordpress tutorials.

To make your post you should use gutenberg editor. It's simple and powerful tool.

Post Layout

Our theme comes with a lot of single post layouts. So you can select the layout that you are interested in.

Go to Sivan > Theme Settings in Single Post > Hero Layout tab in the Standard Post Format section, and select your layout. This is the default layout for your standard posts.


This option can be simply overwritten in every single post.

Go to your post and edit it. At bottom of the page you can find STANDARD POST FORMAT settings. Select another layout that you want for this post.

Post Formats

Our theme comes with several post formats. You can select post format on post editing page.

  • Standard
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Gallery
  • Link
  • Quote

At bottom of the post you can find Post Hero Section Settings. Here you can configure your post format settings.

Typography

Global typography like font family can be setup in Sivan > Theme Settings > Typography tab.

Colors

Global colors can setup in Sivan > Theme Settings > Styling tab.

Category Color

To Change each category color, simply edit the category and set the custom color for it.

So you can enable multi category color in theme options for single posts or use multi category option for categories in Elementor posts widgets.

User Avatar & Socials

To Change your avatar image, simply go to Users > Profile > Extra Info From The Theme tab, and choose your avatar image. Also here you can fill your socials adress to show in your bio section in single posts.

AMP

Sivan is compatible with the AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) and will optimize your site speed and google score.

To enable the AMP, install the AMP Plugin and navigate to its settings and select Reader for Template Mode and choose Legacy Theme. And select Posts for the Supported Templates.

NoteAMP has some heavy limitations like a maximum of 75KB CSS and Javascript is not allowed and is not compatible with many plugins like Elementor. So we applied a simple style for it and we do not guarantee that the 3rd plugins will be compatible with it or not.

It is recommended to enable AMP just for the single posts.

Translate The Theme

Our theme is fully translatable and you can translate it into any language.

Method 1. Using PoEdit Software
  • Install PoEdit software on your computer.
  • Open Sivan.pot located in sivan/languages folder via Poedit.
  • Click on create new translation at the bottom of the application.
  • Select the language that you want, for example: french.
  • Use the translation field to make replacements.
  • When you are ready, go to File -> Save as then save the file with your WordPress locale code inside sivan/languages folder. Example: if you are working with a french WordPress installation your file name will be fr_FR.po
  • Go to your server via FTP, and upload both .po & .mo language files into your theme (located at wp-content/themes/sivan/languages).
Method 2. Using Loco Translate Plugin
  • Install the Loco Translate plugin through your wordpress.
  • Go to Loco Translate > Themes and select your theme.
  • Click on New language.
  • Start translating it.

Child Theme

Sivan includes a child theme to make the changes easier.

If you have planning to add a lot of CSS changes or add your own customization of HTML or PHP, it is highly recommended to do these changes inside a Child Theme, so you will never lose these changes.

So just install the sivan-child.zip like a wordpress theme. You can add your CSS in style.css inside the sivan-child folder or overwrite theme templates inside it. Learn more about child theme here.

Performance

You can measure your site performance on gtmetrix.com. To increase your site performance, pay attention to these factors:

  • Use a high quality hosting. Your site speed and optimization are highly dependent on your hosting server quality.
  • Go to Sivan > Theme Settings > Performance tab and enable performance features.
  • Optimize and compress your images. You can use Tinypng or optimization plugins.
  • Optimize your Database. You can use WP Optimize or other optimization plugins.
  • Disable Revisions by adding define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false ); to the wp-config.php. Revisions store a large number of records in the database and make it slow.
  • Use a cache plugin like Wp Rocket or other cache plugins.
  • Use a CDN like Cloudflare.
  • Do not install unnecessary plugins. They increase your host resources (CPU & RAM) usage and reduce your site speed.

Woocommerce

To add ecommenrce features to your site, you need to install Woocommerce plugin.

You can learn more about it in Woocommerce Documentation.

Update The Theme

We regularly update our themes. Whenever we update our theme, you will receive an information email about it. You can update the theme automatically or manually.

Method 1. Update the theme manually
  • Download the new version from your account in the ThemeForest.
  • Go to your hosting file manager in wp-content > themes and upload sivan.zip and extract it to replace. (Or connect to host via FTP and upload sivan folder to wp-content > themes path.)
Method 2. Update the theme automatically
  • Install the Envato Market plugin recommended via the theme.
  • Go to Envato Market plugin setting and insert your token.
  • Now you can update your theme from wordpress dashboard automatically.

Support

If this documentation doesn't answer your questions, So, Please send us an Email via Item Support Page

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