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Home Resources Quick Start: WordPress Theme Setup (UMC Theme 2)

Quick Start: WordPress Theme Setup (UMC Theme 2)


sections in this tutorial:

Download the Theme  Install the Theme  Download Plugins  Install Plugins

 

DOWNLOAD THE THEME:


The official University of Utah WordPress theme is built around the current University-approved design and brand guidelines. You can download the theme and install it on any WordPress site just as you would any other WordPress theme. We're always making improvements, fixing bugs and enhancing functionality of the theme. As updates are made, including changes to the University web standard guidelines, we'll post new versions of the theme here.*

Download the U of U WordPress Theme (UMC Theme v.2.2)

* Please note that this download link is the previous version of the theme. You can find the new version of the U of U WordPress theme here.

DOWNLOAD THE PLUGINS


UMC Digital requires a few plugins in order to function optimally, and highly recommends a few others to help you get your site ready to go with all of the capabilities common to a University of Utah website, such as a page layout builder, event calendar integration, Duo 2FA authentication, easy form creation and email marketing integration.

Recommended plugins:

INSTALL & CONFIGURE THE THEME:


You will install the University of Utah WordPress theme just as you would any other WordPress theme. Upload the 'umctheme2' directory to your local installation's themes directory (/wp-content/themes/), or you can simply follow the instructions when you click the 'Upload Theme' button from the WordPress dashboard.

Create menus and set menu locations

Once you've installed the theme one of the first things you'll need to do is create the global menus for the right fly out menu and the footer menu. In order to do this you'll need to create the menu and assign it a location.

From the WordPress dashboard of your site, navigate to "Appearance > Menus."

Click the "create a new menu" link. You can name it whatever you like.

 

 

Be sure to assign a menu location to the new menu you have created.

 

 

You'll want to repeat this step for both the Primary Menu and Footer Menu locations.

 

 

Add your site name and tagline to the header

Go to "Appearance > Customize" and then open up the "Site Identity" tab. You can change the site name as well as the text that displays underneath the name. The tag line is optional. If you leave it blank the site title will appear larger in the header.

 

 

Create the home page

To create the home page navigate to "Pages > Add New" and create a new page titled, "Home."

Once you have created the page navigate to "Settings > Reading" and within the "Your homepage displays" section select the "A static page" radio button. This will set the new page you created as your home page.

 

 

INSTALL & UPDATE THE PLUGINS:


Either upload the plugin installation files to your local installation's 'plugins' directory, or use the 'Add New Plugin' button from the WordPress dashboard to install the recommended plugins.

Meta Box

The Meta Box plugin is leveraged throughout the custom University of Utah theme to capture custom data for each post/page such as the main banner marquee that displays a sliding banner widget on the top of each page. It's recommended to install the main Meta Box plugin as well as the Meta Box Group plugin at the very least, but all five provided Meta Box plugins are recommended.

Akismet

We use Akismet to block spam coming from comments fields. It is highly recommended to reduce unwanted spam comments on your site.

Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a robust drag-and-drop form solution. It is available as a free plugin, however they do have a pro version with enhanced capabilities.

Page Builder by SiteOrigin

Page Builder is a powerful page builder solution that allows you to be very flexible and creative with your page layouts. It allows you to create rows and blocks of content in columns you define. You can drag-and-drop components and we've even created a custom set of additional widgets you can use within your SiteOrigin layouts.

View the SiteOrigin Tutorial

SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle and U of U SiteOrigin Widgets

We've developed our own SiteOrigin widgets specific to the University of Utah in addition to an expanded widget bundle from SiteOrigin.

WP Cassify

WP Cassify is our CAS plugin that we use to integrate with Duo 2FA (the University's two-factor authentication). You'll need to submit a Service Now request to add your domain to the Duo 2FA whitelist. Once you've been added you can configure WP Cassify to point to https://go.utah.edu/cas/.

 

 

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