INSTALL
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1. Upload the theme folder into wp-content/themes/ directory.
2. Go to Admin WordPress and select Appearance.
3. Select The Stars theme.
4. Upload the plugins that are found within the theme's plugin folder into the wp-content/plugins directory.
5. Activate the plugins.

SETUP
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The theme doesn't come with an admin options page so you will need to do the setup manually by editing the theme files to match your wordpress installation.

1. Site logo
   Simply replace "logo-star.png" file in the "images" folder with your logo.

2. Feedburner - header.php line #75
   Feedburner subscriber counter on the top navigation bar. Please change the feedburner username with your own username.

3. Menus
   a. Top menu - header.php line #73
      The top menu displays a list of all your categories and by default has 3 levels depth.
      To exclude some categories, you need to specify the categories ID. ie: "exclude=1,3" will exclude category with ID 1 and 3 from the list.

4. Front page - home.php
   a. Featured posts
      Assign your "featured posts" into a category (ie. featured), then specify the "featured" category ID in home.php line #3 ($headline_cat)

   b. Front page categories
      The front page "Latest News" section displaying your 5 latest posts grouped by category, you can select which categories to display here by edit the home.php file on line #4 ($front_cat_list)

5. Sidebar "aside posts" - sidebar.php
   The sidebar aside section displaying posts from a specific category, to setup simply edit sidebar.php on line #2 for the category ID and line #3 for the number of posts to display.
   
6. Archive Page
   Insure that the "clean-archives-reloaded" plugin is installed and activated. Create a page called 'archives' and type [cleanarchivesreloaded] on that page (in html editor view) you would like the archives list to show up on the page.
	

PLUGINS
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There are some plugins included in the package, most of them are optional, which means you can run the theme with or without them. Only 1 plugin is required - limit post plugin.
1. limit-post - required
   this plugin required to limit most of the posts content on the front page (headline posts and category list)

2. sidebar tabber
   a. WP Post Rating - optional
   b. WP Post Views - optional
   c. Most Commented - optional

3. Single post view page
   a. WP Email - optional
   b. WP Print - optional

4. Search page
   If there is no search result, the theme will display a list of most popular articles, you need "Popularity Contest" plugin for this to work

5. Front page
   You can display photos from flickr under the "Featured" section, you need flickrrss plugin.
   
6. Arhive Page
   Use the "clean-archives-reloaded" plugin (included). Create a page called 'archives' and type [cleanarchivesreloaded] where you would like the archives list to show up on the page.

THUMBNAIL IMAGE CUSTOM FIELDS
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There are two custom fields used for all post's thumbnail images
Custom Fields Keys
1. "preview-big" is for the Featured Category thumbnails
2. "entry-preview" for all other category thumbnails


HOW TO USE CUSTOM FIELDS FOR IMAGES
In order to get thumbnail images to appear on the homepage, a custom field image needs to be added to each post. Towards the bottom of the post editor page in your WordPress dashboard is an Advanced Option called Custom Fields. What you need to do is open that section up, and create a new key (listed above) as well as include the image source for each image you want to show.

ADVERTISING BANNERS
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The theme include 3 pre-defined advertising spots
468x60px banner in the header
300x250px square ad in the sidebar
300x100px rectangle ad in the sidebar

Edit the 3 ad files (ads-300x100.php, ads-300x250.php, and ads-468x60.php) located at "thestars/ads" with your required image and link details. 

*** Note
See comments at the relase page at http://www.premiumwp.com/the-stars-a-free-premium-wordpress-theme/ for further explaination and assistance 

Some important things to note regarding automatic image resizing
The theme uses the TimThumb PHP script to automatically create and resize the thumbnail images, and in order for it to work properly you need to take note of the following:

- TimThumb requires the GD library, which is available on any host sever with PHP 4.3+ installed.
- The theme has a cache folder for the thumbnail images located at \thestars\scripts\cache which requires proper write permissions. If your host server doesnt allow this by default, be sure to manually change the /cache/ folder permissions to 777.
- In addition, make sure the \scripts\ folder (thestars\scripts\) is set to 777.
- Use absolute paths for your images in the custom fields.


