a 'modular' approach?

[colkav]

Hi,

Using the 1.9 sample theme.  What i've aways wanted out of a theme is to be able to add content to a Page in blocks.

For example, what i'm trying to achieve for a home Page is this:

first row: text widget 1 third of the width, featured post slider 2 thirds the width

second row: 4 text widgets of equal width

third row: 3 widgets of equal width

I'm just starting to learn css, and an educated guess is doing the above is the php bit.  My questions are:

Is there any easy way to do the above by copy / pasting code, and a little php awareness / common sense?  Where to start?

Or, is there a theme to recommend that would allow me to do this easily for a Page?

The site i'm ultimately creating is for a wholesale company, a non-ecommerce website.  The theme that nearly matches what i'm looking for is the Crystal theme, but i don't like the background and i don't need the portfolio feature.  Is the Crystal theme very customisable?

Any insight would be great.  Ideally i'd like to use the sample theme,  to drop 'areas' into a Page in blocks, pester people for help in populating those areas if need be, and work on the css for styling.  But if a theme is the way to go to get things done then that is the way I'll go!  So far I've purchased Thesis, which does not have this functionality.  I'd just like a bit of advice before i purchase

Many thanks in advance,

colkav

[SoZo]

You need to create a home.php with sidebars in it. See this tutorial. You can take a look at a theme like Agency which has a home.php included.

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John “Nicolas Flamel” Wright | SoZo’s design| John Wright Photography

[Dorian Speed]

As a general answer to your question:

If you're familiar with css, and you see a theme that has the underlying architecture you want (the layout of widgets like you've described), what I would do in your situation is purchase that theme and then customize the css to get it to look the way you want. Are you familiar with Firebug? It's an extension for Firefox that will allow you to see the different regions on the page and what in the CSS is determining their appearance.

Alternately, it's not that hard to set up a layout like you've described. This is a really comprehensive overview from Bill Erickson on building a child theme. If you scroll down a bit he describes how to lay out the front page of the site.
http://www.artofblog.com/building-a-genesis-child-theme/

I think I would recommend the CSS approach if you haven't done much with PHP before. Find a theme laid out pretty much the way you want it, then peer at the home.php file if you decide you want to add a widget area or so. Otherwise, make changes to the style.css file to make it look the way you want.

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[colkav]

Many thanks for your replies.  @SoZo  I read that tutorial, the problem there is when i want to create multiple sidebars on the same row, they end up stacked on top of one another / on different rows.  Tried messing with the code, not sure what i'm doing... I've downloaded the Agency theme, will have a look. A bit of a shame though - I've been working away on the genesis sample theme and preferred the look of that.  Seems like i'd have to do as much work on Agency.  And I find the fact that the home page has to be non-static a bit weird, and contradicts what i'd designed as the structure of the site.

 

@Dorian.  What your suggesting is pure common sense!  I've got a css book here which I plan to get stuck into , and i've been using Firebug and playing with the results.  So yes, I think i'll learn CSS first and maybe further down the line get into PHP.  i've read the article you mention, as with most tutorials there's a point where it either doesn't work, or quite suit my needs and will need modifying, the only way to do this is learn the code...

 

Many thanks again for your responses.

[SoZo]

In order for two or more elements to align next to one another they need to be floated. And there's no reason the front page can't be set to a static page but if you want sidebars then you'll need to create a page template just like you would create a home.php template.

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John “Nicolas Flamel” Wright | SoZo’s design| John Wright Photography

[colkav]

Apologies for the slow response, yes, thank you, that was the info I was looking for, 'float' and 'clear'.  So I made significant progress there.  I'm now dedicating myself to learning css....

 

Many thanks again,

colkav

[SoZo]

You're welcome 🙂

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John “Nicolas Flamel” Wright | SoZo’s design| John Wright Photography

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