Let’s take a look at the new WordPress Twenty Seventeen Theme. Kori Ashton will help you understand how to update to WordPress 4.7 and gives you a reveal of the newest free WordPress theme.
Full Video Transcript
Hey y’all, welcome to another WordPress Wednesday. My name is Kori Ashton here at WebTegrity in San Antonio, Texas and we’re going to be looking, today, at the brand new WordPress theme “Twenty Seventeen”. Every single week I’m producing some sort of video like this. Just for you and the WordPress world. Whether we’re talking about social media marketing inside of WordPress or Search Engine Optimization inside of WordPress (or even just how to improve your website). I’m making a video like this, so be sure to click on the little “Subscribe” button that looks like a little play button and subscribe to our channel. So, here’s what we’re going to be doing today…I want to give you a quick glance at the brand new Twenty Seventeen theme, which of course, is in the budget of FREE. That’s always in the budget.
We’re seeing some crazy, cool trending features inside of this brand-new theme and it’s inside of the upgrade to 4.7. Actually, the theme is out now if you wanted to check that out. I can show you how to get over there and find it; but, let’s take a look at it first and see if you even want to use it. It’s pretty spectacular.
You see in the opening scene, right away, it has a very interesting placement for where your logo will sit. The menu we see down here, just before the first fold ends. It’s obviously available to have video in this opening scene, which is pretty darn slick or you can also just have a static picture sitting there. It gives you an option to press pause on that video, which is kind of a cool little feature to have.
Your main navigation would sit here, right across. Of course, it would extend out the more options
that you had. They give you a little bit of a visual aid here. Letting you know that there’s more down below so, when you click on that you get to see more content.
Again, remember that all of this is just temporary fake content for now. You can apply your own content any way that you can imagine, so dream big with me. Just check out some of the features here, though. We’ve got a little welcome option over here and then a Wiziwig environment where you can put anything you want in text. Then, they’ve got this really large imagery and you see how this kind of overlays and opens up. This is what we’re seeing that’s trending now in 2016 and 2017. This really large imagery. Edge to edge imagery. Large typography and the minimalist approach. So this is very much cutting-edge design here. Even though it’s a minimalist approach. Then again, another section where you have a title
section and a little bit of a layout area here. Where you can have anything you want. And then another beautiful image. Almost a fixed image type of CSS applied to it. Very cool. Yet again another one. So, they just really let you have a lot of beautiful space to add in these gorgeous images. Then, they give you a blog roll which is pretty spectacular too. Right here I see that they’ve got the three most recent blog articles listed here. Something that’s rare to find in a layout is that there’s not featured image visible in this spot, which I think is kind of nice. Again, kind of that minimalist approach.
So, scrolling down you get to see the footer area. You’ve got a column over here and a column over here. And then, of course, your social media icons. This is what that homepage would look like. Let’s go to an inner page and see what the new version of the header would be. This larger image behind here with
your logo up at the top. This is more of a traditional, where your navigation will be across the top, and then, of course, that footer. The blog roll has a really large featured image when you go into individual blog article. A beautiful large featured image at the top and then a right sidebar option and of course, the commenting options. So, pretty slick and pretty cool.
A great job to the team that built this out for you. Twenty Seventeen. Obviously, it’s fully responsive. So, as it shrinks down on a cell phone it’s going to look beautiful on a mobile version or on an iPad version.
So, how do you get this theme? How do you play around with this theme? You’ll go to appearance and go to your “Themes” section. You’ll want to click “Add New Theme” and as soon as you do, it should actually
be this first one visible right here or you can just do a search inside of “Search Themes” for “Twenty Seventeen”.
You can click “Install” and add it into your website. Installing now… And, of course, if you want to activate it, you can. You can come over here to your themes area and see it in your themes area now. That easy to do and it’s free, so there’s no upgraded pro-version of this. Every feature you just saw you get inside of this free version. Alright, the other thing I want to point out to you is, updating to version 4.7 it’s super, super important that you keep your WordPress core up to date. It’s so important.
So, I want you to log into your dashboard and go down here to the bottom side and you’re going to see version 4.7 and you’re going to see up here that you’re running version 4.6.1 or whatever version you might be running. You absolutely want to be sure, as of today, December 8th, that you have an updated version of the core.
So, how do you do that? First things first, if y’all watch my channel you know that you have to have a backup in place. Do not press update unless you know for a fact that you have a backup already in place and you know how to restore it. If you don’t know how to do that, I want you to pause this video. There’s going to be a link in the description box below over to this video, which is “How to Backup Your WordPress Website”. Again, super important that you know you have a backup in place.
Once that’s done, you can go over here to your updates area and it says and updated version of WordPress is available, “Click Now to Update”. Of course, we run on WP Engine’s hosting, so I know that there are backups in place every 24 hours; but, I did go ahead and make another restore point.
So, it’s saying “Hey, before you update are you sure you want to do this, you may want to make a restore point.” No thanks, I’ve already done this. It’s going to go ahead and do all the updating for me. I just want you to be sure that you’re making every single one of your WordPress websites up to date with the most recent version. This, of course, is taking us to 4.7.
Every major update in WordPress they name after a famous jazz musician. This one is named “Vaughan”, after Sarah “Sassy” Vaughan. You can click “Play” and watch this video and see all the different features; but, they do kind of share a few about the new theme “Twenty Seventeen”. They talk to you about some of the upgraded versions, as well. Adding some custom CSS. Some upgrades inside of the menu builder area. It’s pretty cool. They’re also adding some more languages and for those that are super nerdy…I love it and want to learn more and be involved in using the Rest API there are going to be more elements inside of this version of 4.7 for you to just get nerdy in the core.
Alright, y’all. That’s it. Be sure, today, that you go and make sure all of your WordPress websites are up to date. Super, super important. Catch me again next WordPress Wednesday. If you’re in a local area that has WordPress Meetup groups. Be sure to connect there or reach out and be part of the community in your area. You can go to meetup dot com (meetup.com) and do a search for “WordPress”, right in your area. If you’re wondering what that is, I’ll put a link in the description box below. They are free meetings, you guys. Free is always in the budget. Have a great one. I’ll see you next WordPress Wednesday. Bye, bye.
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