Chalk is an innovative theme for twenty-first century teachers and creative bloggers. The theme includes some exciting features to help make sharing your favorite content easy: to-do lists, chats, links, podcasts, photos, and video.
Overview
Chalk has been designed to look beautiful on any device or screen width, including phones, tablets and regular monitors.
While Chalk is targeted at teachers, its emphasis is on presenting content of all types in a clear and easy to follow way. If your site needs a way to highlight various media formats around a certain topic, Chalk may be what you’re looking for!
Showcase a variety of content types
Posting text, video, audio and images is all done from the comfort of your admin panel, and Chalk comes with a detailed tutorial on using any of the content types if you hit any snags.
In addition to the normal post formats, Chalk features a special use for the Aside post format: to-do lists. You can use to-do lists for checking off concepts covered in class or listing books you plan on reading – really, for anything you want to share in list form!
Setting up to-do lists is easy:
Select Aside from the post format box on the Edit Post screen. Then, create an unordered list. Separate each task into a new list item by pressing enter/return on your keyboard.
To mark a task as complete, highlight the text of a particular list item, then apply the Strikethrough styling (as shown below).
Swap in your favorite colors!
From your theme options page, you can easily swap the two main colors on your site to match your school colors, to compliment your images or simply to show your favorite colors. Just choose the colors and save!
Your site will automatically be updated to use your new color palette. By adjusting Chalk’s two primary colors along with the background color of your site, you can make your site look and feel uniquely yours.
Add beautiful typography
If you enjoy good, readable typography (and we do!), you’ll love the easy font swapping you can do from Chalk’s theme options page. You have a choice of 7 different fonts including 5 from Google’s web font directory that can be mixed and matched to fit your site’s content. You don’t need to purchase the custom font upgrade to get access to the 7 fonts included with Chalk!
All this, and more!
In addition to the stunning features mentioned above, your purchase of Chalk also includes:
- A customizable logo image
- A plethora of display options to get your posts looking “just right”
- Beautiful handcrafted social icons for your footer including Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Flickr and RSS
Activate Chalk on your site
Purchasing Chalk gets you access to the Premium support forums, where you’ll get help from the theme creators directly. Chalk can give your site a unique feel with a clean design. Activate Chalk today to get started!
Quick Specs (
all measurements in pixels):
- Chalk is a flexible-width, responsive design.
- The main column maximum width is
760.
- Featured images are
760 by 300.
All images will scale to fit the viewing screen.
Chalk theme documentation
Posting overview
Chalk supports 9 post formats, selectable from the Edit Post screen: Standard (text), Aside (to-do list), Gallery, Link, Quote, Status, Video, Audio and Chat. Whenever you create a new post, choose an appropriate post format and follow the instructions below.
Posting articles
Articles work just like regular WordPress posts, leave the post format set to Standard and create your post.
Posting to-do lists
Select Aside from the post format box. Then, create an unordered list. Separate each task into a new list item by pressing enter/return on your keyboard.
To mark a task as complete, highlight the text of a particular list item, then apply the Strikethrough styling (as shown below).
Note: This post format is not intended to display images and other typographic elements.
Posting galleries
Select Gallery from the post format box. Then, complete the following steps:
- Upload your image files via the Add Media icon.
- Click “Save all changes”.
- Customize your gallery settings (optional).
- Click “Insert gallery”.
Your images will now show using Chalk’s native slideshow display. The post title and meta will not display, only the gallery you created will be shown.
Would you like to autostart your gallery? If yes, please read through the section of this theme’s documentation about enabling gallery autostart.
Of course, you can also use the default WordPress gallery in the Standard post format.
Note: This post format will not display a Featured Image.
Posting links
Select Link from the post format box and type your link title into the post content editor. Next, highlight the text you just entered, and create your link by clicking the link icon in the editor. The post title will be ignored; only the linked text you entered will be shown.
Posting quotes
Select Quote from the post format box and type or paste your quote into the post content editor. Your quote will now display using Chalk’s custom Quote post format styling. The post title will not display, only the quoted text you enter will be shown.
Posting status updates
Select Status from the post format box and type a brief message into the post content editor. Your status update will now display using Chalk’s custom Status post format styling. The post title will not display, only the text you enter will be shown.
Note: This post format is not intended to display images and other typographic elements.
Posting videos
Select Video from the post format box. Make sure you are editing in the HTML editor mode, and paste your embed code into the post content area. The post title and meta will not display, only the video you embed will be shown.
Note: This post format will not display a Featured Image.
Posting audio
Select Audio from the post format box. Then, upload your audio files via the upload audio icon at the top of your post editor. You may also add a description for your audio files in the post content area.
If you choose to upload multiple audio files, a playlist will automatically be created.
Posting chats
Select Chat from the post format box. Then, create an unordered list. Separate each line of dialogue into a new list item by pressing enter/return on your keyboard. Your conversation will now display using Chalk’s native chat styling.
Styling overview
Chalk features a number of custom styles that will make your content stand out even further. Below are instructions for adding these custom styles to your content.
Alerts
Alert styles call attention to specific sections of your content. To style an alert, you will need to be in HTML editor mode. Then, wrap your content in a div with a class name of “alert”, like so:
<div class="alert">Weighs <strong>40%</strong> of your course outcomes</div>
Green “success” alert styling:
<div class="alert success">Your content here.</div>
Red “error” alert styling:
<div class="alert error">Your content here.</div>
Post-it styling
To style a small post-it box, you will need to be in HTML editor mode. Then, wrap your content within pre tags, like so:
<pre>Your content here.</pre>
This styling is not intended to for long bodies of text.
Enable slideshow on page templates or non-gallery posts
To enable a slideshow on a page or non-gallery post, add your gallery; then, paste the following shortcode into your page content, replacing the default [gallery] shortcode:
[gallery slider="true"]
Using the regular [gallery] shortcode will remove the slider styling and return to the default WordPress gallery.
Enable gallery autostart
To autostart a slideshow within a gallery post, add your gallery; then, paste the following shortcode into your post content, replacing the default [gallery] shortcode:
[gallery autostart="true"]
To autostart a slideshow within a page template or non-gallery post, include autostart="true" into the shortcode, like so:
[gallery autostart="true" slider="true"]
Creating pages
Chalk has three available page layouts, including the Default, Archives and Sitemap templates.
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Pages → Add New and select one of the three templates available from the Template drop-down; your content will be formatted accordingly.
Archives and Sitemap pages
The Archives and Sitemap pages on the demo site are created using the default page templates. Select “Archives” or “Sitemap” from the Template drop-down to set the specifically formatted display for these page types.
Uploading a Feature Image
Chalk’s Feature Image will display above your post content. To add a Feature Image to your post, you need to complete two steps:
- Create an image with dimensions of 760 x 300 pixels or larger.
- Set a Featured Image within your desired post.
Not sure how your Featured Image should look? Take a look at this example on the demo site.
Setting a custom background
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance → Background. This will display the options available for adding a custom Background Image and/or Background Color.
Change the color scheme
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Appearance → Theme Options page. Under the “Fonts & Colors” section, enter your Primary and/or Secondary color value into the corresponding input fields, or feel free to use the color pickers for convenience.
Typography options
In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Appearance → Theme Options page. Under the “Fonts & Colors” section, there are two options for controlling the font families used across your theme.
The Accent font is used for headings, block quotes, buttons, menus and other highlighted areas.
The Body font is used for your post copy and all other content that is not styled by the Accent font.
Display options
Chalk allows you to easily remove the author’s name, post navigation, print link, tags and categories from the post display. In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to the Appearance → Theme Options page. Under the “Display options” section, check the appropriate options to prevent them from displaying on all posts and pages.
Sharing buttons (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Google+)
Your sharing buttons are controlled under the “Footer” section of the Appearance → Theme Options page. To disable all footer icons (including RSS), check “Disable all icons”.
Footer byline
The input field for your footer Copyright text is found above the sharing options, under the “Footer” section of the Appearance → Theme Options page. By default, this is left empty.
