I have done my utmost best to make the xMark WordPress Theme as easy to use as possible - but there are BOUND to be questions, and I will try to answer them with this page. You can leave questions in the current release notes thread and I’ll do my best to get them answered for you, as well.

xMark requires WordPress 2.5+ Download the theme files by clicking the snappy folder in the top right sidebar on any page of this site. Once you have extracted the files, upload the xMark folder to your wp-content/themes directory on your web server. Done? Great! Login to your WordPress administration panel, click the “Design” tab and activate the xMark theme.

Once the xMark theme is activated, you will see a new tab in the top navigation menu called ‘xMark‘ - click that tab and you’ll find a few options that you can set for your blog:

• Show Post Author: Select Yes or No to tell WordPress whether or not you want to display the post authors name underneath the title of the post
• Date Format: The xMark date format is: F jS, Y (e.g. January 15th, 2000). You can choose this format, or choose to use the date format you already have set up in your WordPress general options
• Show Author on Pages: Select Yes or No to tell WordPress whether or not you want to display the post authors name underneath the title of STATIC pages
• Show Comments on Pages: Select Yes or No to tell WordPress whether or not you want to allow/display comments on STATIC pages
• Asides: If you do not know what asides are, familiarize yourself with them by reading this page in the WordPress Codex about asides - Also known as remaindered links or linkblog, Asides were originally implemented by Matt Mullenweg , developer of WordPress, and it soon spread far and wide and became a very popular method of adding little bits of information to your blog. If you want to add Asides to your blog - follow these easy steps:
  1. Create a new category on your blog that you will use specifically, and ONLY, for Asides
  2. Visit the xMark Options page an enter the name of the category in the Asides box.

That’s it!
When you are done setting options on this page - don’t forget to click the “Store Options” button at the bottom — this will store your preferences in the database so they will be remembered and applied

xMark is fully ready to take on Sidebar Widgets. But what are they? The best way I can explain them is to say they make organizing the content on your blog a LOT easy by providing you with ‘drag-n-drop’ functionality. Widgets are included in the WordPress installation as of version 2.2

With Widgets installed - you will see a new tab in the navigation menu in the Theme Editor section of your administration panel - click that tab and start adding widgets to your sidebar.

Both sidebars on the xMark theme are ready for Widget attacks!

Create a blank, static page and give it the title of “SiteMap” (without the quotes). In the ‘Page Template’ drop down menu that you see in the page options to the right of where you created your page, choose the “SiteMap” template. Publish the page. That’s it! You can see my SiteMap page here - it creates a really nicely laid out sitemap for your site. Google will LOVE you!

xMark does not REQUIRE plugins.

Now that I’ve said that - there is built-in functionality for the FlickrRSS plugin. You can grab that plugin from this site. Read the installation instructions and install it on your WordPress blog. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a new shiny widget in the ‘Sidebar Widgets’ menu. Drag and drop it wherever you want your Flickr photos to appear. Make sure you set up the FlickrRSS options in the options menu.

xMark also has built-in functionality for this plugin: Share This (2.x) by ShareThis. Download the plugin from that site and follow the installation instructions. Once you have it installed- go to “Plugins” and activate it.

Next, click the Settings link and then click the ShareThis tab in the top menu. It gives you two drop down menus asking if you want to automatically add ShareThis to posts and pages - - select NO for both options and save the changes. xMark comes with the code built into the template in a nice area beneath the posts and gives us more control over the styling. NOTE: if you don’t do this step - the ShareThis icon will appear twice in each post… ick!

WP Related Posts gives a listing of posts that are related to the post you are viewing - giving your readers a nice navigational feature to view other posts that are related to the topic at hand. Just grab the plugin from the given URL, follow the installation instructions - activate the plugin and you’re good to go! The Related Posts will show on the individual post page only.

xMark uses the typical WordPress list markup and your basic structure to add new stuff would go something like this:
<li><h2>Menu Title</h2>
<ul><li>menu item</li></ul></li>

Simple, I know. Understandably, even with Widgets, you may want to add different elements into your sidebar - so following that format above will get you there.

BACK UP YOUR TEMPLATE FILES BEFORE YOU MAKE CHANGES TO THEM!