Brunch Pro

FAQ

FAQ

These are the features you can expect from this this minimalist WordPress theme:

  • Clean and simple widgetized home page for a flexible layout
  • Make it your own with the typography and color Customizer options
  • Upload your own retina-quality logo and favicon OR simply type in your blog title to match the default styling
  • Flexible grid archive options in Customizer
  • Strategic areas for ads and opt-ins:  before header, inside header, primary sidebar, secondary sidebar, after entry widget, footer widgets
  • Built-in Featured Posts widget with flexible options
  • Clean color scheme to highlight your branding & photos
  • HTML5 Markup + Mobile Responsive
  • Built in “read more” button
  • Styled responsive drop down menu
  • Landing page template (full-width template)
  • Styled share buttons, subscribe widget, contact form, and comment form
  • Easily integrates with your email subscription service

What else will I need to make this theme work?

This child theme requires the Genesis Framework, which must be purchased separately. While not required to make the theme work at its basic level, we recommend the following plugins for full functionality:

What’s new in Brunch Pro?

Brunch Pro is regularly updated by Feast Design Co., with changes based on feedback from bloggers. We keep on top of SEO and design best practices, helping you comply with search engine requirements.

We keep a changelog at the bottom of the theme page: Brunch Pro theme.

Food Blog Hosting

We recommend either WPEngine, Cloudways or GetFlywheel for food blogger hosting. Hosting is a critical part of a food blog and we recommend budgeting at least $30/month for hosting. Less expensive hosts cut corners, causing your blog to load slower and hurting your search engine rankings.

These premium hosts also include server-side caching, drastically speeding up your pagespeed.

  • Lightning fast page loads with caching
  • Managed SSL enabled on all front and back end pages
  • Free migration from your old host
  • Staging site
  • Nightly package

As an additional safety measure, nightly backups means that you won’t lose days or weeks of work if your website goes down for some reason. This makes updating plugins stress-free, and makes keeping your blog up to date simpler.

Pagespeed

We know pagespeed is critical for users and search engines, which is why we’re always updating Brunch Pro to be as fast as possible.

We’ve fine-tuned the theme as much as we can, and you’ll want to use WP Rocket and the Feast Plugin to squeeze as much juice as possible from your setup.

How can I customize my theme?

Historically, bloggers have customized their Brunch Pro child theme by editing style.css and functions.php. This turns into a maintenance and updates nightmare.

All CSS customizations should be put into Admin > Appearances > Additional CSS, so that they’re easily copied over during updates.

All functionality editing should be put into the code snippets plugin. We recommend that you do not ever edit your functions.php file.

What size should my logo be?

We recommend a header size of 320 × 100 pixels and you can upload your logo in the Customizer. You’ll have the option to crop if you need to. Or, if you don’t have a logo, you can simply type in your blog name and it will be styled to match the rest of your typography.

We recommend a header size of 320 x 100 pixels, as most food blogs get mobile traffic, and mobile screens are primarily under 400px wide.

You can upload your logo in the Customizer, and you’ll have the option to crop if you need to.

See our tutorial on how to create your logo.

Or, if you don’t have a logo, you can simply type in your blog name and it will be styled just like the word “Cook’d” is on the demo.

New: We’ve introduced a pagespeed-friendly retina logo option in the Feast plugin!

Previously, we recommended uploading retina-quality logos. This is no longer a best practice, as the larger file size slows page loading times.

How big should my post images be?

To make full use of the theme and it’s built-in thumbnail sizes, you’ll need to make sure that your featured image is 720 px wide.  We also recommend including a Pinterest-optimized vertical image within the body of your post. (see: How do I handle Pinterest pins below)

All other images can be flexible in width, but to fill the full width of the post area, try to shoot for photos that are at least 720 pixels wide.

We recommend uploading images at 1440 px width to safeguard against future changes in screen sizes.

How does the “Read More” button work?

If you are using excerpts on the archive pages, blog page, or in the Featured Posts widget, a “Read More” button will automatically appear for you. You can also use the MORE tag to insert the button when displaying full content.

As of 2019, we no longer recommend using the “Read More” button. It creates excessive busy work and provides no reader value. Instead, simply display only the featured image and post title – no entry-info or post-content.

What recipe plugin do you recommend?

I’m glad you asked! You need a plugin that will make your recipes look great and get attention from Google, but we think you also need a simple, streamlined solution.

We recommend WP Recipe Maker or Tasty Recipes.

How do I handle Pinterest pins?

It’s no longer best practice to put your Pinterest image in the post content – use a plugin to create a “hidden pin”.

Pinterest is a great source of traffic for food bloggers, but they’re a separate business with continually changing functionality. Any functionality we built into a theme would be incomplete, and quickly outdated.

Because of this, we recommend using the Tasty Pins plugin.

What if I have more questions? How can I get support?

We have a dedicated support team to help you get your theme set up. Check out our helpful tutorials or submit a support ticket if you need additional assistance.

Can you install and customize it for me?

Absolutely! Check out our Done For You services for more details.

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