Quick answers to your most pressing questions. Anything missing? Let us know.
How do I change the colors of my site?
To change the colors of your site, go to the Appearance > Customize page in your WordPress admin area. Open the Theme Colors section and use the color controls to change sections of your site.
Once you’ve finished, don’t forget to click the Save button.
How do I add my logo?
You can upload your logo to display on your website by going to the customizer under Appearance > Customize. Open the Logo section indicated below to upload your logo.
For best performance, you shouldn’t upload a logo that’s too large. A logo that is 500px wide is plenty large to be displayed crisply even on retina screens.
How do I build a homepage like the demo?
The Theme Customizer will give you special display options to build an effective homepage. You can find the customizer by going to Appearance > Customize.
If you’ve completed the recommended first steps, you will have already uploaded your logo and created your primary navigation menu.
When you reach the Theme Customizer, open the Header Image section:
Here you can upload a full-width image to display prominently on your homepage. Your image should be very large, at least 2000 pixels wide, to account for visitors who will view your website on large screens.
You’ll have an opportunity to crop the image to 2000x1333 pixels in size.
Next, in the Theme Customizer, open the Call to Action section:
This section allows you to set the text for the call to action on your homepage. This is a big, attention-grabbing statement that should get visitors excited about your restaurant, cafe or bar.
Aside from the header image, this could be the most important text on your site, so spend some time getting it just right.
You can also set the text for the button which appears below the call to action, and then choose any Page on your site to send visitors to in the Button Target option.
If you take online bookings, I recommend setting the Button Target to your reservations page. Otherwise, you can send them to your opening hours, contact details or online menu.
Next, in the Theme Customizer, open the Display Options section:
This section allows you to control the sidebar behavior and configure your footer panels.
The Sidebar option allows you to hide the sidebar on every page of your site. If you don’t have anything you want to display there, select this option to turn every one of your pages and posts into a full-width page.
You’ll also find a series of options for your Footer Panels. These panels sit at the bottom of your site and provide a flexible way to display different content you want to be avaiable on every site.
On the homepage, clicking on any of these panels will cause it to slide open, revealing the content you’ve configured.
On any other page, these panels will appear below the main content, and the first panel will be open.
If you’ve enabled all of the recommended plugins, each panel can have one of the following options:
- Nothing: Select this option if you don’t want the panel to appear. This is useful if you only have two or three panels to display.
- Map: Show a map to your location. (You must have filled out your Business Profile)
- Contact Card: Show your address, phone number, opening hours and a map to your location. (You must have filled out your Business Profile)
- Random Review: Show one of your reviews selected randomly each time the page loads. (Requires the Good Reviews) plugin.
- Custom Widget Area: Add a widget area you can fill with whatever widgets you’d like. Once you’ve selected this option, you’ll need to save your changes then reload the customizer. Once reloaded, you should see the new widget areas appear under the Widgets section in the customizer.
And that’s all you need to do to set up a great homepage for your restaurant, cafe or bar. If you really want to shine, here are a couple more recommendations.
First, get a great photo. If you haven’t hired a professional to take a photo of your place, you might consider investing in that. Since the photo is so prominent in this homepage design, it can have a huge impact on how successful your homepage is.
Second, after you’ve uploaded the header, you might find the call to action is a little bit hard to read. Under Header Image > Header Darkness you can use the slider to make the background image darker. It’s really important that your call to action is clear and easy-to-read against the background image.
Finally, keep your menus short. You can nest menu items beneath each other if you have more than 4 or 5. Keeping the list short will help visitors who are scanning quickly. I’ve written about good navigation menu design for restaurants if you want to learn more.
How do I build my restaurant’s menu?
This theme integrates with the free Five Star Restaurant Menu plugin.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can begin building your menus by going to the Menu Items page in your WordPress admin area.
Learn more by visiting the plugin’s documentation and don’t miss the Pro version.
How do I take reservations for my restaurant?
This theme integrates with the free Five Star Restaurant Reservations plugin.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, create a new page for your booking form. Then go to the Bookings > Settings page and select your Booking Page. The reservations form will automatically appear on this page.
You can also add the form to any page or post with the [booking-form] shortcode, or use the Booking Form widget to add it to a sidebar.
There’s so much more you can do, from setting your booking schedule to configuring notifications. There are also powerful addons to add custom fields, build your mailing list and export bookings to PDF/Excel files.
Be sure to read the plugin’s documentation.
How do I display my restaurant’s contact details?
This theme integrates with the free Business Profile plugin.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, open the Business Profile page in your WordPress admin area (hint: it’s way down near the bottom of the navigation menu on the left). Fill out your restaurant’s details.
Then just add the [contact-card] to any page or post, or use the Contact Card widget to display it in any sidebar.
Learn more by visiting the plugin’s documentation.
How do I add reviews of my restaurant?
This theme integrates with the free Five Star Restaurant Reviews plugin.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, go to the Reviews page in your WordPress admin area. From here you can add and edit reviews.
Learn more by visiting the plugin’s documentation.
How do I promote my restaurant’s events?
This theme integrates with the free Event Organiser plugin.
Once the plugin is installed and activated, go to the Events page in your WordPress admin area. From here you can add and edit events.
Then add the [eo_fullcalendar] shortcode to any page or post. I recommend you use a page with the full-width page template.
This plugin provides extensive documentation as well as a pro version with more features.
How do I improve my restaurant’s SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a large and complex topic. But it is extraordinarily valuable for restaurants, cafes and bars.
If you haven’t already, I recommend you install the Yoast SEO plugin, which gives you a number of useful tools to help you optimize your site.
Yoast has written the book on Search Engine Optimization with WordPress. But learning how to make effective use of it can take time, and it may feel overwhelming if you’ve never encountered it before.
I’ve written a few guides that break down those aspects of SEO that I believe are most critical to restaurants:
- Three fast steps to improve your restaurant SEO with Yoast
- Tending your SEO garden with Google’s Search Console
- But I’m big in Japan: local search for your restaurant website
How do I add icons which link to my social media profiles?
This theme is configured to support a special navigation menu for your social media profiles.
To set this up, go to the Appearance > Menus page in your WordPress admin area. Create a navigation menu using the Custom Links type of menu component. Enter the link to your social media profile.
Once you’ve saved the links to your social media profiles, assign this menu to the Social Profiles theme location.
Assigned to this theme location, the theme will automatically transform the menu into a set of icons matching your social media profiles.
How can I create a photo gallery that opens in a lightbox like the demo?
WordPress supports great photo galleries right out of the box and this theme displays them beautifully. I like them so much that I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to add photo galleries to your pages and posts.
When you’re following the guide to create a gallery, make sure that you set the Link to option to “Media File”. This theme will automatically display such photos in a lightbox when they’re clicked.
Can I hide the sidebar on just one page?
This theme includes a full-width page template. It’s great for pages where you want to focus on one piece of content – like a photo gallery or your booking form.
To make use of this template, go to the Pages > Add New page in your WordPress admin area. On the page editing screen, find the Page Attributes box on the right, below the publish button.
Set the Template option to Full Width then preview the page and you’ll see the sidebar is gone.
Want to hide the sidebar everywhere? Remove all the widgets from it under Appearance > Sidebar and it will go away.
Can I make changes to the CSS styles?
There are several ways you can add your own CSS code. But the worst way is to edit the theme files directly. Any changes you make to the theme’s files will get overwritten the next time the theme is updated.
I recommend you use the CSS feature that’s part of WordPress itself. To use it, go to the Appearance > Customize page and open the Additional CSS section. You can enter your CSS in there and see it applied immediately in the live preview.
If you plan to use a lot of CSS and you want to be able to save the file locally, I’d recommend you use a Child Theme. Along with the download link for the theme in your purchase receipt, you also received a download link for an empty child theme. When making changes to the theme, I strongly urge you to activate the child theme instead of the base theme. You can add CSS styles to the style.css file and they’ll automatically get loaded. Learn about the many benefits of using a child theme.
How can I change the fonts?
This theme integrates with the Typecase plugin to make it easy to change the font(s) used on your website.
Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you’ll need to select new fonts to display on your site by going to the Typecase page in your admin area.
Search for the Google Webfont you want to use and add it to your collection.
Don’t worry about assigning any “selectors”. That will be done automatically by the theme.
Once you’ve selected your fonts, go to the Appearance > Customize page and open the Theme Fonts section. There you’ll be able to assign the fonts you’ve selected to any fonts defined by the theme.
How do I contact support?
I’m here to help. Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for support if you’re struggling with anything.
Can I get a refund?
We offer a 14-day money-back guarantee on all products. Request a refund.
I’m in over my head. Where can I get more hands-on help?
We do our best to help every customer use any of our products. But you may need more dedicated help than We’re able to provide.
If you need a helping hand when building your restaurant, cafe or bar website, take a look at WP Site Care. They provide on-going support and maintenance, including advice when you’re having trouble, audits to improve your website performance and SEO, and more.
If you need custom code development to add a feature or make more significant alterations to your site, take a look at codeable.io. They match your needs with qualified freelance developers who can take on small and large customization projects.
We do not receive any compensation for recommending either of these services.