Staylume documentation

A WordPress theme for hotels and resorts: beach resorts, city boutique hotels, mountain lodges, private villas, spa retreats and country inns. Six demos, a booking bar, rooms with nightly rates, room types, stay offers, team profiles, booking requests with a live stay price and a stay cost estimator.

Thank you for choosing Staylume. This guide takes you from a fresh WordPress site to a copy of the demo with your own details. If something is not covered here, write to support@codememory.com — we answer within one working day.

• Version1.0.0
• WordPress6.5 or later
• PHP7.4 or later
• Live demoOpen the demo

Highlights

• Six hotel demos imported in one click
• Booking bar in the hero: arrival, departure and guests, sent to your booking page
• Rooms with nightly rate, size, beds, guests, amenities and an at-a-glance list
• Arched room type tiles with a photo and the number of rooms
• Stay offers with price, stay length, room and the last day to book
• Booking request form with dates, guests, rooms and a live stay price, saved in your dashboard
• Stay cost estimator with a long-stay discount
• Team profiles with role, languages, years with you and where to find them
• Room types and occasions to group rooms and offers
• Reservation hours with an "Open now" badge
• 19 Elementor widgets (free Elementor)
• Every section also works as a shortcode
• Call / book bar on phones
• Light and dark mode
• Colours and fonts from the Customizer
• Block patterns and every core block styled
• Self-hosted fonts, nothing loaded from Google
• Translation ready, right-to-left support
• Child theme included

What is in the download

themeforest-staylume-wordpress-theme/
├── staylume.zip               ← the theme: upload this in WordPress
├── staylume-child.zip         ← child theme, for your own code changes (optional)
├── plugins/staylume-core.zip  ← the theme's plugin (also installed from inside the theme)
├── demo-content/              ← demo files for a manual import
├── documentation/             ← this guide, as HTML and PDF
└── licensing/                 ← GPL licence, font licences and credits

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or later (tested up to 7.1).
• PHP 7.4 or later (8.2 or later recommended).
• For the demo import: PHP memory_limit 256M, max_execution_time 300, upload size 32M. Most hosts already allow this; if an import stops half-way, ask your host to raise these values.

Every plugin the theme uses is free from wordpress.org. Nothing needs a paid licence.

Installing the theme

1. In your dashboard, go to Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme → Upload Theme.
2. Choose staylume.zip and click Install Now, then Activate.
3. Optional: install and activate staylume-child.zip the same way (see Child theme).

Upload by FTP instead: unzip staylume.zip and copy the staylume folder to wp-content/themes/, then activate it under Appearance → Themes.

Plugins

After activation, a notice at the top of the dashboard lists the plugins the theme uses. Click Begin installing plugins (or go to Appearance → Install Plugins), select them all, choose Install, then activate them.

The theme works without any plugin: posts, pages, menus, widgets and search are styled the same. The plugin is needed for the hotel features (rooms, offers, team, booking form…).

Importing a demo

The import gives you the demo site: pages, rooms, offers, team members, reviews, posts, menus, widgets and the Customizer settings. Use it on a new site: it adds content next to what you already have.

1. Install the plugins above.
2. Go to Appearance → Import Demo Data.
3. Pick a demo and click Import. It takes one to three minutes; keep the page open.
4. Done: visit your site. The home page, menus and blog page are already set.

All six home pages are imported with every demo; the demo you pick decides which one is the front page and which colours and header the Customizer uses. To switch later, go to Settings → Reading and choose another home page.

Manual import

If the one-click import is blocked by your host, use the files in demo-content/:

1. Tools → Import → WordPress (install the importer when asked) → upload content.xml.
2. Install Widget Importer & Exporter → Tools → Widget Importer & Exporter → upload widgets.wie.
3. Install Customizer Export/Import → Appearance → Customize → Export/Import → upload customizer-<demo>.dat.
4. Appearance → Menus → Manage Locations: set the main, top bar and footer menus. Settings → Reading: choose the home and blog pages.

After the import: your details

The demo uses a made-up phone number, address, reservation hours and rates. Replace them with yours, in this order:

1. Phone number and top bar: Appearance → Customize → Staylume options → Header and top bar. Set Phone number, Top bar text (a short line such as your reception hours) and the Label next to the phone. Every "Call" button on the site uses this number.
2. Logo and site icon: Appearance → Customize → Site Identity.
3. Colours: Appearance → Customize → Colors. The six demo home pages each have their own accent colour (see Page options); clear it there to use the Customizer colour.
4. Booking page, reservation hours, estimator rates and booking emails: Settings → Staylume Core (see Booking requests, Reservation hours and Stay cost estimator).
5. Footer widgets: Appearance → Widgets → Footer column 1–4: edit the Contact details widget (address, phone, email).
6. Your content: edit the rooms, offers, team and reviews in the dashboard menus of the same names, and replace the grey placeholder photos with your own.

Rooms, offers, team and reviews

The Staylume Core plugin adds four content types, a Room types list and an Occasions list to the dashboard. Each content type has a Details box under the editor.

Room types (under Rooms) group rooms and offers, for example Suites or Villas. Each room type has its own page at /room-type/<name>/, and the Room types widget shows each one as an arched photo tile with its number of rooms. Occasions (under Rooms) group rooms and offers by what they suit, for example Romantic escapes or Family stays, with a page at /occasion/<name>/. A room can have several occasions; the Rooms and Offers widgets can show one occasion only.

With Hide offers that have ended on (the default), past offers are hidden; when none is current, the widget shows the latest ones instead of an empty section, marked Offer ended.

The featured image of a room, offer or post is used on its card and at the top of its page. Use landscape photos at least 1600 × 900 px.

Booking requests

The Booking form widget (or the [staylume_booking] shortcode) asks for the guest's name, phone and email, the room, arrival and departure dates, adults, children, the number of rooms, the arrival time, how to confirm (email, phone call or text message) and an optional message. Name and a phone number or email are required. Spam protection is built in (a hidden field and a limit on repeated sends) and no other plugin is needed.

• When the guest picks a room and dates, the form shows a guide price for the stay as they type (rate × nights × rooms). The saved request gets its own estimate, worked out from the room rate on the server.
• Every request is saved under Bookings in the dashboard, with a counter of new ones. Open a request to see the details and set its status: New, Contacted, Waiting for guest, Confirmed, Cancelled.
• The rooms in the form come from your Rooms, so they stay up to date.
• Settings → Staylume Core → Booking requests: choose the Booking page (the page with the Booking form widget), turn email alerts on or off, choose the address (empty = the site admin email), and edit the thank-you message and the privacy note under the form.
• Emails are sent by WordPress. If they do not arrive, install an SMTP plugin such as WP Mail SMTP; requests are saved in the dashboard either way.

The booking bar

Turn on Show the booking bar in the Hero widget. Visitors pick arrival, departure, adults and children and press Check availability: the booking page opens with the form already filled in. The Book this room button on each room page opens the same form with that room chosen.

The form is a request, not an online payment: your reservations team confirms each booking by phone or email.

Prefer a booking engine or a channel manager? Put its shortcode in a Text Editor widget, or point the header button to it. Everything else keeps working.

Reservation hours

Settings → Staylume Core → Reservation hours: set an opening and a closing time for each day. Leave both empty on days you are closed, and add an optional note (for example "Reception is open 24 hours a day").

• The Reservation hours widget (Elementor) or [staylume_hours] shortcode shows the hours beside your address and phone number. The Staylume: Reservation hours widget shows them in the sidebar or footer.
• Today's row is highlighted, and a badge says Open now (with the closing time) or Closed now. The badge uses the time zone in Settings → General, and it is worked out in the visitor's browser, so it stays right even when your pages are cached.
• The week starts on the day set in Settings → General → Week Starts On; times use the time format set there.

Stay cost estimator

Settings → Staylume Core → Stay cost estimator: list your rooms, one per line as Room|rate per night|sleeps, for example Garden Room|240|2. Set the currency symbol, the long-stay discount and the number of nights that gets it, and the note under the result.

The Stay cost estimator widget (or [staylume_calculator]) lets a visitor pick a room and the number of nights. It shows the total and the price per night ("About $5,607 in total, or $801 a night"), worked out in the browser: nothing is sent or stored. Turn on List the rooms in the widget to show every room with its rate beside the estimator.

Page options

Each page has a Page options box in the editor sidebar:

• Accent colour for this page: overrides the Customizer accent on this page only. The demo uses it to give each demo home page its own colour.
• Colour scheme: light or dark for this page only (the City boutique hotel demo is dark).
• Header layout: classic, centered or contact, for this page only.

Leave them empty to follow the Customizer.

Page templates

Customizer settings

Appearance → Customize. Colours are in the Colors section; everything else is in the Staylume options panel. Changes show in the preview before you publish them.

The site title, tagline, logo, site icon, background and homepage settings are WordPress's own, in Site Identity, Background image and Homepage Settings.

Menus

Appearance → Menus. Create a menu, add pages, services or custom links, then tick a Display location:

• Primary menu — the header. Drag items under another to make a drop-down.
• Top bar menu — the small links in the top bar.
• Footer menu — the links in the footer's bottom row.
• Social links menu — links to your profiles (Facebook, Instagram…), shown in the footer. Add them as Custom Links.

Widgets

Appearance → Widgets. Areas: Blog sidebar and Footer column 1 to Footer column 4 (set the number of footer columns in the Customizer). The plugin adds three widgets, named Staylume: … in the widget list:

• Contact details — phone, email, address, each with a link.
• Reservation hours — your hours from Settings → Staylume Core, with an "Open now" badge.
• Rooms list — links to your rooms; the current room is highlighted.

Building pages with Elementor

All demo pages are built with the free Elementor plugin and the theme's widgets.

1. Create a page, set its Template to Full width, no title, and click Edit with Elementor.
2. Search for the widget or open the Staylume group in the left panel and drag a widget onto the page.
3. Edit its text and options in the left panel. Every widget has a Background option (light, paper, dark or accent colour) so sections alternate like the demo.

The widgets fill themselves from your content: Rooms, Room types, Offers, Team, Reviews and Latest posts show the items you add in the dashboard. List fields (prices, steps, questions…) take one item per line, with the parts separated by |, as the help text under each field shows.

Elementor's own Google Fonts loading is switched off by the demo import, so the site keeps using the theme's self-hosted fonts.

Without Elementor: shortcodes

Every widget is also a shortcode, so you can build the same sections in the block editor: add a Shortcode block and type, for example:

[staylume_rooms count="6" columns="3" occasion="romance"]
[staylume_offers count="4"]
[staylume_booking title="Book your stay"]

Options are the same as in Elementor. In list options, separate items with || and parts with |. Images take an attachment ID (Media → Library → the number in the address) or a full URL.

Shortcodes: [staylume_hero], [staylume_rooms], [staylume_roomtypes], [staylume_reviews], [staylume_team], [staylume_stats], [staylume_features], [staylume_steps], [staylume_pricing], [staylume_faq], [staylume_cta], [staylume_trust], [staylume_calculator], [staylume_offers], [staylume_posts], [staylume_emergency], [staylume_about], [staylume_booking], [staylume_hours].

Block editor and patterns

Posts and simple pages use the WordPress block editor. Every core block is styled to match the theme, and the editor shows the theme's fonts and colours. Click + → Patterns → Staylume for ready-made sections: hero with call button, three services, call to action, questions and answers, three reviews, price table and contact details. The theme also adds block styles: Card (Group), Check marks (List), Eyebrow (Paragraph) and Framed (Image).

Blog

Settings → Reading → Posts page sets the page that lists your posts (the demo uses "Blog"). Choose a grid or list layout and the sidebar position in Customize → Staylume options → Blog. Posts show the author, date, category, share links (turn them off in Settings → Staylume Core) and related posts.

Light and dark mode

Customize → Staylume options → Style and fonts → Colour scheme: Light, Dark or Follow the visitor's device. With Show a light/dark switch on, visitors can switch with the moon button in the header; their choice is remembered on that device. A single page can be forced to light or dark in its Page options.

Child theme

If you want to change the theme's code, install staylume-child.zip and activate Staylume Child. Put your CSS in the child theme's style.css and your PHP in its functions.php; copy a template file from staylume into the child theme to override it. Theme updates replace the parent theme only, so your changes are kept.

Small style changes do not need a child theme: use Customize → Additional CSS.

Translation and right-to-left

Every text in the theme and the plugin can be translated. The templates are staylume/languages/staylume.pot and staylume-core/languages/staylume-core.pot.

1. Easiest: install Loco Translate → Loco Translate → Themes → Staylume → New language, and translate in your browser. Do the same under Plugins for Staylume Core.
2. Or use Poedit: open the .pot file, translate, and save the files as staylume-fr_FR.po/.mo in wp-content/languages/themes/.

Right-to-left languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian…) are supported: when WordPress runs in such a language, the layout mirrors automatically.

Updating

When a new version is released, download it from your ThemeForest Downloads page. Then either:

• Appearance → Themes → Add New Theme → Upload Theme → choose the new staylume.zip → Replace current with uploaded; or
• replace the wp-content/themes/staylume folder by FTP.

When the theme comes with a newer Staylume Core, the dashboard notice offers to update the plugin. Your content, menus, widgets and Customizer settings are kept. Changes you made to the parent theme's files are lost: keep them in the child theme.

Questions

Support

Support is included with your purchase and covers questions about the theme's features and fixing bugs. It does not cover custom changes or problems caused by other plugins.

Email support@codememory.com with your purchase code and your site address. See the changelog for what changed in each version and third-party materials for credits.