The featured slider is displayed above your post list, on your home page. To add a post to the featured slider:

  1. Go to the Edit Post screen for your post.
  2. Check the “Show in featured slider” box in the Watson Theme Post Options meta box:
  3. Set a featured image.
  4. Save your post.
Posts that are included in the featured slider will not appear in the default blog post listing. Since the posts in the featured slider are included at the top of this listing, they does not appear a second time in that same listing. Featured slider posts will, however, display in archives and RSS feeds.

The featured thumbnails are displayed after the second post in your post list, on your home page.

To add a post to the featured thumbnails:

  1. Go to the Edit Post screen for your post.
  2. Check the “Show in featured thumbnails” box in the Watson Theme Post Options meta box:
  3. Set a featured image.
  4. Save your post.
Posts in the featured thumbnails area will appear in the default blog listing. These posts will be displayed twice if included in the featured thumbnails area.

Theme options

Changes to your theme options can be previewed in real time. Your can preview changes by clicking “Customize” on the Appearance → Themes page of your admin panel.

From here, you can:

  • Set a logo and high-resolution logo (for Retina/Hi-res devices).
  • Autostart the featured slider.
  • Hide tags, categories, authors, dates, featured images and post navigation.
  • Choose a primary color (used for links and other accents).
  • Set up Watson’s social icons.
  • Add credit/copyright text to the footer.

Formatting with editor buttons

Watson adds a set of buttons to WordPress’s visual editor, which make it easy to use Watson’s pre-defined styles in your posts. To view these extra buttons, make sure you’ve enabled the “Kitchen Sink” option on the visual editor.

Stylistic elements include:

  • Horizontal rule
  • Alert boxes
  • Footnote and sidenote
  • Run-in
  • Excerpt
  • End

Examples of these elements can be viewed on Watson’s demo site.

To add items to your sidebar or two footer areas, navigate to the Appearance → Widgets screen on your admin dashboard.

Watson’s sidebar cannot be disabled. If empty, the sidebar will display a message explaining how to add sidebar widgets.

Recently Discussed widget

The Watson Theme Recently Discussed widget is featured in the sidebar of the demo site. The widget was designed to be placed in the sidebar, and probably shouldn’t be placed in either footer simply because it won’t look as nice.

The widget displays the featured image, title, and date of last comment for your 3 most recently commented posts.

The Watson Theme Recently Discussed widget will not be carried over if you switch themes.

Slideshows in posts and pages

To add a slideshow on a post or page, add your gallery; then, paste the following shortcode into your page content, replacing the default [gallery] shortcode:

[gallery slider="true"]

To autostart a slideshow within a post or page, include autostart="true" into the shortcode, like so:

[gallery autostart="true" slider="true"]

Retina device support

To provide Retina-friendly versions of your images for high-resolution devices, we recommend the WP Retina 2x plugin, which is used on Watson’s demo site.

Image dimensions

Where a height is not provided, feel free to use any value.

Featured slider/featured image for pages

  • Width: 608px
  • Height: 400px

To support high resolution devices:

  • Width: 1216px
  • Height: 800px

Single post/default page content area:

  • Width: 492px

With-sidebar page content area:

  • Width: 550px

Full width page content area:

  • Width: 900px