Shaka WordPress Theme Documentation

Introduction & Installation

Introduction

Shaka is the world’s first WordPress theme made specifically for the water-sports industry. Whether it is for surf schools in Hawaii or diving classes in Bali, Shaka will have your visitors pumped and ready for an unforgettable trip to the ocean.

Installation

Check out our guide on how to install the Shaka theme and how to import its demo data

I assume you already have a fresh copy of WordPress installed on your server.

Download the theme zip file
The first thing you will need to do is to download the theme installation zip file.

If you bought the theme on ThemeForest, then you have to download the installable WordPress files only zip file from the ThemeForest download section.

Install the theme
You can install the Shaka WP Theme in two different ways:

Upload a zip file - preferred method
When you are logged in your WordPress dashboard go to Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme and select the theme installation zip file you downloaded from our Shop or from the ThemeForest and click Install Now button.
FTP upload
Unzip the contents of the theme installation zip file and upload the extracted folder to your server to wp-content/themes/ folder using a FTP client.

Once your theme is on the server, activate it by clicking the Activate button below the preview image in Appearance → Themes

Congratulations! Now the Shaka WP Theme is installed.

Install and activate the required plugins and any recommended plugins you need. You can do this by visiting Appearance → Install Plugins inside wp-admin.

Before importing demo content, install and activate the required plugins and complete theme registration. Recommended plugins are optional; activate any needed for the demo features you want to use.

Registration and Updates

Open Appearance > Theme Registration after activating the theme. Use the license key from your ProteusThemes account, or the purchase code from your ThemeForest download, according to the instructions on the registration page.

Register before using One Click Demo Import. In the ProteusThemes shop version, registration also unlocks the theme's Customizer options. The ThemeForest version does not apply that Customizer restriction, but still requires registration for demo import.

Automatic updates: After registration, the theme can notify you when updates are available. For a ThemeForest purchase, also generate and verify the Envato token requested on the registration page to enable automatic updates. This is separate from your purchase code.

If an available update is not showing, open Dashboard > Updates and click Check Again.

Manual updates: Follow our manual theme update guide to install a newer version yourself.

Customize the Appearance

You can fully customize the appearance of the Shaka WP Theme. Go to Appearance → Themes and click on the Customize button:

The new window appears and you can now customize the appearance of your theme — upload your custom logo, change the base colors, enable/disable theme features, add custom CSS or JavaScript, etc.

Demo Content

Before importing, activate the required plugins and the plugins used by your chosen demo, then complete theme registration.

One Click Demo Install

You can import demo content from our demo site (with blurred licensed images) with a single click of a button. Go to Appearance → Import Demo Data and click on the import button.

Don't forget to activate all required plugins before importing demo data.

When setting up a content with your new theme, put special focus on the page speed optimization, especially on the image optimization process. This way you can save on your bandwidth, reduce the bounce rate on your website, and make your users happy. Our themes are created with the speed in mind but large, non-optimized images can and will ruin this experience.

Import XML File

If you want to import the demo content the old-fashioned way, you can get a fresh copy of the XML file on our server at this URL: https://artifacts.proteusthemes.com/xml-exports/shaka-latest.xml. Don't forget to activate all required plugins before importing demo data. To import the demo data go to Tools → Import, click on WordPress (install the WordPress Importer plugin if not already installed) and upload/import the previously saved xml file (don't forget to enable the Download and import file attachments checkbox to also import the images).

Demo Widgets
After you import the demo content, you can also import widgets the old-fashioned way. The file for widget import is also located on our server: https://artifacts.proteusthemes.com/json-widgets/shaka.json. Rename this file to shaka.wie (mind the file extension) and use it in the plugin Widget Importer & Exporter. Go to Tools → Widget Import/Export and import the file.

After import setup
After you have imported the demo data and widgets, you should also setup these things:

In Settings > Reading, choose A static page and select the homepage and posts page.
In Appearance > Menus, assign your menus to the theme's available menu locations.
In Appearance > Widgets, select the appropriate menu in each imported Navigation Menu widget.
Use Appearance > Customize to set your logo, colors and other appearance options.

These steps are especially useful after a manual XML and widget import. If the demo importer has already assigned pages or menus, check those selections rather than repeating the import.

If for some reason these URLs are not available, then all you need to do is download the All files & documentation zip from ThemeForest and you will find the content.xml and widgets.json file in the extras folder.

Don't forget to activate all required plugins before importing demo data.

Top Bar

On both the left and right side of the top there are widget areas. You can put many widgets on Top Left or Top Right widget area: Icon Box, Social Icons, Custom Menu or Text widget.

Logo

The logo can be changed in our Theme Options - Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Logo.

Favicon

Since WordPress version 4.3, the favicon setting can be found in Appearance → Customize → Site Identity, where you have to set the Site Icon option.

Header Widgets

You can put a lot of widgets in the Header widget area, but your header will look great with the following widgets: Icon Box, Social Icons, Text Widget, Search.

Icon Box

With widget Icon Box you can put any kind of title with small text and image in the header. In our demo we use this widget for contact information which we think is very important for customers.

In this widget you can choose Title, Text and Icon from Font Awesome. You can also choose a link for the whole box. If you leave that field empty the Icon Box will not be click-able.

We give you few Icons to choose from but you can actually use any icon from Font Awesome 4 icons. Just paste the icon title in the Icon field and that's it. How cool is that?

More than one Icon Box widget can be used in the Header.

You can also use tel: and mailto: in the Link area for direct connection with phone or mail. For example: tel:0038631567536 or mailto:[email protected].

For the WPML language switcher widget, see Translations.

Main Menu can be set in wp-admin → Appearance → Menus. Theme locations for Main Menu is called Main Menu.

You can select Featured Page or add Featured Custom Link as the last item of the navigation. You will find settings for that in Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Navigation → Featured Page.

Pages

wp-admin → Pages is the area where you will spend most of your time when building a site. We added a few tools in that process so you can create your pages easier and faster.

Page Templates

You can choose between 3 different Templates - Default Template, Front Page with Slider and Front Page With Layer/Revolution Slider.

Default Template: Just a default template for simple layouts and Page Builder. First you must choose the Page Builder option under the title and you are ready to go. You can add our widgets here, choose different visual styles and much more. More about that in the next chapter.

Front Page with Slider: This is a unique template which adds an option for a slider in the page options. It can be used with Page Builder. More about that in the Slider chapter.

Front Page with Layer/Revolution Slider: We don't include these two slider plugins with the theme but we make sure they work nicely, since we know our customers want to use them. When you activate this template there is a new Page Slider meta box in which you can put ID/alias from Layer/Revolution Slider.

Page Builder

Page Builder is a very powerful tool for making pages. Here is one example of how it looks:

You can make any kind of grid with adding new rows and inside them you put widgets. When you are finished with adding widgets you can also move whole rows up and down.

For more information on how to use Page Builder please visit Page Builder by SiteOrigin documentation page.

For a step-by-step guide to adding rows and widgets, read SiteOrigin's Building a Page tutorial.

Page Builder Row Style

Let's take a look at how we can style Page Builder rows.

To start off we have to click on "Edit Row" for the row that we want to style as shown on the image above. An "Edit Row" window will open, and on the right, there are three setting tabs: Attributes, Layout and Design. Here you can customize different things for this particular row.

In the Layout tab you can set the Bottom Margin, Padding and change the Row Layout to Full Width. In the Design tab you can set the Background Color, Background Image and other things.

To achieve the same design for the Call to Action widget as on our demo page you have to click on Layout tab and set the Bottom Margin to 70px, Padding to 40px and the Row Layout to Full Width. Then click on the Design tab and set the Background Color to #3b3331.

Page Builder Jumbotron Overlap

For wider screen (1500px +) there is really nice option in Shaka to make first row overlapping over jumbotron. You must edit first row of the page with slider and insert class jumbotron-overlap in the Attributes -> Row Class.

In Shaka we added one new widget style. You can now set a box around the widget and make widgets stands out. This option can be chosen for all widgets in the page builder under the tab Design.

Page Builder Widgets

You can use almost any widget in the Page Builder. Let's take a look at few not so straight forward ones.

SiteOrigin Editor Widget

SiteOrigin Editor will create you the same editor environment as a normal WordPress editor does. You can use this widget if you want normal text editing options. SiteOrigin Editor Widget is part of Site Origin Widgets Bundle.

Call to Action Widget

How do I add a button? With our custom shortcodes. You can find instructions in the Buttons section.

Featured Page is a really simple widget that we use in Page Builder. All you have to do is to select the page and one of the two layouts we made for you.

But how do I change the image and text on the Front Page?

The image on the Front Page is just the normal Featured Image of the selected page. You can change that in the sidebar of every single page. Text can be changed in the Excerpt field which can be found at the end of the page settings. If the excerpt field is not there, you must click on the Screen Option (at the top of the page) and check Excerpt. For more info please take a look at the screenshot below.

The Portfolio Grid widget displays portfolio items in a grid or a single-row slider. In its settings, choose the layout, maximum number of items, sort order, and categories to display. You can also add a call-to-action item.

The theme uses Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed for Instagram feeds. The former ProteusThemes Instagram widget is no longer included.

Install and activate Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed from the theme's plugin installer.
Open Instagram Feed > All Feeds > Add New, choose User Timeline, and add a source. Follow the plugin's account connection prompts.
Customize and save the feed, then click Embed and copy its shortcode.
Paste the shortcode into a SiteOrigin Editor widget on your page and save the page.

For account requirements and connection help, follow Smash Balloon's setup guide. Configure the feed layout and refresh settings in the plugin.

The Weather widget shows a location forecast. It uses a free OpenWeatherMap API key. You do not need a One Call subscription.

Follow OpenWeatherMap's API key guide to create an account and copy your key.
Paste the key into the widget's API key field.
Enter the location name, then the latitude and longitude. Look those up on latlong.net.
Choose whether to show current weather in the main area, how many forecast days to display, and the temperature and wind units, then save the page.

Weather data is cached for one hour. To refresh it sooner, edit the widget (for example, change the forecast length, update the page, then change it back).

If the widget still cannot retrieve forecasts after you add a key, update the theme to version 3.0.1 or later. Older versions called OpenWeather's discontinued One Call 2.5 API.

This is how the Weather widget looks next to a Featured Page widget:

You can embed a public X profile or list in a sidebar or a Page Builder row using a WordPress Custom HTML widget.

Open X Publish and enter the profile or list URL you want to display.
Choose the embedded timeline, adjust the available display options, and copy the generated code.
Add a Custom HTML widget to the sidebar or Page Builder row, paste the code, and save the widget and page.

Only public posts can appear in a timeline. See X's timeline embedding guide for the current options and requirements.

Slider

Building a Theme slider has never been easier.
You can create a Theme slider on any page you want. The only thing you must do is choose the page template Front Page With Slider (you can use this template even if it's not for the front page). After you select this page template there will be a new meta box at the bottom of the page which is called Front page slider. Now you can add images or videos to your slider.

You can add Youtube or Vimeo videos. These two video providers are supported in our theme slider.

As you can see on the example image bellow, there is also another tab: Settings. In Settings tab, you can change how the slider behaves (change the slider settings).

This is how the slider backend looks like:

Please take a look at this slider dimensions article for the recommended size of the slider images for this theme.

You can also use Layer/Revolution Slider. We don't include them with the theme but we make sure they work. When you activate page template - Front Page With Layer/Revolution Slider there is new field in which you can put id/alias from Layer/Revolution Slider.

ProteusThemes Options

You can find all Theme Options in the Customizer: Appearance → Customize. This is a live preview editor for your page.

Here you can change:

Logo
Header
Navigation
Page Header Area
Theme Layout & Colors
Shop
Footer
Custom Code
And Much More ...

Shortcodes

Buttons

Add a button with [button]Your Text[/button]. Customize it with style, href, target, fa, fullwidth, class, title, funky.

Text: Change the text between the opening and closing shortcode.
Example: [button]New Text[/button]

Style: Choose primary, secondary, danger, success, info.
Example: [button style="primary"]Your Text[/button]

Href: Set the button's destination URL.
Example: [button href="https://www.proteusthemes.com"]Your Text[/button]

Target: Use _self for the same tab or _blank for a new tab.
Example: [button href="https://www.proteusthemes.com" target="_blank"]Your Text[/button]

Font Awesome icon: Add an icon before the text.
Example: [button fa="fa-phone"]Your Text[/button]

Full width: Stretch the button to fill its container.
Example: [button fullwidth="true"]Your Text[/button]

Class: Add extra CSS classes to the button.
Example: [button class="btn-lg"]Your Text[/button]

Title: Make the button larger.
Example: [button title="true"]Your Text[/button]

Funky: Give the button an irregular shape.
Example: [button funky="true"]Your Text[/button]

Icons - Font Awesome

Shortcode for Font Awesome is very similar to the buttons shortcode. It looks like this: [fa]
The attributes are icon, href, target and color.

Icon: You can use any Font Awesome 4 icon. To set the selected icon, just get the title of the icon, for example "fa-phone".
Example: [fa icon="fa-phone"]

Href: You can add URL to the icon.
Example: [fa href="https://www.proteusthemes.com"]

Target: You can choose if you want to open the link in the same - "_self" or new - "_blank" window.
Example: [fa target="_blank"]

Color: You can set a custom color to your icon.
Example: [fa color="#ff00ff"]

So a Font Awesome icon shortcode with a home icon, linking to a page and opening in a new window/tab would look like this: [fa icon="fa-home" href="https://www.proteusthemes.com" target="_blank"]

Tables

Tables are in fact not made with real shortcodes but very simple html tables.

Paste the example below into the Text tab of a SiteOrigin Editor widget or a WordPress Custom HTML widget.

After that all you need to do is to add our shaka-table class in the <table> and that's it.

Example for our demo Pricing Tables:

<table class="shaka-table">
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>GEAR FOR RENT</th>
      <th class="text-center">Renting price</th>
      <th class="text-center">Boat trip price + eqipment</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>Neoprene suit</td>
      <td class="text-center">Free (on all trips over $50)</td>
      <td class="text-center">Free (on all trips over $50)</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>SNORKELLING FINS</td>
      <td class="text-center">$22.95</td>
      <td class="text-center">$20.95</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>SNORKELING MASK</td>
      <td class="text-center">$16.95</td>
      <td class="text-center">$10.95</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>SQUBA PRO</td>
      <td class="text-center">$23.95</td>
      <td class="text-center">$20.95</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>OCEANIC COMPASS</td>
      <td class="text-center">$9.95</td>
      <td class="text-center"><a href="https://demo.proteusthemes.com/shaka/services/diving-and-snorkeling/">GET IN TOUCH</a></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Plugins

We also use and support some of the best plugins for WordPress.

Required and Recommended Plugins

You can install and activate these plugins by going to wp-admin → Appearance → Install Plugins.

The list of required and recommended plugins used in this theme:

These groups match the required and recommended labels in the theme's plugin installer. Install recommended plugins when you need their features.

Required plugins

Advanced Custom Fields
ACF Repeater Field (bundled with the theme)
ProteusThemes Shortcodes (installed from the developer's download)
Page Builder by SiteOrigin
SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle
One Click Demo Import
Breadcrumb NavXT
Custom Sidebars by ProteusThemes
Classic Editor
Classic Widgets
Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed

Recommended plugins

ClevrBot (installed from the developer's download)
Portfolio Post Type
Contact Form 7
WooCommerce - excelling eCommerce

Contact Form 7

We use Contact Form 7 for our Contact Us page. This is the code from our demo:

<div class="row">
  <div class="col-12  col-lg-6">
    [text* your-name class:form-control placeholder "First Name"]
  </div>
  <div class="col-12  col-lg-6">
    [text* your-last-name class:form-control placeholder "Last Name"]
  </div>
  <div class="col-12  col-lg-6">
    [email* your-email class:form-control placeholder "E-mail"]
  </div>
  <div class="col-12  col-lg-6">
    [text your-subject class:form-control placeholder "Subject"]
  </div>
  <div class="col-12">
    [textarea your-message class:form-control placeholder "Message"]
    <div class="wpcf7-notice">Fields with * are required.</div>
    [submit class:btn class:btn-primary "SEND MESSAGE"]
  </div>
</div>

After that just place the plugin's shortcode into your Contact Us page.

WooCommerce

Activate WooCommerce to add a store to your site. Follow its onboarding steps, then use WooCommerce > Settings to configure your store, shipping, taxes and payments.

If your chosen theme demo includes products, activate WooCommerce before you import that demo so its product data can be imported.

Optional sample products

For a test store, WooCommerce supplies a sample_products.csv file in the plugin's sample-data folder. Download the WooCommerce plugin ZIP and extract that file, then open Products > All Products and use the product import button. Select the CSV, review the column mapping, and run the importer.

Alternatively, use Tools > Import > WordPress to import sample-data/sample_products.xml from the same plugin ZIP. Select Download and import file attachments if you also want the sample images. See the WooCommerce sample-data guide for both methods.

Shop sidebar

Open Appearance > Widgets to add the available product widgets to Shop Sidebar. WooCommerce must be active for this sidebar to appear.

For product management and store configuration, see the WooCommerce documentation.

Breadcrumb NavXT

The breadcrumbs in this theme are powered by the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin.

All the settings for breadcrumbs can be found in Settings → Breadcrumb NavXT. Here you can define a separator (which should be empty by default for our themes), breadcrumb hierarchies for different pages (pages, custom post types, taxonomy, ...) and set other breadcrumbs related things.

Default Product Breadcrumbs

Let's take a look at how to setup the default breadcrumbs used on this theme for the Products custom post type. Go to Settings → Breadcrumb NavXT and click on the Post Types tab. Scroll down to the Product section, and set the Product Root Page to Shop page and since we set the root page, we can also disable (uncheck) the Product Archive Display checkbox. Don't forget to save the settings.

Default Portfolio Breadcrumbs

To set the correct default Portfolio/Project custom post type breadcrumbs, you should go to Settings → Breadcrumbs NavXT and click on the Post Types tab. Scroll down to the Portfolio Item section, and set the Portfolio Item Root Page to your "Projects" page (where you list all your projects), then disable (uncheck) the Portfolio Item Archive Display and Portfolio Item Hierarchy Display checkboxs. Save the settings.

Last but not least there is our footer area. The footer area is divided into:

Footer Widgets is the place where you can add the last things to your page. You can add widgets in the Apperance → Widgets → Footer. There are also few options for that area in Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Footer. You can changes different colors there.

The Bottom Footer area is the place for copyrights or some custom text. Custom text for the left and right side of the bottom footer can be added in live customizer Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Footer.

Translations

Manual translation

We have an article with a video on how to translate our themes.

WPML for Multilingual sites

This theme officially supports WPML. Head over to the WPML website, buy the subscription, then install the main plugin — likely the OTGS Installer Plugin. When prompted to download, install, and activate specific WPML plugins, make sure to install and activate these:

WPML Multilingual CMS
String Translation
Media Translation

WPML’s setup wizard will also prompt you to install other plugins if it thinks you need them. For example, if this theme includes a WooCommerce-based site, WPML will prompt you to install WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency. Install whatever WPML suggests installing.

Note: We have styled the WPML language switcher widget for this theme. There are too many plugins and other options to make WordPress multilingual, so we cannot support all of them. We choose to officially support only WPML as it is de-facto standard. However, in case that you selected other plugin than WPML to make your WordPress-powered site multilingual and it allows for modification of the language switcher, here is the HTML markup that you might find helpful:

<div class="widget  widget_icl_lang_sel_widget  js-wpml-widget" style="margin-left: 0;">
  <div id="lang_sel">
    <ul>
      <li>
        <a href="#" class="lang_sel_sel icl-en"><img class="iclflag" src="https://example.com/path/to/flags/en.png" title="English"/>&nbsp;English</a>
        <ul>
          <li class="icl-de">
             <a href="#"><img class="iclflag" src="https://example.com/path/to/flags/de.png" title="Deutsch"/>&nbsp;Deutsch</a>
          </li>
          <li class="icl-en">
             <a href="https://www.proteusthemes.com/docs/shaka/#wpml" target="_blank">WPML support</a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>

For reference: the widgets and theme options can only be translated using the String Translation.

Extras

Demo Images

All images used in Shaka WP can be found on Shutterstock.

All the images shown in the demo page of Shaka WP are copyrighted and come blurry with the theme (demo content).

Customizations

If you need advanced customizations for this theme, we can do that. See our Theme Customization page for details.

Changelog

View the Shaka WP changelog.

Support

If you need more help after all, you can write to us.