Blog

This section defines options related to the display of posts.

General

Blog Page Main Title Text
Set the main title text for the assigned blog page.
Blog Page Title Bar
Set this option to “On” if you want the title bar to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.

Blog Meta Data

Show Meta Data About the Post
Set this option to “On” if you want the meta data about the post to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Show Author
Set this option to “On” if you want the author information to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Show Author Image
Set this option to “On” if you want the author image to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Show Date
Set this option to “On” if you want the date to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Date Format
See Formatting Date and Time for more information. If empty, the ‘Date Format’ on Settings > General panel will be used
Show Categories
Set this option to “On” if you want the categories to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Tags
Set this option to “On” if you want the tags to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Comments
Set this option to “On” if you want the comments to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.

Single Page

Image Size
Select the size of the image you want to be used for the single post page. If you do not see an image size that you think will work, you can add your own size in the Intense admin options (Settings->Intense) on the Images tab.
Post Disclaimer
This option allows you to set the disclaimer text to be shown on the website.
Ad Code
If you would like to display an ad, place the code for the ad here.
Show Previous/Next Navigation Above Post
Set this option to “On” if you want the previous/next navigation to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Featured Images, Video, Audio, etc.
Set this option to “On” if you want the featured items to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Post Title Below Featured Media
Set this option to “On” if you want post title to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Show Post Author Information
Set this option to “On” if you want the author information to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Show Related Posts
Set this option to “On” if you want the related posts to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Related Posts Count
Set the number of posts you want to show in the “Related Posts” section.
Related Posts Columns
Set the number of columns to display in the “Related Posts” section.
Related Posts Image Size
Select the size of the image you want to be used for these posts. If you do not see an image size that you think will work, you can add your own size in the Intense admin options (Settings->Intense) on the Images tab.
Show More Posts from the same Category
Set this option to “On” if you want more posts from the same category to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
More Posts Count
Set the number of posts you want to show in the “More Posts” section.
More Posts Columns
Set the number of columns to display in the “More Posts” section.
More Posts Image Size
Select the size of the image you want to be used for these posts. If you do not see an image size that you think will work, you can add your own size in the Intense admin options (Settings->Intense) on the Images tab.
Show Post Comments
Set this option to “On” if you want the post comments to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Previous/Next Navigation Below Post
Set this option to “On” if you want the previous/next navigation to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.

Icons

There are thousands of default icons to choose from. Intense includes over 4,500 icons that are all in zip files. Some of our demos include their own additional icon zip files. The current list of available icons can be seen by looking at the Intense plugin site, on the Icon shortcode page.

Adding Your Own Icons

You can add your own icons by creating an intense_icons folder within Intensity or a child theme. Inside of that folder, create another folder and place your icons inside of it. Here is an example of what the folder structure should look like.

theme/
  intense_icons/
    my-icons/
      myicon.svg
      anothericon.svg

If the icons are designed to be one color, you may need to manually remove the fill color from the individual SVG files. This will let you set the color using the shortcode. For multicolored icons, this isn’t necessary since you will want the fill color of the icon.

There is also a pack.json file that you can put in the folder with the icons to add more details about the icons. This isn’t necessary but, if you are curious, look at the example pack.json code below. This pack.json file is from the Font Awesome icon folder.

{
    “title”: “Font Awesome”,
    “name”: “font-awesome”,
    “author”: “Dave Gandy”,
    “license”: {
        “type”: “SIL OFL 1.1”,
        “url”: “http:\/\/scripts.sil.org\/OFL”
    },
    “website”: “http:\/\/fortawesome.github.io\/Font-Awesome\/”,
    “source”: “http:\/\/fortawesome.github.io\/Font-Awesome\/”
}

Author

This section gives you the ability to control what information is shown about the author on the archive page.

Archive Page

Show Bio
Set this option to “On” if you want the author bio to show, and “Off” if you do not want it to show.
Bio Template
This option allows you to select a template for the author’s bio. There are a number of templates included with Intensity, but you can also create your own. See Creating Content > Templates for more information.

Child Themes

WordPress child themes allow you to apply custom changes to your site without the worry of your changes being deleted when the parent theme is updated. Continue reading if you would like to learn how to use or create a child theme.

Support Policy on Child Themes

While child themes are a great way to apply custom changes to Intensity (the parent theme), they are generally used to customize the core code of the parent theme. We cannot provide support for customizations of this kind, as they fall outside our scope of support and we will be unable to assist you with issues that may arise.

What Is A Child Theme

A child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality and styling of another theme, called the parent theme. Child themes are the recommended way of modifying an existing theme.

Why Use A Child Theme

There are a few reasons why you would want to use a child theme:

  • If you modify a theme directly and it is updated, then your modifications may be lost. By using a child theme you will ensure that your modifications are preserved.
  • Using a child theme can speed up development time.
  • Using a child theme is a great way to learn about WordPress theme development.

Installing The Intensity Child Theme

You cannot install a child theme without the parent theme being installed, so make sure to install Intensity prior to installing the Intensity Child Theme.

Open up your WordPress dashboard/admin, i.e (yourdomain.com/wp-admin) and login. On the right hand side click on “Appearance”, you should now have what looks like the screenshot below. As you can see in the screenshot below, there are a couple of “Add new theme” buttons, click either one.
When you get to the screen that looks like the screenshot below, click on the “Upload Theme” button.
When you get to the screen that looks like the screenshot below, click on the “Browse” button and find the Intensity Child Theme that you want to install. The download from ThemeForest includes a number of child themes for Intensity that you can install.
Once you have selected the child theme that you want to install and the name is shown next to the “Browse” button, go ahead and click “Install” to start the installation of the child theme.
When you get to the screen that looks like the screenshot below, the child theme has successfully been installed and now all you have to do is to click the “Activate” link to activate the child theme.
Congratulations, you have successfully installed the Intensity child theme.

In the image below, the “Intensity Child Theme” is the current “Active” theme. The Parent theme, “Intensity”, is found just to the right of the child theme image. If you are looking to modify the core code of the Intensity theme, use the Intensity Child Theme to make your modifications.

Useful Documentation On Child Themes

If you’d like to learn more about child themes, check out the links below.

WordPress Codex on Child Themes
How To Create A WP Child Theme video by WPBeginner.com

Page

This section gives you the ability to control page options.

General

Show Featured Images, Video, Audio, etc.
Set this option to “On” if you want the featured items to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Page Comments
Set this option to “On” if you want the page comments to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Show Image Page Comments
Set this option to “On” if you want the image page comments to show, and “Off” if you do not want them to show.
Reply Icon
Set the icon that you want to be used. You can select from a number of icon sources. Select an Icon Source, then the Icon Type will be populated. The default is to use the Font Awesome “arrow-down” icon.
Error 404 Page Icon
Set the icon that you want to be used. You can select from a number of icon sources. Select an Icon Source, then the Icon Type will be populated. The default is to use the Font Awesome “warning-sign” icon.

Hooks: Actions and Filters

Hooks allow you to ‘hook’ into the rest of WordPress. There are two types of hooks in WordPress: actions and filters. Actions allow you to run your own code during execution. Filters let you alter content created by WordPress. Intensity defines actions and filters that can be used in your plugins or themes to hook into its functionality.

You can read more about hooks here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API

Actions

intensity_before_header Executed before the header is displayed
intensity_after_header Executed after the header is displayed
intensity_before_opening_main Executed before the main content body
intensity_after_opening_main Executed after the main content body
intensity_before_closing_main Executed before closing of the main content body
intensity_after_closing_main Executed after closing of the main content body
intensity_after_closing_body Executed after closing of the content body
intensity_before_the_content_begin Executed before the page/post content begins
intensity_after_the_content_begin Executed after the page/post content begins
intensity_before_the_content_end Executed before the page/post content ends
intensity_after_the_content_end Executed after the page/post content ends

Filters

intensity_viewport_meta Applies to the viewport meta

Post Lists

This section gives you the ability to control how post lists are shown for all the various post types and their archive pages as well.

General

Post List Location
Change to control the settings per location. When done, make sure to save the changes. The settings below this dropdown will apply to the post list location that is chosen.

List

Template
This option allows you to select a template for the meta data. There are a number of templates included with Intensity, but you can also create your own. See Creating Content > Templates for more information.
Posts Per Page
Set the number of posts to show per page.
Template Content
Select what type of content you want to be shown in the template. If you choose “Excerpt” or “Content”, you can set the “Excerpt/Content Length” to limit how much is shown. If you choose “Full Post Content”, the entire post will be shown.
Excerpt/Content Length
Set the number of words to be shown in the template.
Order By
Select what you would like to order the list by (typical setting would be “Post ID”)
Order
Select how you would like to order the post list (typical setting would be “Descending”)
Masonry
Set this to “On” if you want a Masonry layout, “Off” if you do not want a Masonry layout, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
In finite Scroll
Set this to “On” if you want Infinite Scroll, “Off” if you do not want Infinite Scroll, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Social Sharing Buttons
Set this to “On” if you want to show the social sharing buttons, “Off” if you do not want to show the social sharing buttons, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Filter
Set this to “On” if you want to show the filter, “Off” if you do not want to show the filter, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Author Image
Set this to “On” if you want to show the author image, “Off” if you do not want to show the author image, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Read More
Set this to “On” if you want to show the Read More button/link, “Off” if you do not want to show the Read More button/link, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).

Meta Data

Meta Data
Set this to “On” if you want to show the meta data, “Off” if you do not want to show the meta data, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Template
This option allows you to select a template for the meta data. There are a number of templates included with Intensity, but you can also create your own. See Creating Content > Templates for more information.
Date
Set this to “On” if you want to show the date, “Off” if you do not want to show the date, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Author
Set this to “On” if you want to show the author, “Off” if you do not want to show the author, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Categories
Set this to “On” if you want to show the categories, “Off” if you do not want to show the categories, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Tags
Set this to “On” if you want to show the tags, “Off” if you do not want to show the tags, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Comments
Set this to “On” if you want to show the comments, “Off” if you do not want to show the comments, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).

Animation

Type
Add an animation to the blog list.
Trigger
Select the trigger that will initiate the animation (scroll, hover, click, or delay).
Delay
Set this option if you want to delay the animation. The amount is in milliseconds.

Image

Images
Set this to “On” if you want to show images, “Off” if you do not want to show images, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Show Missing Image
Set this to “On” if you want to show the missing image, “Off” if you do not want to show the missing image, or “Default” if you want to use the setting stored for this option in the “Default Settings” (this is the option “Default Settings” in the “Post List Location” dropdown).
Border Radius
Set a value for the border radius of the image (50% will make the image a circle if the image is square).
%, em, px – examples: 25% or 10em or 20px

Performance

Performance and Site Optimization

If your site is not performing as fast as you’d like, there could be a few different issues. Our live demo is a representation of how fast your site should be. Results will vary depending on the items below. This post will outline the common issues that can slow your site down and the ways that you can correct these common issues.

Important Note Before Getting Started: While you are building and developing your site, it’s advised to turn off caching. This is especially important if you are working with our support team. It’s possible to implement a change, and not have it take place because a cached version of the page or various resources are loading instead of the latest version.

Plugins – Plugin management is a very crucial piece of making sure that your site continues to run smoothly. You have to make sure that you keep your plugins up-to-date, but even that isn’t enough to guarantee peak performance. Each plugin can hinder the performance of your site. The more plugins you have, the slower your site may perform. It is best to keep your plugin list down to only the plugins that you are using. If you have plugins that are not activated and you don’t use them, go ahead and remove them as well. Anything that you can do to cut down the amount of space used and the potential conflicts between your theme and/or plugins, the better off you will be.

Images/Content – Image compression is a crucial part of making your site load fast, but most people forget it and then are left wondering why their site loading speed is very slow. Images are one of the biggest part of your website. An image heavy site can still be quick if you watch out for some of the following:

First of all always try to use JPEG or GIF images rather than PNG images since they are smaller in size. A lot of people upload their big images and WordPress will crop them in all the different thumbnail sizes and you will insert the image with the proper thumbnail size in the post and then people think it’s all set. This is not the case. If you upload a big, uncompressed image, WordPress will crop that large image, which will make images that are still uncompressed. It is best to compress your images first, then upload them to WordPress, so that all of the cropped images will be compressed and optimized.

There are different ways on how to compress images. Below are a couple of services and WordPress plugins you can use to optimize your images for decreased loading times.

  • WP Smush Pro is a cloud based image optimizing plugin, that works on a API based system, that allows you with a few clicks to send your images for optimizing and also includes lossless compression with its Super Smush option.
  • Kraken.io is another cloud based image optimization service, the main difference being, they not only have a WordPress plugin you can use, but you can also optimize images directly on their website, rather than using the plugin.
  • Ewww Image Optimizer is another cloud based image optiomization plugin, that also allows you to optimize and compress images to decrease load times.

If you are creating images in Photoshop a common thing that people do wrong is save the images without using the option “Save for Web & Devices”. This is very crucial since you can set the compression and quality rate and other things which will lead to a smaller image size. Other image editing programs can do the same so always look in the documentation for image compression.

Server/Hosting – Sometimes slow speed can be the result of your hosting service. Some hosting services use shared hosting which can have an effect on speed. This is a very broad topic but the general idea is that some hosts are better than others. Here are a couple that we suggest looking into if you are experiencing slow speed time from your host.

  • DreamHost has an easy 1-click WordPress install that makes it dead simple to set up a new site. DreamHost is a Los Angeles based hosting provider that has been hosting sites since 1997.
  • Bluehost comes highly recommended within the blogging world. It also has an easy 1-click WordPress install. Bluehost is one of the top 20 hosting companies and host over 2 millions websites.
  • WP Engine provides best-in-class customer service on top of innovation-driven technology. They have over 30,000 customers in 120 countries. WP Engine makes managed WordPress hosting simple, scalable, and secure.

* Disclosure: the three links provided above are affiliate links. They won’t cost you anything additional and, if you use them and decide to purchase, we will earn a small commission.

Disable Features/Shortcodes You Are Not Using – The Intense plugin makes up a large part of the Intensity theme. You can go into the Intense admin options (Settings->Intense from the WordPress menu) and turn off shortcodes and/or custom post types that you are not using or do not plan to use. Doing this will eliminate the CSS and JS from being loaded. Preventing the CSS and JS from loading for these items will help speed up your page load times. One thing to point out, Intense does a good job of only loading what is needed for each page, but there is a cached CSS file that is stored that includes CSS for a number of the shortcodes. If the active shortcodes are changed from the Intense admin options, the cached CSS file is rebuilt. This cached file should also help to speed up your page load times because you are using one file rather than a bunch of separate files.

Use A Caching Plugin Like W3 Total Cache (W3TC) – W3 Total Cache is a plugin that will make your website run smoothly. It will minify JS, CSS, and HTML. It also is integrated with CDN networks (more on this below) and many other tools for site performance. We use W3 Total Cache to speed up all of our sites.

With all of that said, we highly recommend using the W3TC plugin to optimize your site’s speed. All premium themes should be using a cache plugin and W3TC is the best one to use.

Consider Using gZIP Compression – gZIP compression is bundling (zipping) pages on a web server before the page is sent to the visitor. This saves bandwidth and therefore increases the loading speed of the page significantly. The visitors’ web browser then automatically unzips the pages. This compressing and unzipping only takes a fraction of a second.

The W3 Total Cache plugin offers gZIP compression as an option, so if you are using the W3 Total Cache plugin, you can easily enable the gZIP option. If you would prefer to control gZIP on your own, without the use of the W3 Total Cache plugin, you can easily accomplish this by adding just a few lines of code to your .htaccess file. The easiest way to enable the gZIP compression for your images, CSS and JS files is to add these lines to your .htaccess file in the root WordPress folder:

## ENABLE GZIP COMPRESSION ##
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
## ENABLE GZIP COMPRESSION ##
Consider Using A Content Delivery Network (CDN) – Content delivery networks (CDN) are server networks that clone your site on all of their location nodes. This means that when your visitors request your site, it will be served by the closest server location, rather than the main datacenter of your hosting provider. For more information on that matter, check out these two very popular CDN’s and decide for yourself which will work best for you.

  • Cloudflare: We use Cloudflare on our theme and plugin demo sites. It works great, integrates nicely with W3 Total Cache, and best of all it’s free.
  • MaxCDN: MaxCDN is a great option and has very reasonable pricing for the services they provide.

Installing WordPress

Intensity requires a working version of WordPress – which can be installed in multiple ways. Check with your hosting provider to make sure you meet the minimum requirements. Often hosting providers will have tools that make installing WordPress a matter of just a few clicks. Check with your hosting company to see if this is an option available to you. If you are looking for hosting, check out our list of recommended hosting companies.

If you need help installing WordPress, there are step-by-step instructions found within the WordPress Codex.

The following video created by Woo Themes walks through the installation process.

Requirements

The Intensity theme is made to work with WordPress 3.5 or newer, PHP 5.6 or newer, and MySQL 5 or newer. However, we recommend you follow the requirements listed for WordPress.

PHP Configuration

Many issues can be caused by PHP configuration settings that are too low. Issues such as: having problems uploading or installing files, experiencing a white screen when trying to access your site, mysteriously losing menu items when editing large menus, etc. can all be related to PHP configuration settings.

Recommended Settings
max_execution_time180
memory_limit128M
post_max_size32M
upload_max_filesize32M

If you are unsure how to change these settings yourself, your hosting company can help. You can see what your current settings are by using the following plugin:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-php-info/