The file you downloaded can be unzipped with any standard unzip program. If you don’t have one already installed on your computer, Stuffit Expander is a popular option for PC or MAC users. When you unzip the file, you’ll end up with a folder with one of the following names, depending upon which license you purchased:

• wp-inspired-basic
• wp-inspired-prem
• wp-inspired-dev

Within this folder are all the theme files along with the end user license agreement (please take a moment to read over the license agreement).

Please Note: Depending on which unzip program you use, you may end up with a folder within a folder. Both folders will have the same name. Be sure you upload the second-level folder (the folder within the folder you unzipped).

Step 2 – Upload the Theme Files to Your WordPress Site

Option 1

If you are using WordPress 2.8 and above, you are able to install the ZIP file of the theme directly from the Dashboard. This simplifies things since you don’t need to use FTP:

1. When viewing the WordPress Dashboard, go to Appearance -> Themes
2. Click “Install Themes” (big tab at top)
3. Click “Upload”
4. Click ‘Choose File’ then navigate to where you downloaded the theme ZIP file; click ‘Open’
5. Click ‘Install Now’
6. When done installing, click “Activate”
7. That’s it!

Option 2

For this step, you’ll need an FTP (file transfer protocol) program. An FTP program allows you to transfer files between your computer and your web hosting account. There are several available, but I use SmartFTP. You’ll want to upload your theme folder to the /wp-content/themes/ folder in your WordPress installation.

Step 3 – Activate WP-Inspired

Login to your WordPress control panel, and click the Appearance tab. On the next page you’ll see all your available themes. Find the WP-Inspired screenshot, and click the “Activate” link.

Step 4 – Install and Activate Plugins Supported by WP-Inspired

WP-Inspired has built-in support for the following plugins:

WordPress Popular Posts – Your Most Popular Posts will appear in the right sidebar in the tabbed navigation box as seen on this site.

Get the Image – This is plugin, created by Justin Tadlock, is necessary if you want to use post thumbnails and and/or the featured content slider.

WP-PageNavi – This is a great little plugin by Lester Chan that will add page numbers in place of the “Older Posts” and “Newer Posts” links at the bottom of your pages.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – this plugin will place Related Posts at the bottom of the Single Post page (see example). After you activate the plugin, visit the plugin settings page, and uncheck the box that says “Automatically display related posts.”

Yoast Breadcrumbs – This plugin will place breadcrumb navigation at the top of your pages. Simply activate the plugin, and the breadcrumb will appear automatically.

flickrRSS – This plugin will allow you to easily add flickr photos to your sidebar or footer via the widgets panel.

Step 5 – Visit the WP-Inspired Theme Settings Page

The link for this page is available under the Appearance tab. We’ve given you several optional settings for the theme, so feel free to change a few of them, and see what sort of site you can create for yourself.

In particular, you may want to activate the following features:

• Color Option
• Featured Content on Home Page
• Activate Footer Widgets
• Subscription Form and Sidebar Contact Settings
• Advertisement Settings

Step 6 – Add Some Content to Your Sidebar and Footer Widgets

Click the Appearance tab, then Widgets, and place some content in your sidebar and footer (if footer widgets are activated). This is also the page where you can add the “Side Tabs” widget which will display Popular Posts, Categories, Archives and Tags (as seen on the right sidebar on this site). You can also place your Subscribe Box in either your sidebar or footer via the Subscribe Box widget (as seen on the right sidebar on this site).

Step 7 – Be Sure to Change Your Permalink Settings

In your WordPress control panel, click Settings >> Permalinks, and change your permalink structure to anything other than the default. This will help Inspired run smoother, and it’s much better for search engine optimization if your post slugs appear in the site URL.

Step 8 – Custom Menus – Very Important

In WordPress 3.0 and above you are able to take advantage of the custom menu feature. Here is a short screencast to show you how it works.

Please note that you must set up the custom menus as instructed in the video. Otherwise, you will have a duplicate page navigation bar as the category bar (if part of the theme).

Activate Featured Content on the WP-Inspired Theme Settings Page

Near the top of the WP-Inspired Theme Settings Page, click the link for “Home Page and Archive Page Layout.” You’ll see a setting titled “Featured Content on Home Page.” By default, this setting is set as “No.” If you’d like to place a Featured Content slider on the home page, select either “Narrow Featured Content Glider” or “Wide Featured Content Glider.”

The default setting will display up to 5 featured articles, however, you can change this number to as many or as few as you like.

Select Some Posts to be Displayed in the Featured Content Section

If you want a post to appear in the featured content section, simply tag the post as “featured” (without the quotes). To add a tag, simply find the “Post Tags” box on the right side of the Write Post screen and enter it there. NOTE: The slug for the “featured” tag must be featured for the featured slider to show posts. If this is not possible, you may instead replace “featured” with “featured-2″ (or the current post tag slug) in the features.php and features-2.php templates. In addition, you must have at least two featured posts for the slider to work properly.

Adding Featured Article Images

1. Featured Content Image Size:

• The ideal size for the featured article image is 390px wide by 260px height.
• The ideal size for a full-width featured article image is 960px wide by 330px height.
• If you need to re-size an image, you can now do so through the WordPress image uploader and editor. If you’re not sure how that’s done, see this video.

2. Use the Get the Image Plugin – If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to install and activate this plugin. It will save you a lot of time and energy when it comes to using images on your site.

3. Upload Your Image – Once your image is the proper size, simply upload via the standard WordPress image uploader found on the Write Post page (just under the post title). The theme will do the rest.

4. If you upload multiple images to a single post, the theme will use the #1 image in your post gallery (see thumbnail to right) as the featured article image.

Adding a Video in Place of the Featured Article Image

If you’d prefer to show a video in place of the featured article image, simply paste your video embed code in the “Video Embed Code” field found just below the post editor on the Write Post or Edit Post screen. The dimensions used in your embed code will be converted to the proper size to fit in the Featured Content section.

How to Use a Full-Width Featured Article Image

As I said above, the ideal size a full-width featured article image is 960px wide by 330px height. To use a full-width image, simply upload your image, and tag your post “full-image.” The theme will do the rest.

When you open this file, you’ll see this code at the top:

$slideshow = {
context: false,
tabs: false,
timeout: 9000, // time before next slide appears (in ms)
slideSpeed: 1000, // time it takes to slide in each slide (in ms)
tabSpeed: 1000, // time it takes to slide in each slide (in ms) when clicking through tabs
fx: 'fade', // the slide effect to use

You’ll need to change the “9000″ to the timeout length your prefer. For example, 7000 = 7 seconds. 0000 will deactivate the autoscroll function. After you make the change, simply save the file and re-upload to file.

If you look at the home page of this demo site, you’ll see that all the posts – including the featured posts at the top – display a post introduction (or excerpt) rather than the full post itself. It’s the same on the category pages, archive pages and search results pages. Then, when you click through to the individual post, you get the full post content along with comments and other information.

There are 2 possible methods to create the post introduction or excerpt …

Set WP-Inspired to Use Post Excerpts, and Use the Excerpt Field

Go to your Theme Settings page, and click “Basic Post Settings.” You’ll see an option to use the Post Excerpts or Post Content (default value is Excerpts). You’ll want to leave it set to Post Excerpts.

Now that the theme is set up for excerpts, the trick is to tell WordPress how to create the excerpt the way you want it rather than it’s own way. Without any other instructions, WordPress will create the excerpt on it’s own. Here’s what it does …

WordPress Codex: “If you do not provide an explicit excerpt to a post (in the post editor’s optional excerpt field), it will display a teaser which refers to the first 55 words of the post’s content. Also in the latter case, HTML tags and graphics are stripped from the excerpt’s content.”

So the solution is simple … Use the Excerpt field on the Write Post screen.

Whatever you place in the Excerpt field is what will be displayed as the post excerpt on your home page. And keep in mind, you will need to add some HTML to the Excerpt field if you want it to be used in the excerpt. Otherwise, WordPress strips out all code including HTML. For example, lets say you want your post excerpt to be displayed just like this:

This is the post intro, and it includes a link to this site.

In that case, here’s exactly what you’d need to place in the Excerpt field:

This is the post intro, and it includes a link to <a href="http://www.solostream.com">this site</a>.

If you need some help with the HTML code, you can write your excerpt in the normal post editor, then click the HTML view tab, and simply copy the HTML code from there.

That’s all for this option. Lets move on to the second method you can use to create your post introduction/excerpt.

Set WP-Inspired to Use Post Content, and Use the More Tag

With this method, all you have to do is set WP-Inspired to use Content rather than Excerpts. Then, when you write your post, simply use the More tag to cut the post according to your preference. The benefit of using this method over the previous one is simplicity. You don’t have to remember to use the Excerpt field, and any HTML code will still show up in your post introduction/excerpt.

Note: If you use the Post Content option with the tag, you may need to disable the post thumbnail. There’s a checkbox just below the Post Editor that will allow you to do this. Simply check the box named “Suppress Automatic Thumbnail Placement on This Post.” This will prevent you from having double thumbnails appear with the excerpt.

Install and Activate the “Get The Image” Plugin

This plugin, created by a savvy WordPress developer named Justin Tadlock, will greatly simplify the task of placing your post thumbnail images right where they belong.

Download the plugin here or add it through your WordPress control panel. Install and activate.

What this Plugin Will Do

1. It will look for any images that you’ve uploaded to your post.

2. If it finds one or more images, it will automatically place the 1st image – as a thumbnail – where it belongs on your site.

3. If you have uploaded multiple images to your post, it will use the #1 image as set in the gallery section of your media uploader (click thumbnail to the right).

4. If you don’t want the image to appear in the post content, just don’t insert it into the post. The plugin will still grab the 1st image you’ve uploaded to the post and place it correctly.

5. If you don’t upload any images for the post, a default image will appear (unless you deactivate this feature on your Theme Settings page).