Education theme: static page slider, header changes, sidebar content changes

[ilene]

Hello there,

I have converted an old html site to the Education theme. Now I want to customize the look/functionality. I am not a php programmer, but have a lot of programming experience.

I need a static home page, with the genesis responsive slider and the home widgets on it. I understand if the home page were posts this would not be a problem. Can this be done?

Most of the site's pages are 'pages'. There are a few pages that contain only blog posts and for them I added the Custom Sidebars plugin so that I can display categories and archives. But I want to get away from using third party plugins and just code it in the theme. My reasons are that some plugins are not kept up to date with the most recent versions of WordPress and some do not have good support for bugs. Please tell me if my logic is flawed.

The Education theme I am using has two columns. How can I change which widgets are displayed in the sidebar based on which page is being looked at? I am not sure, but does this mean creating my own widgets based on content and them somehow calling them on that page? If this concept is correct, I have no idea how to do it.

The page needs the organization's logo in header area. I am not sure of the best way to do this.

I have added a search box to a sidebar, but would really like it in the header on the right side.

These URLs use the Education theme. This one uses the slider like we want, http://www.sunmeadow.com/. This URL uses the changing sidebar content based on the page visited, http://www.habitatstark.org/get-involved/.

I know this post has a lot of questions. I would really appreciate some guidance. I can provide the new URL in a pm.

Thank you,
Nancy

[Susan]

Hi! Since it's been a while since you posted your question, I hope you were able to get it resolved.

If not, please report back here, and I will try to assist, or will escalate.

Thanks!

[Author]

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