Elegant Themes Minimal

One category decides which part of your site is the blog

You publish news, notices and long articles, and categories get created along the way. As long as the theme asks nothing of them, that disorder goes unnoticed. Here you have to choose which one acts as the blog.

In Minimal, the category you designate as the blog takes on the blog layout, fills the home page tabs and gets a navigation link, so it pays to choose it well. It is an Elegant Themes theme that brings together a featured slider, three service blurbs and blog tabs, and connects them to your pages and categories from its options panel.

What content fills the slider and the service blurbs

• Featured slider: filled with pages picked one by one or with the posts of a category chosen as featured.
• Three service blurbs: three pages assigned in the Service Page 1, 2 and 3 dropdowns. A "more" tag inside each page cuts the preview text.
• Icon for each blurb: added with a custom field named Icon, and the image must not exceed 36 x 36 pixels.
• Descriptions under titles: they come from a custom field named Tagline, available on pages and posts.
• Blog tabs: they show the category you designate as the blog. That category also takes on the blog layout and gets a navigation link.

Ads, templates and content elements

The options panel also manages advertising: from there you change the images and target URLs of the ads. For 125 x 125 pixel formats there is the ET: Advertisement widget, which goes in a sidebar.

When editing a page you can choose among several templates in the Templates dropdown. Selecting one brings up the ET Page Templates Settings box with its settings.

Shortcodes add new buttons to the text editor for inserting pre-built design elements without writing HTML. And to take the theme into another language you have the .mo and .po files in the /lang folder.

Dropdowns and fields instead of drag and drop

Its features do not include a drag-and-drop visual builder. The home page is arranged with dropdowns and custom fields, so each block is adjusted in the panel or the editor rather than directly on the page.

A store module is not among its features either.

Content upkeep is also up to you. Icons and descriptions are written page by page, so a site with a lot of content on the home page calls for order. And if you are coming from another theme, your thumbnails need regenerating; the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin takes care of that.

Installation and working order

The theme installs in WordPress like any theme ZIP. After that, this order saves you from redoing the home page:

1. Upload the ZIP from Appearance, Themes, and activate Minimal.
2. On a fresh install, import sampledata/sample.xml from Tools, Import, with the Import epanel settings box checked, to see the structure with sample content.
3. Set your logo from ePanel, in the general settings. The /psd folder includes starter files to prepare it.
4. Create your three service pages, with their "more" tag and Icon field, and assign them in the Homepage tab.
5. Designate the blog category and configure the slider in the Featured Slider tab.
6. Set the featured image of each post at full size.

When you would rather design on the page

If you want to control the header, footer and templates visually, Divi, from the same maker, is a theme and builder in one, and it works with Flexbox and CSS Grid. And if your site already runs on another theme and you only want that way of editing, Divi Builder brings the builder to any theme.

Settings people look for when setting up Minimal

Can the slider show pages instead of posts?

Yes. Turn on Use Pages and choose the pages. Without that option, it uses the posts of the featured category.

Can I change the icons of the three blurbs?

Yes. Each service page takes its own from the Icon custom field, at a maximum of 36 x 36 pixels.

Where do I write the text that appears under a title on the home page?

In a custom field named Tagline, inside the page or post in question.

Does it come with sample content?

Yes. The sampledata/sample.xml file is in the theme folder and is imported from Tools.