Marquee Documentation

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Overview

Information described in this documentation will give you an idea of how to setup your site to look and function like the theme demo. View the changelog for more a detailed record of all the changes made to Marquee.

Getting Started

After installing and activating Marquee, you can jump in and customize your theme by going to Appearance → Customize. You’ll find options for adding a logo, changing colors, assigning custom menus, front-page settings, and more.

Detailed instructions for working with the theme’s unique features are included below, but if you run into any issues or have a question and have an active AudioTheme license, you can get in touch through the priority support form.

Marquee requires WordPress 4.3+

Layout

Marquee’s layout is a little different than traditional theme layouts. On smaller screens, the header is up top, but on larger desktop screens, the header shifts to the left half of the screen, while the content makes up the right half.

There are also two off-screen panels that can be toggled to reveal the navigation options and a site-wide player.

Fast Page Loading

Marquee includes an experimental feature we’re calling “Fast page loading” that enables some exciting possibilities, but also has the potential to cause issues with some plugins.

It’s disabled by default — to turn it on, head to the Customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Theme Options section to expand it
  3. Check the box to “Enable fast page loading”
  4. Click the Save and Publish button to apply your changes

Typically, browsing to a new page on a site requires a complete refresh, which reloads all the content, images, CSS, JavaScript and other assets on the page. With fast page loading, the content is loaded in the background and inserted in the page when its ready.

Aside from the speed benefits, this allows the site-wide player to continue playing seamlessly as visitors browse your site.

We’ve gone to great length to try to make sure this feature will work with as many plugins as possible, but can’t guarantee support for any individual plugin. If you do have trouble, we recommend leaving fast page loading disabled.

Let us know if you do have trouble with a plugin. While it’s not possible to fix every problem, we’d like to keep track of issues to help guide future development in this area.

The header greatly influences the personality that Marquee takes on, so there are various options for you to help make it your own.

Your site’s title and tagline will be displayed in the header area of Marquee by default, but you can easily replace the text with your own logo or custom image in the Customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Site Title section to expand it
  3. Upload a new image in the Logo field

You may also customize the site title and tagline text in this section, or hide them to display the logo by itself.

Header Image

Header images can be added in the Customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Header Image section to expand it
  3. Upload a new image or select a previously uploaded image

After setting a header image, you may need to head to the Colors section to adjust the text color, background color and background opacity settings.

Header Colors

The header text and background colors can be changed in the Customizer:

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Colors section to expand it
  3. Update the Header Text Color and Background Color settings

An additional setting for changing the opacity of the background color is included and is useful for making sure the text in the header remains visible when using a header image.

Homepage

The homepage is typically one of the first pages most visitors see when visiting your site. While it shows a list of your latest posts by default, Marquee includes a few options that allow you to customize the layout and information displayed.

Read the instructions for setting up a static front page if you’d prefer to use a page for your homepage. You’ll also want to create a page for displaying your latest posts  (see the Blog section below).

Widgets

Additional content can be added to the homepage using widgets — go to Appearance → Widgets and drag individual widgets to the widget area labeled Home.

Blog

When using a static front page, be sure to create a page for your posts. If you haven’t already done so:

  1. Go to Pages → Add New to create a new page for your posts
  2. Give the page a title (“Blog” or “News” work well)
  3. Click the Publish button to create the page
  4. Go to Settings → Reading
  5. Select the page you just created in the Posts Page dropdown
  6. Click the Save Changes button

Now when visiting that page on your site, it will display a list of your latest posts. Be sure to add it to your Primary Menu so your visitors can find it.

Custom Menus

Custom Menus provide granular control over the links that appear in the various navigation areas on your site. Marquee supports three menu locations: the Primary Menu navigation, Secondary Menu navigation, and the Social Links Menu.

You can create and assign menus by going to Appearance → Menus.

Primary Menu

The Primary Menu appears in the off-screen panel that slides into view when clicking the “Menu” toggle button.

Secondary Menu

The Secondary Menu is just below the Primary Menu in the off-screen panel.

The Social Menu allows you to display links to your social media profiles as icons. Each menu item should be added as a Custom Link. Marquee will automagically display the correct icon based on the link URL. For example, a link like https://twitter.com/audiotheme will display a Twitter icon because the theme has detected it is a URL pointing to Twitter.

The following icons are bundled in Marquee for use in your Social Menu: Amazon, Apple/iTunes, Bandcamp, Facebook, Flickr, Google Play, Google+, Instagram, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Rdio, ReverbNation, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress, and YouTube.

AudioTheme Archive Menus

Marquee has menu locations for the Gig, Record, and Video archive pages when the AudioTheme plugin is active.

Site Wide Player

The site wide player in Marquee relies on the Cue plugin. Cue gives you the ability to easily create and manage playlists.

Once Cue is activated, go to Playlists → Add New to create a playlist. After creating a playlist in Cue, you can associate it with the Site-wide Player in the Players meta box while editing the playlist. It’s also possible to use the Customizer:

  1. Navigate to Appearance → Customize
  2. Click the Cue Players section to open it
  3. Choose a playlist from the dropdown for the Site-wide Playlist setting

Page Templates

Page templates allow Pages to display or function differently. A page template can be set in the Page Attributes meta box when editing a page in your dashboard.

Landing Page

The Landing Page template is a basic alternative for the homepage that centers content (vertically and horizontally) in the right content panel. It can be useful for placing the emphasis on a single call to action.

AudioTheme Support

Marquee requires the AudioTheme plugin to be installed and activated to function as shown in the theme demo. AudioTheme provides the ability to manage your gigs, venues, records, tracks, and videos. The plugin can be downloaded from your account dashboard.

Gig, Discography, & Video Archives

Be sure to read the documentation about setting up your archives to add links to your discography, gig, and video pages.

Archive Menus

Marquee has menu locations for the Gig, Record, and Video archive pages. These menus can be used to add additional navigation for past gigs or maybe display different record types (e.g. Albums, Singles). An example of an archive menu can be seen on the theme demos Upcoming Gigs page, where we use the menu to display past gigs by year.

Adding a menu to one of these archive pages is the same as assigning a menu to the main navigation via Appearance → Menus.

Gigs

Help on how to setup gigs can be found in the AudioTheme plugin documentation.

Records

Help on how to setup records can be found in the AudioTheme plugin documentation.

Videos

Help on how to setup videos can be found in the AudioTheme plugin documentation.

Customizing Marquee

Custom Fonts

Marquee has built in support for a few handpicked Google fonts. To customize fonts, go to Appearance → Customize and click the Fonts section to open it and change fonts.

Typekit Fonts

If you have a Typekit account and would like to use the fonts included in one of your kits, you can follow the documentation for integrating custom fonts for Typekit.

Custom CSS

For making minor CSS customizations, we recommend using a plugin that allows you to easily add your snippets in the WordPress admin panel. If you’re already using Jetpack, it includes a Custom CSS module, otherwise, Custom CSS by Dev7studios is a good standalone option.

Child Theme

When looking to make more advanced customizations to Marquee, make your changes in a Child Theme to ensure your modifications aren’t lost when we release updates. You should never directly edit code in a parent theme or plugin.

You can download a sample child theme here. In the sample, we’ve changed the site content background color from white to red as a way to demonstrate the changes are working.

Need Customization Help?

If you need help customizing your theme, you can find help in the following places