If you have the Feast Plugin, do not follow this tutorial. Go directly to the Feast Plugin Setup.
Demos, FAQs, Tutorials and How-tos for the Cravings Pro Classic WordPress Theme.
Note: Updating from a previous version to the most recent version is like installing a new theme altogether, requiring customizations to be redone.
Before starting, read the tutorial on How to launch a food blog.
Below are all the tutorials on getting your new theme set up to appear like our demo.
Basics & Settings
- Cravings Pro Classic FAQ
- How to Update Cravings Pro Classic
- WordPress Settings
- Genesis Theme Settings
- How to install your theme & import demo content
- Add a logo to Cravings Pro Classic
- Setup your Navigation Menu
- Custom fonts with Cravings Pro Classic
- Setup your category pages (grid options)
- Speed & Performance Guide
- Editing CSS, colors, fonts and whitespaces
- Run the Regenerate Thumbnails Advanced plugin from Shortpixel
- Remove the “website” field from comments to help avoid spam
- If you’re new to WordPress, take the Yoast FREE WordPress Training course (highly recommended)
Plugin Setup
Front Page Setup
- Home Page Layout
- Home Top Widget Area (2x oversized “Cravings Pro – Featured Posts”)
- Home Middle Widget Area (3x “Genesis – Featured Page”)
- Home Bottom Widget Area (3x “Cravings Pro – Featured Posts”)
Recipe Index Page Setup
Note: Make sure you noindex the recipe index pages, as well as pages used to create the recipe index.
- Recipe Index Page Layout
- Recipe Index: Filter
- Recipe Index: Content
- How to Create Multiple Recipe Index Pages
Other Widget Areas
- Before Header Widget Area
- Setup Your Nav Social Menu Area
- Setup your Newsletter Opt-in (Genesis eNews Extended)
- Primary Sidebar
- Footer Widget Areas
After-Setup
These aren’t required for getting your theme set up like the demo site, but are things you should do to set yourself up for success:
- MANDATORY: Review the Google SEO Starter Guide
- Especially the “best practices” and “avoid” tips under each section
- How to add content to the category pages
- Optimize your food blog for search engines
- Expand your functionality with the Feast Plugin!
- How to set a Favicon
- Update your author bio in entry meta (above content)
- Remove the Entry Meta (below content)
- How to use alt text for images (Posts + Pages only)
- How many words to use for image alt text
- Understanding food blog site structure
- Add Google Analytics Tracking
- Use the Code Snippets Plugin to customize your theme (do not edit theme files)
Image sizes you need to know
These are the recommended image sizes you need to know for the theme:
- Featured images: 1200 x 1200 px
- The featured image is what is used to generate thumbnails for the home page and category pages
- Post content: 720px width minimum (any height is fine)
- For future proofing, uploading 1200px or 1440px width is a good idea, but this will take up additional disk space on your host
- Pinterest/Social: ask your plugin provider (Tasty Pins, Social Pug)
- Recipe card: ask your plugin provider (WPRM, Tasty Recipes)
- Sidebar: 300px desktop, 360px mobile
- Footer:
- Full width (mobile): 360px
- Full width (desktop): 1400px
- One Half (desktop): 380px
Images for recipe cards, and social platforms are outside the scope of the themes. They require dedicated plugins to manage because of how frequently they’re updated.
How do I write a recipe post?
One of the most frustrating things we hear from bloggers is that their content doesn’t rank well. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but the most prominent is that their content is simply not high enough quality.
We’ve detailed how to write a high quality recipe post in the anatomy of a recipe post, and we highly recommend reviewing the quality rater guidelines for recipe pages.
Misc
- Change site inner width (advanced!)
Start Your Food Blog Checklist
Whether you’re DIY-ing everything from the ground up, or learning just enough to figure out what you need to ask for help with, this checklist breaks it down into the bite-sized steps you’ll need to take to put your best food forward.
