Getting Started with the Editor Blocks Theme

Getting Started with the Editor Blocks Theme

Editor Blocks Theme

Editor Blocks Theme has extensive support for the new WordPress Editor (Gutenberg). In addition to fantastic design, you’ll also receive dashboard one-click updates and access to world-class theme support by our team of in-house professional WordPress developers.

WordPress Upload

To upload through your Dashboard, select “Appearance” and then “Themes”. Next, select the “Install Themes” tab at the top of the page and then select the “Upload” link, right above the search field. Choose your file and select “Install Now”. Once the theme is fully uploaded and installed, click “Activate” to activate the WordPress theme.

The theme files will be stored on your server in the wp-content/themes location.

FTP Upload

To manually upload your new WordPress theme, login with your credentials to your website and locate the wp-content folder in your WordPress install files. Upload the un-zipped Editor Blocks Theme folder into the: wp-content/themes folder.

Once uploaded, activate the theme by heading to the “Themes” menu in the WordPress Dashboard. Locate the Editor Blocks Theme theme and hit “Activate”.

Theme Support

If you have a problem with the theme or found a bug, please let us know via the WordPress.org support forum. If you are experiencing a theme issue, please first turn off all third party plugins to see if the problem persists.

PluginsBack to Top

Before going any further we recommend installing the following plugins to ensure you can use the theme to it’s full potential.

Required Plugins

Gutenberg

Gutenberg will be the default editor in the next major WordPress update (5.0). For now, it can be installed as a plugin.

Editor Blocks

The Editor Blocks plugin adds 10 new blocks to Gutenberg.

  1. Wrapper Block
  2. Pricing Table Block
  3. Team Members Block
  4. Hero Block
  5. Testimonial Block
  6. Callout Block
  7. Brands Block
  8. Features Block
  9. Horizontal Feature Block
  10. Vertical Feature Block

Recommended Plugins

Google Fonts for WordPress

Add and use any Google Font to your website. The live preview feature helps you choose which.

WPForms

Add a contact form to your site in less than two minutes.

Gutenberg

Gutenberg is WordPress’ next evolution of the text editor. In Gutenberg, content is divided into ‘Blocks’. A block can be a paragraph, an image, a video or anything else you can imagine. Blocks can be arranged using the drag-and-drop interface.

By default, Gutenberg comes packaged with 20 essential blocks; these include headings, audio, video quotes, lists, tables, custom HTML and more.

What are Editor Blocks?

Editor Blocks are a collection of blocks that expands on the basics Gutenberg provides.

How to use Editor Blocks

There are two ways to insert Gutenberg blocks:

The first way is to click the + sign and then choose a block from the popup that appears. Editor Blocks has it’s own category in the popup so you can easily find them.

 

A quicker way to insert a block is to place your cursor on the page and then type a forward slash followed by the first letters of the block you want to use, for example /pri would bring up the pricing table block. This method is a lot faster when you are crafting a page.

 

Quick Tip: The ‘Wrapper’ block allows you to place any other block inside it. That means you can easily add a background, padding and margins to any block.

Templates

Editor Blocks Theme has the following templates built into the theme and can be applied by creating and saving a page in WordPress.

The default template for pages is a full-width template, perfect for creating pages using Blocks.

Post Templates

  • With Sidebar Template (Default)
  • No Sidebar Template
  • Full Width Template

Page Templates

  • Full Width Template (Default)
  • With Sidebar Template
  • No Sidebar Template

Contact

To create a contact form we recommend WPForms, it’s a free plugin that allows to add a simple contact form in less than two minutes.

 

Once you’ve created the form with WPForms you can paste the shortcode they provide onto any page and you’re done!

Updates

1-click updates are provided within wp-admin. When an update is available you will receive a notification. Updating is as simple as clicking the checkbox and pressing ‘Update Themes’.

 

If you have made any changes to the core theme code, they will be overwritten by the 1-click theme updater. Use a child theme to avoid losing your work.

Editor Blocks Theme Child Theme

A child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality and styling of another theme, called the parent theme. Child themes are the recommended way of modifying an existing theme.

Why use a Child Theme?

There are one main reason why you would want to use a child theme: If you modify a theme directly and it is updated, then your modifications WILL be lost. By using a child theme you will ensure that your modifications are preserved.

Installing the Child theme

Log in to your site’s administration panel, and go to Administration Panels > Appearance > Themes. Click “Add New” and follow the directions to upload the editor-blocks-child.zip file.

Next simply click “Activate” and both the Editor Blocks Theme theme Child Theme will be active on your WordPress site. Now you’re ready to customize away.

Customizing Template Files

If you want to change more than just the stylesheet, your child theme can override any file in the parent theme: simply include a file of the same name in the child theme directory, and it will override the equivalent file in the parent theme directory when your site loads.

For instance, if you want to change the PHP code for the site header, you can include a header.php in your child theme’s directory, and that file will be used instead of the parent theme’s header.php.

Child Theme Functions.php

Unlike style.css, the functions.php of a child theme does not override its counterpart from the parent. Instead, it is loaded in addition to the parent’s functions.php. (Specifically, it is loaded right before the parent’s file.)

In that way, the functions.php of a child theme provides a smart, trouble-free method of modifying the functionality of a parent theme.

Adding PHP Functions

Say that you want to add a PHP function to your theme. The fastest way would be to open the editor-blocks/functions.php file and put the function there… But that’s not smart: The next time Editor Blocks Theme is updated, your function will disappear (as the entire contents of the /editor-blocks/ folder are replaced upon an update.

However, there is an alternative way which is the smart way: you can create a child theme, add a functions.php file in it, and add your function to that file. The function will do the exact same job from there too, with the advantage that it will not be affected by future updates of the parent theme.

DO NOT copy the full content of functions.php of the parent theme into functions.php in the child theme. It’s not a good practice by any means.

Modifiying PHP Functions

You can use this same exact methodology to modify functions that are within the parent theme’s files.

To learn more, read this article on the WordPress Codex →

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