Configuration

After you have installed the required and recommended plugins, now it is time to configure and customize your site.

The Research AMP theme is a WordPress "block theme" which means that its layout and style can be modified using the WordPress Site Editor. For an introduction to the WordPress block system, visit https://wordpress.org/support/article/blocks/

The Research AMP block theme is installed when you install the Research AMP plugin. To use Research AMP, activate it by navigating to Appearance > Themes > Research AMP Theme. This contains a number of Archive Templates, as well as other features.

As Research AMP was designed for people with no technical background in website design to be able to use, its underlying design is an attempt to balance the ability to customize the site with some established parameters that ensure that any user can create an attractive and well-designed site without having to know and utilize coding. For example the Home Page is populated with blocks that show different types of content, like research reviews and articles; while there are a couple of different options for how they can be displayed and ordered on the home page there are some limitations on how much these can be customized. For example, the spacing between elements is established and cannot be changed using the site editor.

That being said, individual Research AMP platforms can be customized by a web developer to change many aspects of the appearance of the site. You may wish to contract with a web development team to create a more bespoke version of Research AMP. To do this, the developer makes a child theme of Research AMP and then alters it to fit the specs of the project.

You can access the child theme for Research AMP at https://github.com/ssrc/research-amp-child-theme.