Action Button and Read More problems, customization questions

Sparkling
1

Hi,

I am moving my current website over from Joomla to Wordpress because the blog has become the most important thing on the site and I want to make it more prominent. I love your Sparkling theme, but am struggling with a few items, probably due to my inexperience with customizing WP themes. I apologize for combining topics, but I thought it would be easier for you to respond this way. If not, I will post separately for any future issues.

  1. I have changed the colors in the stylesheet so that the red is now blue, however that has not affected the red color in the slider. When I change that via Template Options, the blocks become opaque. How can I change the color and maintain the transparency? Additional question: should I have changed the colors in the Custom CSS sheet instead of doing it in the main stylesheet?
  2. The Call for Action button remains white no matter what I do. I put in a yellow background so I could confirm this. When I hover over the button text, the button changes colors the way it is supposed to. Who can I make it perform the way it does in the demo?
  3. I have the blog set to just show excerpts on the front page (I tend to write long posts), but the posts are not excerpts. I am seeing full posts with the Read More button at the end. Do I have to put a manual break within each post?
  4. Is it possible to set up the blog so that the most recent post shows in full, and all subsequent posts are excerpts?
  5. I would like to make the featured images on the posts shorter or change them to the way they appear in the Dazzling theme. What is the best way to do this?
  6. I saw another post where you explained how to create a sticky menu. Is it better to do that by rewriting the code or should I create a child theme? I have never created one and am just learning WP code, but I am good at writing HTML, if that makes a difference.

My site is temporarily located at www.coffeenancy.com/wordpress while I finish tweaking it. I appreciate any help you can provide and I will give you some Twitter love once I launch the new look. Thank you so much for your help with these issues.

2

Correction: Question 2 should be “How can I make it perform the way it is supposed to?” I would like a white background with blue text and a button with blue outline and text that turns blue with white text when hovered over.

3
  1. There were options for that in Theme Options. Now when you will attempt to update you will lose all customizations.

To maintain transparency for slider title you should use RGBA colors like this

.flex-caption h2 {
  background: rgba(218, 68, 83, 0.7);
}

WordPress default color picker doesn’t support this color, so you have to do it “manually”

  1. There are conflicts with TK Shortcode plugin, so you changes you make via Theme Options aren’t applied to CFA buttons. Disable this plugin and use Easy Bootstrap Shortcodes instead.

  2. I use manual read more tag for Sparkling demo and for most of my website because it provides with more control. There is a “read more” button in post editor styling options

  3. Doing manually would be so much easier as it requires modification to several template files.

  4. No option for this either. It involves a lot of work and I would personally go for Dazzling theme instead if you need smaller images. This theme is designed for large images and it would require complete remake of front page to make it work with smaller images. That’s why there are two similar themes.

  5. I already explained that you are now stuck with this theme version because you edited stylesheet directly. Creating Child Theme doesn’t require any technical knowledge at all.

How to create child theme:

  1. Create folder called sparkling-child so it would be side by side with sparkling theme folder folder
  2. Create a file called style.css
  3. Copy/paste this content in style.css and save changes
/*
Theme Name: Sparkling Child
Theme URI: https://colorlib.com/wp/themes/sparkling
Author: Colorlib
Author URI: https://colorlib.com/
Description: Sparkling Child Theme
Version: 1.5.0
Template: sparkling
License: GNU General Public License v2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Text Domain: sparkling
Domain Path: /languages/
Tags: green, light, white, gray, black, one-column, two-columns, right-sidebar, fluid-layout, responsive-layout, photoblogging, left-sidebar, translation-ready, custom-background, custom-colors, custom-menu, featured-images, full-width-template, post-formats, theme-options, threaded-comments

*/

@import url("../sparkling/style.css");
  1. Activate this theme via WordPRess dashboard.

Now you can copy/paste files from parent theme to Child Theme folder and edit them there. For example header.php that you need to edit to create sticky/fixed menu.

4

Thank you for your quick reply! I appreciate your patience with my newbie questions.

I will attempt to create the child theme and make the changes to the code you suggested. I did use the Theme Option to change some of the colors, but some of them (for example the hover color of the tags and the Return to Top button) still showed the red color.

I have to say that I downloaded a few paid templates (hence the TK plugin) and none of them were as good as your themes. I can’t wait to move my site over and show it off.

I will probably have a few more questions before I am ready to go live, but I am so grateful for your assistance. Thank you!