Please be aware that many of the screenshots on this site predate the Scout Association's 2015 brand guidelines which have been supported by the theme since version 4.00. The 2018 brand guidelines will also be supported, making the screenshots even more outdated. This may also date some of the text somewhat. References to older versions of the theme are being removed as the documentation is updated for version 6.0.0.

WordPress tweaks

The theme makes some tweaks to change default, or common, WordPress behaviour.

  • When you login or logout of WordPress you are returned to the original page you were on instead of ending up on the admin page or the login page. This just seems like a better way to do things and there is nothing unusual about it as it is straight forward use of the argument to wp_loginout()intended for exactly this sort of purpose. The calls to wp_loginout() are in header.php, boxes.php and footer.php. It is mentioned in case your experience is limited to WordPress themes that don't do this.
  • If you are using WordPress 3.9 or later, when you are editing a page or a post the editor offers you the Scout colours as the first text colours, and then a selection of other colours follow (these were believed to be the default colours at the time the change was implemented). This is implemented in functions.php.
  • WordPress normally uses 'smart quotes', meaning that straight single or double quotes in posts and pages are converted to nice opening and closing quotation marks. They don't work as well as they might though and seem more trouble than they are worth so they have been disabled. This is implemented in functions.php.
  • The WordPress 'gallery' defaults to putting a grey border around the thumbnail images. This has been removed in the stylesheet (style.css).

There are also some other odds and ends worth knowing about.

  • The theme adds five new proportionally sized image sizes named page (maximum of 740 wide and/or 555 high), fullwidth (maxiumum of 960x360), narrow (maximum of 520x390),  height60 (maximum of 60 pixels high) and height100 (maximum of 100 pixels high).
  • The shortcode [bhcookies] will present a table with the name and value of all first-party cookies on the page. This is really for diagnostic purposes but could be used on a cookie policy page with appropriate styling.
  • The 'Media Category' and 'Linked URL' taxonomies that have been added to the Media Library may only be manipulated by users with the manage_categories capability (which by default is Editors and above).
  • The page template files sidebar-none.php, sidebar-two.php, sidebar-on-left.php, sidebar-on-right.php, and page-with-slider.php exist to make the templates known to WordPress so they can be selected instead of the default template for a page. However code in functions.php tells WordPress to actually use page.php to render the pages. This makes the theme easier to maintain.
  • The theme defines six locations for WordPress Navigation Menus (before and after the two calls to the Navbar in the Header and the call in the Footer) and will call any Menus attached to those locations.
  • If you are using Easy Theme Options a link will be added to the WordPress Toolbar when you are viewing the site as an admin. This gives you a shortcut to the 'Theme Options' page.