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Mimbo Pro Help

Requirements

  • WordPress 2.8+
  • PHP 4+ and a MySQL database
  • A host server with GD library (very common)

Configuration

  1. To experience the real power of Mimbo Pro, first get acquainted with the control panel options by clicking Appearance > Mimbo Pro Options. Here you’ll configure your homepage categories, Feedburner info, contact form, and other helpful bits.
  2. Go to “Appearance > Widgets” and insert content for your sidebars and footer
  3. If you’re an author, click the Users > Your Profile and insert your biographical information. Your photo will automatically be inserted using Gravatars (more information on Gravatar.com).
  4. Switch on your custom templates (Contact, Archives, Image Gallery and Sitemap) by clicking Pages > Add New, and applying the appropriate template in the “Template” pulldown menu.
  5. Search around the forums and read what people are doing with Mimbo Pro
  6. We recommend setting your permalinks to “Date and Name Based” to ensure all feeds work correctly
  7. Go set up an account at Gravatar.com for your author photo
  8. If you want to include advertisements, install the WP125 plugin and drop the widget into your sidebar. Then go to “Ads->Settings” and make sure to unclick “Include default ad stylesheet?”, as Mimbo Pro comes pre-styled for this plugin.

FAQs

  1. How do I get a coupon to upgrade to v2.0?
    Log in to the accounts system by entering your email and the reference number from your previous order. A dashboard message will provide the coupon code for upgrades.
  2. How do I associate an image with a post?
    Mimbo Pro comes with code which automatically pulls the first image from the body of your post, resizes it and inserts it on the homepage, category pages and search page. If there is no image in your post, the script checks for a custom field called “Image”, to support older versions of the theme.
  3. Why aren’t my images working?
    First make sure your /scripts/cache/ folder is set to 777 and that you’ve confirmed GD Library is installed correctly on your host server. If your theme is installed somewhere other than the root folder, make sure to adjust your control panel under in Settings->Miscellaneous. If you still have no luck, please consult the forums. The images are resized with some software called TimThumb – there is more info on configuring TimThumb available here
  4. How do I add author photos?
    The author archive photo corresponds to your gravatar.com account, which must be set up beforehand
  5. How do I customize the masthead logo and background image?
    This can be easily done in the control panel by clicking Appearance > Custom Header.
  6. How do I keep my excerpts looking consistent?
    By default, WordPress excerpts use the first 55 words of a post, but you can always tailor them yourself by using the Excerpt field in the Write panel.
  7. How do I use the custom masthead tool if I’m using a child theme?
    All the included child themes come with specific pre-styling for the masthead area, which can be easily overwritten in order to utilize the custom masthead tool. Just open the child theme stylesheet and delete the line that looks like: “#masthead { background: #000 !important;}”
  8. How do I change the jpeg quality in the automated cropping and resizing?
    Cropping and resizing is done in scripts/timthumb.php, you can edit the default value (currently 70) on line 24.
  9. Why are my category summaries/ carousel/ homepage headlines not showing up?
    If your installation of WordPress is new, some stories won’t show up at first. This is because Mimbo Pro deliberately prevents any redundancy of content on the homepage between category summaries and the other content regions at the top of the page (lead story, recent news, carousel). As you continue adding new content, eventually the summaries will begin filling in.
  10. Why do the category summaries not appear on the homepage?
    Category summaries will only show up when there are posts in the categories.
  11. Can I customize color and layout without affecting future versions of Mimbo Pro?
    Mimbo Pro comes with three child themes. Two are colorful, and one (“Basic Starter”) is for developers starting from scratch. What is a child theme? It’s a smaller theme which inherits most of its code/functionality from its parent. Thus, when new versions of Mimbo Pro are released, your customizations (saved to your child theme folder) are not overwritten. Read more about child themes on our Child Theme support page
    Note: if you intend to both customize Mimbo Pro and adopt future upgrades, it’s strongly recommended that you create your own child theme rather than editing the Mimbo Pro core files.
  12. Why don’t my category drop-down menus show up?
    Some menu items may not display in your menu’s. The reason for this is most commonly that categories have been created but they do not have any posts in. Generally this is fine (why link to an empty category) but if your parent category has no posts in it then it may not display it, or it’s children. So make sure that any category you want to display in the menus has at least one post in it.
  13. How do I align the crop location in my post thumbnails?
    Aligning the post thumbnail in Mimbo Pro requires a custom field to be added to each post. The custom field should be called ‘align‘, and the value can be t, b, l, r, tr, tl, br, or bl. More information is available on these properties on this blog post about crop positions with TimThumb.

Tutorials

Translations

Currently we have the following languages available:

If you would like to contribute a translation in exchange for a single-license copy of Mimbo Pro 2.0, please download the blank English (en_EN.po) file, fill it out, save it correctly and email it to Darren.

Custom Templates

Mimbo Pro has a number of page templates included as standard and below are descriptions of what they do. For basic information on setting them up read the “Creating Custom Pages” documentation.

  • Archives (archives.php)
    The Archives are a paged historical list of all of the posts that have featured on the site, ever.

  • Full Width (full_width.php)
    Full Width is a standard page layout, only the sidebar has been removed giving you more space to do interesting things with.

  • Contact (contact.php)
    The Contact page template gives you a simple method for adding a contact form to your website. This page requires you to have completed the information in the email section of the admin control panel (such as filling out the subject and the from address)

  • Image Gallery (image_gallery.php)
    The image gallery is a page archive of all of your posts, however instead of displaying the posts in the traditional way it displays the images associated with the posts – just like an image gallery.

  • List Authors (list_authors.php)
    Lists all of the accounts on the website who have posted some content on the blog.

  • Sitemap (template_sitemap.php)
    Lists every post ever written on your website on a single page. I would recommend linking to this page somewhere fairly subtle (in the footer?) and then placing that link on every page. This is fantastic for SEO as it means every post on your site is linked to quickly and easily and so will show up in the search engines.