One of the cool things about the Unnamed Tabloid theme, if I do say so myself, is the fact that it has an options panel with many choices for customizing the theme and how it functions. (I know other themes have these kinds of options, but mine is free and much cooler.)

Firstly, you can choose which articles are displayed on the front page, and in what order. You can also choose an image to be featured on the front page.

This is what the front page looks like (or at least the top half of it – would that be “above-the-fold” in newspaper-speak?):

You’ll see the primary featured article in the left column, and above it the featured image. It would probably make sense to have the featured image be related to the primary featured article, but I leave that up to you.

In the second or middle column are the three “secondary” featured articles. (“Secondary” was the best name I could come up with for these articles.)

So, to start with, how do you tell Unnamed Tabloid what article you want to be the main featured article, and what image?

When you load the theme, a menu item will appear on the left side of your dashboard (along with all the other menu items), called “Unnamed Tabloid Options.” Click this option and the options panel for the theme will open up for you in all its glory.

Your first option will be to fill in a category slug for the primary featured article.

You enter the slug of the category that the featured article comes from. The theme will pull the most recent article from the category whose slug you enter. (For more information on slugs and categories, look here.)

And that’s all you need to do for the featured article. Just enter the slug. The theme will output the article’s headline in a large and beautiful font, and the article excerpt below it.

For the featured image, the theme needs some more information.

First, you need to enter the url of the image (most likely the image exists in your media library, right?).

Next will be the image width, in pixels, and then the image height, also in pixels. The recommended size for the featured image is 340px by 250px or so. The height isn’t as important as the width. If you go much over 340 pixels wide, it’ll kind of “break” the design of the page. If you go too many pixels under 340, you’ll be leaving a lot of white space that might not look too good. But that’s also up to you.

The last piece of information the theme needs is the image’s alt text. If you want more information on what an image’s alt text is, and why it’s important, look here. (Note: There’s no caption option for the front page’s featured image.)

So that’s it for the left side of the page, the primary featured article and image.

Now for the center column, where you can feature three more articles, one from whichever category you’d like (or two from the same category, for what that’s worth).

You’ll need to enter the category slug for the article you want on top of the column, then the middle, and finally the bottom, just like you did for the primary featured article. The theme will automatically display the most recent post from the category the slug corresponds to, as well as a link to the category page above the article link, as highlighted below:

That’s it for the top half of the front page, the featured content. Any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to let me know.

The next post, Part 2, will focus on the rest of the options, which are mainly important links that can be automatically displayed once you enter them into the options panel.