Chateau theme runs on the base of , Tevolution plugin and Booking add-on. To use it easily, you should also refer their specific documentation guides. This guide follows the version 2 design and functions. So, you need to install & activate both these plugins.

Have a look at the Tevolution Guide to use this theme to its optimum.

Theme Installation

Install Chateau using the WordPress back-end.

Easy installation

  1. Connect to the member area and expand the “Chateau” area within the “My Downloads” section. Download the Easy Installation .zip file.
  2. Login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload. Load the .zip file you just downloaded.
  3. Activate the theme once the installation process is done.
  4. Enter the license key. You can get it from the member area, under “My Downloads” inside Download pop up. Screenshot.
  5. Go to the Appearance > Themes section, click on the blue “Install sample data” button to populate your site with dummy data and make it look like our demo. The dummy data activation process can last up to 1-2 minutes. Don’t interrupt it. (Inserting Sample data is not compulsory but is advisable to do so as you will have an overall idea of setting your website up & it will make you more creative for it)

Traditional installation

This installation type is necessary on servers that don’t allow plugins to be loaded automatically (which is the case with the Easy Installation method). Traditional installations basically means loading each Chateau component separately. Instead of installing one file (like with Easy Installation) you’ll instead manually install 3 plugins and 1 theme.

  • Connect to member area and expand the Vila Rental section. Download all available files (Chateau, Tevolution and Templatic-Booking plugin)
  • Connect to your WordPress dashboard (wp-admin) and then navigate to Plugins -> Add New. Now click on Upload and then on Browse. Load the Tevolution.zip file you downloaded earlier and then click on Install Now
  • Once the install process is done click on Activate Plugin
  • Enter the license key. You can get it from the member area, under “My Downloads” inside Download pop up. Screenshot.
  • Navigate again to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload and repeat the steps for Templatic-Booking.zip. Activate the plugin once installation is completed
  • With the plugins installed navigate to Appearance -> Themes. Click on the Install Themes tab and then on Upload. Use the Browse option to locate the Chateau zip file on your hard drive – then click on Install Now. After the installation process gets finished and activate it.

In case WordPress rejects the .zip files use FTP to install the theme.

For detailed instructions on using FTP please click here

  • Upload tevolution.zip and Templatic-Booking.zip to /wp-content/plugins directory
  • Upload Chateau.zip to /wp-content/themes directory
  • Once uploading is done connect to the WordPress dashboard and activate them in this order:
    1. Tevolution, 2. Templatic Booking add-on, 3. Chateau

Want to hire us to complete the install for you?

If you don’t have time to tinker with installing Directory purchase one of our installation packages and we’ll do it for you! If you already purchased one of the installation packages please claim it here.

Settings

All the back-end settings are explained here. You need to follow the here given steps to set up your website nicely.

1. Set logo, various colors and other theme options

It is very easy to apply these options to your website. We give you the following options to set your choice.

  • Go to Appearance > Themes > Current Theme > Customize.

1)    Navigation – Using this option, you can apply your navigation menus at the header and footer region of your site (Secondary and footer).

2)     Colors – Set the colors for various things on your website as listed below:

  • Body background, Header texts, Button texts, Menu links
  • Links, Headings, Titles and Buttons Color
  • Page Content Color
  • Sub Text Color
  • Secondary Color – Link Hover & Slider Background
  • Change color of footer.

3)     Site Logo

  • From here you can upload your company’s or any desired logo for your site.
  • If you want to have favicon icon for your site, you can do that as well! Just upload it by simple file selection process.

4)     Site Title & Tagline

  • You can give a title to your site from here by just entering the simple text in the given field.
  • Taglines to the site add the additional information about it. To do that, just give your desired text in the tagline field given here.
  • If you want to hide the tagline of your site but don’t want to remove it completely in the backend, you can check mark “Hide Site Description” box.

5)     General Settings

  • Use custom css – Check marking it, will apply the style settings coded in the custom.css file residing in your wp-admin/Appearance/Custom.css Editor. But before that you need to apply your style code in the custom.css. Know more about custom.css
  • Hide autoinstall – To hide the “Insert Sample Data” option from Appearance > Themes, activate it.
  • Show author biography on posts – Choosing this option, you can show the details of the Post author besides his own post such as who has wrote it, profile picture of the author etc.
  • Show author biography on pages – The same thing happens like ‘Show author biography on posts’. But here, Author’s information will be displayed on the page instead of the post.
  • Show Breadcrumb – It is basically a navigation check strip which shows you that you are viewing which page & from where you have come to that page.
  • Enable sticky menu – Check this option if you want to enable sticky menu at header during the page scroll.
  • Is RTL – Enable this only if you translated the theme into languages such as Arabic or Hebrew. Otherwise leave it disabled.

6)    Static Front Page – This option is concerned with your homepage that what should be displayed as your home content.

  • Your latest posts – Choosing this will show all your posts according to their published date order on your home page.
  • A static page – You can set any available page as your home page by selecting it from the drop down “Front Page”.

7)   Contact Page – you can enable/disable captcha validation for both the Contact page template as well as for inquiry form.

8) Listing page settings  –  This specific option basically used to configure various information displaying over the house/room listing page that includes Display Images, Display No-Image-Available, Display Author Name, Display Publish Date, Display Terms of Post, Display excerpts, Display Rensponses On Post and Excerpt length.

9) Detail Page Settings – The module used to configure a room/House detail page info holding Enable view counter Facebook/Twitter, pintrest share buttons, comments on page,post,room, houses.

10) 404 Error Page Setting – You can fetch the categorory lists for a specific post type over the 404 page by inserting a comma separated post type slug(s)

11)  Footer – With this one, you can upload your logo at this place & can also use the html<tags> to display your desired thing here (example: Copy right, trademark etc)

12)  Google Analytics tracking code- Paste your Google Analytics code in this area. If for some reason it doesn’t work you should open the header.php file (from Appearance > Editor) and paste it in between the < head > tags.

13)  Widget-  The section is originated from the wp-admin >> Appearance >> widgets section through which we can configure various page sections by placing the appropriate widgets to their respective widget areas.

2. Create navigation menu

A) Custom menu

Main menus play a vital role for your site. Users generally see the menu to figure out what you have in store for them!

  • Go to wp-admin -> Appearance -> Menus.
  • You can add and manage various items inside the menu. Post categories, Pages, House Category, Room Categories etc. For details on creating the Main menu watch the following video.

This way you can create a regular WordPress menu but if you want to add some visual effects to it then you can use the mega menu for it.

B) Mega menu

A mega menu is similar to a regular custom menu, but instead of allowing you to have just one dropdown per menu item, it enables you to create several columns inside one item. To create a mega menu you first need to install a plugin, follow these steps:

  • Download the plugin by clicking here
  • Extract the plugin using software such as 7-Zip (use Extract Here option)
  • Connect to your server using FTP. For details open this article
  • Upload the plugin (folder) to wp-content/plugins
  • Go to wp-admin -> Plugins and activate the plugin

Now that you’ve installed and activated the plugin go to Appearance -> Menus and create your new menu. To utilize the mega menu plugin your menu should have a structure in which at least one item has two or more sub-items and those sub-items then have items themselves.

With that done head over to Appearance -> Widgets and place the jQuery Mega Menu widget inside Mega Menu Navigation area (You can see this widget area only when you activate Mega menu plugin as said above) . Inside the widget the “Number Items Per Row” option is the most important since it directly influences the structure of the mega menu item. It will be usable only in secondary navigation.. Pleaase refer to the following link for more detailed instructions.

Read a tutorial on Mega menu to understand it even better.

You need to load jQuery Mega Menu widget ONLY in the Mega Menu Navigation area. other widgets will not work here.

3. Create pages using theme page templates

Page templates are the ready made pages that are designed to achieve the specific design. With Chateau you get 3 page templates. Let’s figure it out,

  • Template – Archive – Shows posts month wise based on publish date.
  • Template – Contact Us – Creates a contact form using which your site visitors can directly send you any inquiry. The inquiries sent using this form will be e-mailed on the email address mentioned under the wp-admin -> Settings -> General -> E-mail Address (You can change it anytime).
  • Template – Sitemap – Shows the list of all your posts, pages etc on a single page.
  • Advanced search Page Template: There is one more page that you can create using template file that helps you create an advance search form for any particular post type. see the screenshot below.

4. Translate Chateau theme to your language

To translate Chateau, you will need software like Poedit. Using Poedit you need to load en_US.po located inside your /languages folder and translate it.

For detailed instructions on translating with Poedit open our localization tutorial.

As Chateau works with a combination of various plugins, so you have to translate each of their .po files located under their folders. Here is the list of those .po files and their locations,

  • Chateau theme – ..\wp-content\themes\Chateau\languages, open en_US.po file.
  • Tevolution – ..\wp-content\plugins\Tevolution\languages,  open en_US.po file.
  • Templatic Booking – ..\wp-content\plugins\Templatic-Booking\language,  open en_US.po file.

Along with the included .po files, Chateau is also WPML compatible.Once installed, open the WPML documentation (will be provided after purchasing) and start translating. The actual translating process is no different than with any other WordPress theme.

5. Compatible with Other plugins.

We know that various plugins are very important to enhance the richness of a particular website! So, we provide you compatibility with other plugins too.

a) WooCommerce:

  • You can click here to download wooCommerce.
  • See the “Getting Started” Tutorial for installation and setting up WooCommerce plugin.
  • WooCommerce’s Documentation/guide is available here.

b) Yoast SEO: The Specific plugin used to configure seo contents, you can download it from this link

Apart from this, you can also integrate Tevolution Coupon Manager along with this theme.

  1. Download the Coupon Manager extension.
  2. Navigate to Plugins > Add New > Upload and load the downloaded zip file. Activate the plugin once the installation is complete.
  3. To start using the plugin navigate to Tevolution > Monetization > Manage Coupons (tab).

By creating coupons you can offer discounts. This is great when running promotions (like for Christmas or Black Friday). To create a coupon go to Tevolution > Monetization > Manage Coupons > Add a new coupon. Coupons can be limited to a specific time-frame by setting a start and end date.

Configure Home Page

a
ff627
To set up home page, please follow the numbering given in the above screenshot.
1) Header Logo – You can setup your logo image for the site directly from the wp-admin >> Appearance >> customizer >> Site logo section.

2) Header Right Find us on Map – We can set contact us and Find us on Map through this widgets.

3) Header Right Reservation – We can set Reservation information here through text widgets.

4) Header navigation Menu – We can arrange various menu items through that header region by creating a custom menu for the secondary navigation.

5) Home Page Full Slider – It is a widget named as T->Home Page Main Slider placed at “Home Page Full Slider widget area. Refer the link over here at “https://templatic.com/docs/t-home-page-main-slider-widget/” for more detailed instructions on configuring a slider contents.

6) Quick Book widget (T- Booking Widget) – Basically a widget named as T- Booking Widget Placed at Home Page Full Slider widget area and and add related information in widgets settings.

7)Welcome to Hotel Basically a widget named as T- Homepage Content Slider Placed at Home Page below Slider widget area, you can set the categories as per your needs to show the content as per different category.

8) About Us You can use a Text widget through that “Home Page below slider ” widget area and insert a static html contents accordingly inside the body of it.

9) Why Book with Us You can use a Text widget through that “Home Page below slider ” widget area and insert a static html contents accordingly inside the body of it.

10) Latest Offers We can use any “T- Post Listing” widget and set the category, sort by options through this widget settings.

11). Testimonials – We can use a widget named as T – Testimonials inside this specific Home Page 2 Column widget area.

12) Advertising – You can use a Text widget through that “Home Page below slider ” widget area and insert a static html contents accordingly inside the body of it.

13) About the theme (Footer Column one) You can use a Text widget through that “Home Page below slider ” widget area and insert a static html contents accordingly inside the body of it.

14) Footer Column Second- Widget Navigation menu is places at Footer Column Second widget area.

15) Footer Column Third – Widget “T > Newsletter Subscribe” and “T -social Media” for this widget area.

16) Footer – You can change the footer text from this mentioned file : “themes\Chateau\footer.php” at line 78.