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The Liberal Democrat candidate in today’s Thamesfield by-election for the London Borough of Wandsworth has been using a modified version of Grit & Oyster’s Lib Dem Aqua WordPress theme for her campaign website.
She has implemented it with some nice customisations and has made good use of the full-width page template.
This is a list of useful WordPress plugins that can be used with the Lib Dem Aqua theme.
Akismet – The standard way of protecting your WordPress website from comment spam.
Contact Form 7 – A simple but flexible plugin for creating web to email contact forms. Use this to create a way for visitors to email you from the website without making your email address visible online.
Google Analytics for WordPress – Add Google Analytics functionality to your website and keep track of your visitors.
Query Posts – “lets you displays a posts by nearly any criteria you can imagine using the query_posts() function, except you don’t need to know anything about PHP to use it.” This plugin provides a widget you can use so is useful for displaying what you want on the theme’s home page.
NextGEN Gallery – A sophisticated plugin for creating image galleries.
The Lib Dem Aqua WordPress theme makes use of widgets.
Widgets are independent sections of content that can be placed into the widgetized areas provided by the theme. The Lib Dem Aqua theme has eleven areas into which you can place widgets. These are;
To configure your widgets go to Appearance -> Widgets in your website’s dashboard. This will take you to the Appearance Widgets Screen.
The available widgets are shown in the centre and the widget areas are listed on the right.
To populate your widget areas with individual widgets, drag and drop the title bars into the desired area.
These are instructions for how to set up your website’s home page when using the Lib Dem Aqua WordPress theme.
A blog style home page shows your latest posts and news stories on the front page.
To set up a blog style home page go to Settings -> Reading in your website’s dashboard.
This will take you to the Reading Settings Screen where you should select ‘Your latest posts’ in the options for ‘Front page displays’ and then ‘Save Changes’.
This will make your post page your website’s home page.
First create two pages. Call one of them ‘Home’ and the other one something like ‘Latest posts’ or ‘News’. This last page will be your post page.
Then go to Settings -> Reading in your website’s dashboard.
This will take you to the Reading Settings Screen where you should select ‘A static page’ in the options for ‘Front page displays’. In the first drop down select the page you have created called ‘Home’. In the second drop down select the other page you have created. Then ‘Save Changes’.
Finally, check that both of these pages appear in your main navigation menu.
Using this method you can make any page in your website the home page.
You can now edit your home page just like any other page. Alternatively you can apply one of the three home page templates included in Lib Dem Aqua.
You can have a more sophisticated home page with a prominent image, a custom menu and two areas for widgets by using one of the three home page templates included in the Lib Dem Aqua theme. This makes a home page which is very configurable:
To use one of the three home page templates first follow the instructions for choosing a static page as your home page above.
Next go to the page you are using as your home page and in the ‘Page Attributes’ box select one of the home page templates in the ‘Template’ drop down. Then update the page.
You have a choice of:
Home Style 1: Which adds the home page widgets, a custom menu, and an image that takes up the full width of the page under the header.
Home Style 2: Which adds the home page widgets, a custom menu, and an image that takes up the width of the first two columns of the page under the header.
Home Style 3: Which adds the home page widgets, a custom menu, and an image that takes up the width of the first second column of the page (the one containing the main content) under the header.
Next you need to prepare an image file to be displayed by the home page with the dimensions that match the template you have chosen. Once you have created this image you should upload it to your website.
Next get the URL of the image you have uploaded and go to Appearance -> LDA Options.
Enter the URL of the image into the ‘Home Page Image’ box on the Lib Dem Aqua Options screen and ‘Save Changes’.
Finally you should choose the widgets you want displayed on your home page.
The Lib Dem Aqua WordPress theme makes use of the Custom Navigation Menus feature added to WordPress 3.0.
Within the theme there are four slots on the page layout where you can add your own custom menus. These are;
The Main Menu: This slot should be used for the main navigation menu of your website. If no custom menu is chosen it will default to displaying all your top level pages.
The Secondary Menu: This slot should be used for the secondary navigation menu of your website. It is useful for pages, such as a contact page, that you want available on every page of your website but that are not part of the main navigation. If no custom menu is chosen it will be left blank.
The Links Menu: This slot is used for links to important external websites. For example it can be used to link to the national party website. It is recommended that no more than three items should be placed in this menu. If no custom menu is chosen it will be left blank.
The Home Page Menu: This slot determines what is shown in the left-hand navigation column on pages that have one of the three home page templates applied to them. It is for a navigation menu specific to the home page. If no custom menu is chosen it will default to displaying the full hierarchy of your pages. Note that the items shown in the left-hand navigation column on other pages are chosen automatically and cannot be customised.
The location of these four slots for custom menus are indicated on the following diagram:
To create custom menus go to Appearance -> Menus in your website’s dashboard.
This will take you to the Appearance Menu Screen where you can:
You can then decide which of the menus you have created will go into which of the menu slots in the Lib Dem Aqua theme. You do this by using the Theme Locations dialogue:
Today Grit and Oyster Limited makes the Lib Dem Aqua WordPress theme available for download for free to members of the Liberal Democrats.
Lib Dem Aqua is a WordPress theme for Liberal Democrat websites. You can see it in action on the Luton Liberal Democrats website.
The theme aims to reflect the look and feel of the national party website and fit with the current Liberal Democrat branding by using an “aqua” colour palette.
Using an installation of WordPress, the Lib Dem Aqua theme, and selected plugins from the WordPress plugin directory; candidates, campaigners and local parties should have all they need to create and maintain an easy to use, flexible and professional looking online presence.
For more information about the theme and to download all the theme’s files visit it’s home page: