Overview
Ristretto is a blog WordPress theme for writing and telling all kinds of stories. It’s also a great solution for any type of blog website: personal, lifestyle, food, fashion, photography blogging. The theme’s design is fully responsive, minimal, clean and modern. Ristretto has momentous font size for easy reading on mobile devices, and/or confortable reading on far-off desktop monitors or smart TVs.
Features
- Clean modern, lucid & minimalistic design
- Easy readable momentous font size on all size devices
- Full-bleed images Major browser compatibility
- 100% Responsive mobile ready design
- Touch-friendly menu navigation
- Keyboard-friendly menu navigation for improved accessibility
- Subtle animated effects
- Powered by WordPress customizer (theme options)
- Unlimited color options
- Layout and design customization
- Widgetized Sidebar & Footer
- Social media icons in the footer
- Font awesome Icons set
- Justified text by default
- Optimum size image display
- Translation ready (i18n)
Requirements
- WordPress 4.8 or later
- Internet Explorer 11
- Chrome 30 or later
- Firefox 32 or later
- Safari 7 or later
Instructions
Ristretto is an easy to use WordPress theme. You can do all the customization from the WordPress Customizer.
The first section in the customizer is Site Identity where you set site title, site tagline and site logo. Also you can choose not to display these things.
The second section in the customizer is Site Colors. In this section you can change every color in the theme and choose your own colors. One note about changing colors; for majority of theme colors you will see the changes taking effect dynamically as you change them. However because JavaScript doesn’t see Pseudo-Classes and Pseudo-Elements in the DOM, some elements’ colors will not change dynamically but the changes will be registered. For you to see the changes taking effect, you will need to click the Publish button and then page refresh button (you do not need to exit the customizer for this).
The third section is reserved for header image. Also you can leave it and choose to have a site without header image. Header image is only visible on Index page.
If you want you can set the site background image in the fourth section of the customizer.
The fifth section is Theme Options section. In this section you can chose how posts will be displayed on index and archive pages. By default the post Excerpt is displayed. The other option is to display the full post content on index and archive pages. One note about these options; right after the fresh install of WordPress and Ristretto theme on your server, depending on myriad of factors, it may happened that the full post content is displayed instead of excerpt. If this happens, you should go in the customizer and in Theme Options section change setting to Display Full content, publish changes, exit customizer, exit the backend of your website, then return to the backend, go to the customizer and change settings to Display Excerpt. From then on the posts excerpts will be displayed on Index and Archive pages.
In the customizer’s sixth section you choose the style of your Primary Menu and what you will put in the Primary menu. Also there is Social Menu, which goes in the footer. For this menu you should provide links to your Social Media profiles, and the theme will present these links with adequate social media icon.
The seventh section is for widgets. Widgets on index, archive and single post pages are located on the right side (the right sidebar). If you choose not to have widgets on these pages, then the content will take the full viewport width. Widgets on regular site pages are located on the left side (the left sidebar). Footer widgets are displayed in three columns (on big screens). You can put as many widgets in the footer as you want, if you have more than three widgets in the footer, than the widgets will begin to wrap in the next row and so on. You can choose your optimal layout with these widgets.
The eight section is for the Homepage settings, a default WordPress section, and gives option between displaying posts in reverse chronological order or a static page. Since this theme is made for blog sites, there is no special template in it for a static home page, so I suggest using the default setting and display your latest posts on the Home page.
In the ninth section you type in the footer copyright info or some other information that will go at the bottom of the footer.
If you want to have a full-bleed image in your post, you will have to provide an image of at least 800px in width, and center align it. These full-bleed images will take full viewport width on tablets and mobile phones.
Some of the recommended plugins for Ristretto Theme:
1. Plugins for viewing photo galleries:
a) Tiled Gallery Carousel Without JetPack, or
b) Simple Lightbox.
2. Plugins for sliders:
a) Slider by WD – Responsive Slider. A slider for pictures and photos. You can insert it anywhere in your post or page via shortcode. Also this plugin adds a slider widget, which you can insert in sidebar or footer. You can insert an unlimited number of these slider widgets.
b) Post Slider by WD – Responsive Post Slider. A post slider. You can insert it anywhere in your post or page via shortcode or php code. Also this plugin adds a slider widget, which you can insert in sidebar or footer. You can insert an unlimited number of these slider widgets.
3. Plugins for contact forms:
a) Custom Contact Forms, or
b) Contact Form 7, or
c) Ninja Forms – The Easy and Powerful Forms Builder.
4. Social Sharing Plugins:
a) WordPress Social Share, Social Login and Social Comments Plugin – Super Socializer, or
b) WordPress Social Sharing Plugin – Sassy Social Share,
c) Pinterest Pin It Button On Image Hover And Post.
5. If you want to integrate some kind of Forum into your blog site, I recommend : bbPress.
6. For Search Engine optimization I recommend: Yoast SEO
