Home Page Balance Theme: Where are You?

[PatCarroll]

Good evening!
I have been spending the day playing around creating pages, uploading plug-ins and was more or less ready to go but I couldn't get it to look pretty. Noob warning up front.

Then I found the very helpful theme instructions, with the recommendation to upload the XML file so I could see what names went with what appearance in the page.

I made pages called About, Planning Cmte, Terms and Conditions and Contact Us. There was a fourth page that was called Welcome to Nurse's Notebook which had very little on it, so I deleted it because I can't figure out where the $#&^ home page is! I thought that since I had it listed as my front page, it was overriding the natural home page, but no. I have configured the home widgets, just as the instructions describe, but that mystery page is hiding! I don't have "home" in the template list and don't know where else to look.

I did pretty well installing CustomForm7 and the CAPCHA addition and got it in along with the Shareaholic, and I tested it all, so I am not totally incompetent 😉 and I have to figure that this is staring me right in the face and I just can't see it.

Don't care about the portfolio -- just want the home.php ready to customize and then move on.

**How do I get a front page that I can configure with those widgets so it will look like the demo?***

I've sent aside tomorrow to load in a course I've written for which I am using LearnDash as my LMS -- already loaded and ready to go.

Once I get the home thing fixed, I'll just get rid of the other pages.

Thank you in advance for your patience! I will be back first thing in the AM.

http://www.NursesNotebook.com

[TravisPri]

Hi there,

You were on the right track! I'm pretty sure that rather than choosing a static homepage, you should go to Settings>Reading and then on the very first question, "Front page displays:" choose "Your latest posts". Then populate your widget areas and they should appear on the homepage.

Good luck!

[PatCarroll]

That did it! Thanks! But, is there any way to have a static welcome front page or is the way the theme is structured incompatible with that?

I will not be blogging on this site -- I am setting it up to offer courses with LearnDash. I suppose I could make the posts my initial content the way they are on the demo page, but am just wondering for moving forward if I can have static content with the demo balance home page layout.

Thanks for your help!

[TravisPri]

Hi Pat,

If you want to stop recent posts from appearing on your homepage, you will need to edit home.php.

I am not a php master by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I know what to do and want to help if I can. Before editing home.php, make sure you save a copy of it and that you have ftp access to the site so that you can re-upload the working copy if something goes wrong. (If there is an error in the php, you will get the dreaded white screen of death.)

The code below is what I believe needs to be deleted from home.php.

add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'child_grid_loop_helper' );
/** Add support for Genesis Grid Loop **/
function child_grid_loop_helper() {

	if ( function_exists( 'genesis_grid_loop' ) ) {
	
		genesis_grid_loop( array(
			'features' => 1,
			'feature_image_size' => 0,
			'feature_image_class' => 'align none post-image',
			'feature_content_limit' => 0,
			'grid_image_size' => 'grid',
			'grid_image_class' => 'align none post-image',
			'grid_content_limit' => 0,
			'more' => __( 'Continue reading...', 'genesis' ),
			'posts_per_page' => 5,
		) );

	}

	else {
		genesis_standard_loop();
	}

}

So the last line of your code in home.php would be:

remove_action( 'genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop' );

Again, be sure you have a working copy of home.php in case something goes wrong. Hope this helps! Let me know how it goes 🙂

[nutsandbolts]

If you want to disable the widgetized homepage, instead of editing home.php, just rename it. I usually tell people to rename the file to something like home-old.php - that will keep the other theme files from being able to find it. Then you can set a static homepage instead of using the widget areas.

---

Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

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