The Basic Install for BioShip is simple and straightforward as with a standard WordPress Theme, just download the BioShip Zip file and upload it via the Themes page in your WordPress Appearance admin menu (or unzip locally and upload to /wp-contents/themes/bioship/ )

Alternatively you can do a Preview Install using the instructions below. This allows you to setup the theme before activating it - a kind of theme sandbox if you will - something traditionally hard to do in WordPress without creating a development copy of the entire site! (Although, you can do this to a certain extent using the in-built WordPress Customizer theme preview.)

Sidenote: To compensate for different themes having different menu and sidebar data, BioShip attempts to backup/restore your menus and sidebars when it is activated or deactivated. This helps preserve your menu/sidebar setup associated with each theme. While Wordpress has improved this process recently, this extra step keeping all the matching sidebar data for activation/deactivation themes. (Another good way to backup your Widget Layouts is with the Widget Saver plugin.)

Basic Install

(recommended for fresh or development sites)

1. Download the BioShip ZIP (right-click and "Save Linked Content As") to your computer.
2. Login to your Wordpress admin area if you are not already.
3. Visit your Wordpress admin Themes page and upload via the Add New -> Upload page.
4. Activate the theme once it is uploaded.
5. You can now access the Theme Options page via the Appearance menu (or via the top Admin Bar.)

Preview Install

(recommended for live sites with an existing theme)

1. Login to your Wordpress admin area if you are not already.
2. Install the Theme Test Drive Plugin from your Wordpress admin Plugins page via Add New and activate.
3. Visit your Theme Test Drive settings page under the Appearance admin menu.
4. Copy the URL of the BioShip ZIP (right-click and "Copy Link Address") and paste into the Easy Install section and Install.
5. Now, you can either:
 a. Activate the Theme Test Drive for the BioShip theme with Level 10 (administrator) privileges. Remember the theme test drive for the theme will be active for all administrators until you disable it via this page! You can now access the Theme Options page via the Appearance menu (or via the top Admin Bar.)
 or b. Use a querystring for a temporary preview of the theme on any page, by adding ?theme=bioship to the page address URL in your browser window. You probably want to change the Theme Options first, so you can access the Theme Options page manually in this temporary preview mode by going to:

WordPress Customizer: /wp-admin/customize.php?theme=bioship
Titan Framework: /wp-admin/themes.php?page=bioship-options&theme=bioship
Options Framework: /wp-admin/themes.php?page=options-framework&theme=bioship

(Generally speaking, if you are the sole site admin of the site then option 5a is fine, otherwise you might want to go with step 5b so that other site admins do not see the new theme preview while you are developing it!)

Theme Updates

(via WordPress Upgrader)

Theme updates are available via your Themes page, just as they would be for any standard theme in the Wordpress.Org repository. Clicking on Update Available on the BioShip Theme will bring up the Theme Details. From there you can click on view version x.x.x Details before updating to show you the latest changes, and then you can simply click on Update Now to update to the latest version.

Note: If you downloaded the BioShip package from the WordPress theme repository, that will also be used as the update source. If you downloaded direct from the BioShip website, the updater will use the website's update server via WShadow Theme Updater (Thanks WShadow!)

Manual Theme Update

(for super-fast update testing)

1. Download the latest BioShip ZIP (right-click and "Save Linked Content As") to your computer.
2. Unzip the file locally, then upload it by FTP to: /wp-content/themes/bioship-new/
(make sure you log in FTP as the correct user so owner/group permissions match your install!)
3. Rename the existing /bioship/ subdirectory to /bioship-old/
4. Rename the /bioship-new/ subdirectory to /bioship/
5. Check the new version is working and when you are ready delete /bioship-old/
This fast "switcheroo" install will update to the new framework core with no downtime, and if you have any problems at all you can always switch back to the previous version without hassle.

Optimization

For pageload optimization use a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache.
Preferably disable the W3 Minify Engine and use Better WordPress Minify.
(BioShip 2.0.5+ integrates with Better WordPress Minity to prevent minification of a few resources. This stops it from breaking the page layout, whereas prior to this it needed to be done manually.)

Back to Documentation Index

Next: Child Theme Setup →