Online documentation: OTW Portfolio Light plugin

Table of Contents

Spread the word, like and share – top

If you like this free plugin please don’t forget to spread the word, like it, share it so other people can try it too. Thanks in advance!

Description – top

Add Portfolio functionality to your WordPress site. Create portfolio items. Categorize them. The plugin comes with a very nice templates to show the portfolio in a page or portfolio category. Nice filter option or pagination is available too.

Installation – top

Install the plugin just like any other WordPress plugin. Here is an article on how to install a plugin in WordPress.
Once installed the plugin with register a custom post type for your portfolio. In the left WordPress menu you will see a new tab called OTW Portfolio.

Portfolio Items – top

You can add new items in your portfolio. Enter the title and the content. In the portfolio settings metabox you can also add client website, short testimonial and portfolio images. Add as many images as you like. They will be displayed in a slider. The recommended size for the images here is 700x400px. If you add a bigger image it will be cropped automatically to that size. For better quality we recommend you upload the recommended image sizes or images with the same proportion.
Add featured image that will be displayed in portfolio lists – categories templates or the portfolio pages (Portfolio filtered, Portfolio paginated). Recommended size for the featured images is 303x210px or image with similar proportion. These images will be automatically cropped too. If you don’t add featured image the plugin will automatically add a blank image so that the layout for the portfolio templates and category templates works correctly.
In Portfolio posts (single portfolio item page) by default the plugin will display the title in the content area. If your theme is displaying the title in the header or you have another reason to hide the default page title for the portfolio items you can do that for each portfolio item individually. Edit an item and find the metabox called Portfolio page title. There you have the option to hide the default title.
Image default sizes can be changed in the Portfolio settings.

Single Portfolio Items links return 404 page not found? – top

You need to go to Settings -> Permalinks and just click save (no need to change any settings). This will refresh your htaccess file. And it should be all fine.

Portfolio Categories – top

Categorize your portfolio just like you categorize posts in WordPress. Categories are used to categorize the portfolio and are displayed in the templates as a filter on top of each portfolio list.

Portfolio templates – top

Once you create some portfolio items and categorize them you will automatically have listings for each category.
If you want to have all portfolio items on one page you can create a new page and select one of the two portfolio page templates – Portfolio filterable or Portfolio paginated.

  • Portfolio Filterable – this template will display all your portfolio items. It will add a filter on top of it that will let your users choose items by portfolio category. It will change category listing with a cool animation.
  • Portfolio Paginated – this will display all portfolio items and it will add pagination bellow. The number of items per page can be set up in Settings -> Reading -> Blog pages show at most. Note that this setting is also valid for all blog archives and the Blog 1 column page template.
  • OTW page full width – If your theme does not have a full width page template you can use this one. Go to /templates folder of the plugin and copy the file named otw-template-full-width.php. Paste it in your theme’s folder. Go to “Add new page” in your WP administration. You should now see “OTW page full width” in your Template dropdown. Please note that there is no guarantee this file will work as is since page templates are very theme specific and it might require some modifications.

Both templates can be called in a Page by using their shortcodes. More info on the shortcodes in the Portfolio Shortcodes section.
Note that it is best to use the shortcodes in a page that is full width (has no sidebars). If your theme does not have a full width page template see “OTW page full width” above.

Modifying template files
You can modify the template files for your portfolio and still be able to update the plugin without doing the modifications again. To do that copy the template you’d like to modify form the /templates/ folder of the plugn and past it in your theme’s folder. Do the modifications you’d like in the theme’s folder files. The plugin will look in the active theme’s folder first. So if it finds the files there this is what it is going to be used. If it doesn’t fine the files there it will load the original files from the /templates/ folder of the plugin.
Do not change the names of the files!

Here is a list of the files you can modify:

  • otw-portfolio-paginated.php – the template used to generate Portfolio Category Archives and Portfolio Paginated, which can be called by the shortcode [otw_portfolio]
  • otw-portfolio-post.php – the single portfolio item template file
  • otw-prtfolio-filterable.php – the template used to generate Portfolio Filterable, which can be called by the shortcode [otw_portfolio otw-filterable]

Portfolio Settings – top

Here you can change the default image sizes. These settings are to help uses who are going to modify the plugin. If you use these settings here you will not have to change any plugin files to change the default image sizes and will not have to do it again once you update the plugin.

  • Portfolio Thumnbail Size (Archive) – the images used in the portfolio category templates, Portfolio Filterable and Portfolio Paginated templates
  • Portfolio Image Size (Single) – these are the images shown in the slider of your Single portfolio item
  • otw-row width – By default this is empty. Which means otw-row will take 100% of your content area. This works well on most themes. If your theme content area does not have fixed width you can set the width of the content here in pixels. This setting applies to all OTW Portfolio templates.

Portfolio Shortcodes – top

The theme comes with the following shortcodes:

  • [otw_portfolio] – This will generate Portfolio Paginated template listing portfolio items
  • [otw_portfolio otw_filterable] – This will generate Portfolio Filterable template listing portfolio items with a nicely animated filter on top

Copy and past the shortcodes in a new page to get a page displaying your portfolio items.

Spread the word, like and share 🙂 – top

If you like this free plugin please don’t forget to spread the word, like it, share it so other people can try it too. Thanks in advance!