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I've just about reached my fill of Googling "Genesis themes" and figured I'd ask my question here. I'm expanding my blog to cover more than one topic, and I'd like to draw specific attention to those new categories' recent posts on my homepage. One theme whose approach to this I *really* like is SmartMag. Only problem: It's a ThemeForest theme (link).
In any of your travels around the web or in coding for your own themes, have you encountered a Genesis theme that looks this nice and has similar homepage functionality? I also like the Hickory theme, but again, it's TF not Genesis.
I've been a Genesis believer for years now, so I'm not about to switch to TF and undo all that work. However, the child themes I'm seeing for Genesis don't really seem to accomplish what I want from a design standpoint or from a functionality standpoint. If there's a way to simply have specific categories' posts called-out in different sections of the homepage, that'd go a long way. But for the life of me I can't get it to work.
Anyone have suggestions/ideas?
Hi,
To me, Magazine and Metro (Genesis themes) have quite similar approaches to what you're describing, but not exactly, of course.I often get questions like this. But if someone really, really falls for a particular theme or site, and then wants to dupe it with another system, they are usually disappointed when someone like me tells them that custom work will be needed. 🙂
In any case, good luck!
Dave
Dave Chu · Custom WordPress Developer – likes collaborating with Designers
I’ve been a Genesis believer for years now, so I’m not about to switch to TF and undo all that work.
I'm with you on that! Plus even though I know some of the authors are great and right good code, some of them are 1 man teams and I don't trust the longevity.
That's a nice looking theme. It looks like "basically" 2 widgets and a sidebar. So I would start with something like LIfestyle, Magazine, Metro or News.
I actually already use a self-customized version of the Magazine Pro theme at my site, Daily Game. The thing is, I want to polish things up as I expand the blog to cover more than just video games. Those designs are much sexier than the home-brew job I cobbled together last year. I'm sure much of the extra work would involve CSS magic, which isn't exactly my ball of wax. If I could find something "off the shelf," like those themes, then I'd have just gone with that and called it good.
Any ideas how to give multiple categories their own "widget / space" on the homepage, at least? That would accomplish some of what I'm trying to do, I think.
I want to be sure I'm not missing something... what features are you all looking for that couldn't be accomplished by putting one of the many variants of the Featured Post Widget in a front page widget area, and configure each one to be for a specific category?
That's what I'm seeing in SmartMag, and the same thing is displayed in the demos for Magazine Pro, News Pro, and even the old Backcountry SP themes.
So, is there more to what you want to display than configuring a different category in each space?
edit: I think I see... you want more spaces to configure for more categories than what's provided by default?
I get it... I've been itching to build a Genesis child theme based on OneTouch... I just haven't had the time yet.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkAnd now I'm wondering if the Hickory design couldn't be approximated by using Epik as a base for customization... or maybe Classik which is available directly from appfinite...
That said, I have used Themedy's Foxy News on 2-3 sites to good effect, with customizations. 2 of those sites are in their showcase.
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkAha! That's the problem. In my current installation I was using the Genesis Featured Widget Amplified, which caused some problems with that. I just uninstalled that on my test server and was able to achieve what you mentioned above. Thanks! Now it'll be a CSS exercise to get it to all look like I'd like it to. I cringe at the number of hours that's going to take me, since I'm such a CSS idiot. 🙂
I looked at Foxy News, actually. I quite liked it, to be honest. There are three things I'd want to achieve with that theme that I'd need to custom code, which (again) frightens me. One would be registering a wide widget between the nav and main content area to accommodate a large display ad. The second would be a top-aligned navigation header once people scrolled beyond a certain point. The third would be the way ZigZag has treated author bylines and dates in the Tequila theme.
I wish CSS and I were on speaking terms. 🙂
The standard GFWA plugin has some issues, which is why several other folks have created more up to date versions of it.
The ones I have seen mentioned here are Genesis Sandbox Featured Content Widget, and Featured Custom Post Type Widget for Genesis
And yes, I did a lot of custom work on my Foxy News sites...don't be afraid of the custom coding; backup early and often, then jump on in! 🙂
WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After DarkYou could make News Pro exactly like Smartmag however it would take a considerable amount of work.
Hearing a coding guru like you (Brad) say "it would take a considerable amount of work" is intimidating for sure. I'll cobble together what I can on my own and share with you all, if you care about the fumblings of a total novice. 🙂 Just give me some time; it sounds like I've got a long, arduous road ahead.
Glad you started this topic because i didn't know about that theme which looks interesting and would be better running on Genesis.
Hey, if you want to create a SmartMag-identical child theme for Genesis, consider me your first child theme purchaser. In the meantime, I'll delve into CSS, functions and plugins to see what I can do on my own. I'm sure it won't be nearly as glamorous....
I'm trying to figure out the best way in Genesis to mimic that top featured area on the homepage. Would it be three widgets (one for the main slider, one for the larger top image on the right, and one for the two smaller images on the right)? Is there some way to add columns to a single widget area and do it that way (say, two-thirds for the slider and one-third for the right side)? Or is it possible to do all that using CSS based on the width of each element?
I'm also struggling to approximate the style of their "Entertainment" section. I'm pretty sure I can get the general layout using widgets, but I haven't found a tab plugin that can accomplish the "All, Fashion, Vogue" functionality they have there. Any guidance or experience doing a similar thing would be much appreciated.
I've hit a bit of a wall and would love some help, if anyone has ideas. In the two homepage "subsections" called Entertainment and World News on the SmartMag demo theme, they've got one primary feature on the left-hand side of the section and then four additional posts in that category with a smaller thumbnail.
Is there a way to re-create that using column classes and the Genesis Sandbox Featured Content plugin? Is it better to create two separate widgetized areas and somehow make them appear next to one another rather than underneath one another? What do you think is going to be the fastest-loading solution?
I'm struggling to get the column class idea to work right (they just end up underneath one another using that widget), so maybe I'm just doing it all wrong anyway. But if there's a more glamorous solution, I'm all ears.
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