Installation & setup

Install the theme, then follow the setup checklist to get a site that looks like the demo.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.4 or newer (tested up to 7.1)
• PHP 7.4 or newer (PHP 8.x recommended)
• Optional: WooCommerce for the shop features

Install ProMax Free

1. In your dashboard go to Appearance › Themes › Add New Theme.
2. Search for ProMax, then click Install and Activate.

Updates arrive through Dashboard › Updates like any WordPress.org theme.

Install ProMax Pro Pro

1. Download the ProMax Pro zip file from your InsertCart account. Don't unzip it.
2. Go to Appearance › Themes › Add New Theme › Upload Theme.
3. Choose the zip, click Install Now, then Activate.

Pro checks insertcart.com for new versions and shows them in Dashboard › Updates. To update by hand, upload the new zip the same way and choose Replace current with uploaded.

Setup checklist

After activating, work through these steps. Everything is in Appearance › Customize unless noted.

1. Logo and title. In Site Identity add a logo (or use the site title), a tagline and a Site Icon. Google shows the site icon next to your pages in search results.
2. Menus. Create menus in Appearance › Menus and assign them to Top Navigation, Main Navigation and Footer Menu. See Menus & widgets.
3. Header banner. Add an Image or Custom HTML widget to the Header Right Widget area. It fits a 728×90 banner.
4. Colours and layout. Pick a colour scheme and a post layout.
5. Home page. In Settings › Reading keep Your latest posts for the magazine grid, or choose a static page and a separate posts page.
6. Social icons. Add your profiles in Social Icons. In Pro, also set Right side of the top navigation bar to Social icons.
7. Featured images. Give every post a featured image. Cards use a sharp 720×480 crop.

Upgrading from older versions

ProMax 3.x and ProMax Pro 5.x are rebuilt from the ground up but upgrade in place:

• All Customizer settings, widgets, menus and per-post layouts are kept.
• Font Awesome 4 still loads, so fa fa-… icons in menus and widgets keep working. Switch it off in the theme options if you don't use them.
• Social icons for services that closed (Vine, StumbleUpon, Skype) are cleared automatically.
• Pro: colours still at their 4.x defaults move to the new accessible palette; colours you changed are kept.
• Child themes that copied files from /includes or (Pro) /layout need updating, because templates moved to /template-parts and /inc. Hooks, template tags and setting names are unchanged.

Upgrading from ProMax to Pro

1. Install and activate ProMax Pro as described above. You can keep the free theme installed.
2. Widgets stay in place and menus map to the same locations, because both editions use the same widget areas and menu locations.
3. WordPress saves Customizer settings per theme, so set your colour scheme, layout and options again in Pro. The setting names are similar, so this takes a few minutes. See ProMax Pro settings.

Recommended plugins

• An SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math for meta descriptions, social sharing tags and sitemaps. The theme works with both; see SEO & performance.
• Regenerate Thumbnails after switching to ProMax or updating from an old version.
• WooCommerce to run a shop.
• Pro Pro suggests Regenerate Thumbnails, Menu Icons and Shortcodes Ultimate in a dismissible notice. All are optional.

Using a child theme

Use a child theme if you want to change template files or add PHP. Put CSS-only changes in Customize › Additional CSS instead. Create a folder next to the theme, for example wp-content/themes/promax-child, with two files.

style.css — use Template: promaxpro for Pro:

/*
Theme Name: ProMax Child
Template:   promax
Version:    1.0.0
*/

/* Your CSS here */

functions.php — the theme loads the active theme's style.css, so a child theme loads the parent stylesheet first:

<?php
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', function () {
	wp_enqueue_style(
		'promax-parent',
		get_template_directory_uri() . '/style.css',
		array(),
		wp_get_theme( get_template() )->get( 'Version' )
	);
}, 5 );

Activate the child theme in Appearance › Themes. To override a template, copy it from the parent (for example template-parts/content/card.php) into the same path in the child theme. See Developers for hooks and filters.