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Hi! The landing page is not fully built yet, but it is live... and it does have the button I want to remove. Temporary development link: http://rightisbackside.com/subscribe/
^^^ Thanks, I am aware of that. It's just that I used to load the images personally in the sizes I needed, because as a photographer, I preferred the better quality of doing the process myself in photoshop. However, I see WordPress has gotten better at downsizing image images. So, I had turned off the feature that crunches images and resaves them. For that reason, Minimum was displaying an HTML resized original image. No bueno. I fixed that today.
Another Edit: Genesis pulls out of a smaller resized image (new smaller file) so long as it's set in the Genesis or WP image settings before image is uploaded. (portfolio image or wp thumbnail image).
Another Edit: So Minimum pulls out of a proper resized image (new smaller file) so long as it is set in the Genesis settings (portfolio, or thumbnail image).
@Kraft - Hi, the CSS works great in order to display the image at the uploaded size, thanks.
However, I did some tests you might want to her about:
I used the banner image as a large rectangle and a 180 x 180px image for a featured image. Yes, in the blog excerpts, the smaller thumbnail square featured image shows. However, when sharing on Facebook & G+, the banner image is the one that shows up in the shares.
Apart from the look of a square thumbnail, and the slight loading time improvement of the small square featured image in the blog or category pages, I really see no other reason to use them over straight up banner images, given I'm not using creative aspect rations or giant sizes for the banner images.
The question is, when Minium displays a rectangular banner image as a small thumbnail image in the post excerpts, is it display the original large image as a small percentage-wise resize, or is it pulling a smaller image up from the resized images that happen during crunching?
!!!!!!! EDIT: I just checked, yes, Minimum pulls from the original size banner image to use as a html-resized image if a smaller featured image is not included. So, this likely means increased loading times in category and blog listings. Good reason to use the smaller featured image.
I'm making all CSS changes in Agency's styles.css but I'm having problems with some rules not working because they are overridden by the styles.css of the slider plugin. I'm frustrated and I'm about to go into the style.css of the responsive slider itself and change the rule there...
But it will get overwritten when the plugin is updated, right?
OK, I take my previous post back. The bit of CSS I added works in Chrome and Safari... but it does not work on Firefox or Internet Explorer. I added !important; rule to it and it still doesn't work.
Anybody have a CSS hack for IE and Firefox to reduce the size of the slider photos?
^^^ I'll take a look into that tomorrow. I'm not actually seeing exactly that. My slider is all white with black text over the regular white excerpt box. (which only shows when it covers a section of product photo). Maybe making it translucent would be good. But I have to test this in various browsers now.
I have to publish this thing by tomorrow afternoon, so I'm rushing to make changes, but the site is almost complete. Made a tons of progress today.
Thanks for all your help man.
I did create the widget using Nick's tutorial. That makes it work in the WordPress UI as it registers properly. My problem came when displaying the widget as I only want it in the middle of the homepage. I couldn't find anything on Nick's article that could help me for that part.
That's when I had the idea to look in the home.php.
That's when I duplicated the code for the home-welcome and just changed the ID and name to home-wide (so I would have both).
I then copied the CSS from #home-welcome and duplicated it for #home-wide - and changed a couple of parameters.
I'm still unsure about that bit of PHP code at the top of home.php that states all the homepage widgets except my new one. Not sure if I have to add it there for some reason... so if @nickthegeek sees this, maybe he can point me in the right direction
However, the widget displays and works brilliantly.
Look here for the content-wide text with header right under the slider: http://ravx.com/xrd/ (temporary link).
This is the text display you are looking for:
XRD Offers Solutions for Dedicated Cyclists
Long hours in the saddle are challenging. XRD provides solutions that put excitement and pleasure back into competitive cycling. Some cycle to win and some cycle for fun, but we are all serious about our sheer love of riding.
Continue scrolling below to see more of what XRD has to offer...
THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks, I got it to work with that tutorial...
1. I registered the widget - Check!
2. Then I tried using simple hooks to display it, but that didn't work of couse, because I only want it in the middle of the homepage.
3. So... I went to home.php and found the code for the home-welcome widget I'm trying to duplicate.
4. I duplicated this code for function agency_home_welcome_helper () {
if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-welcome' ) ) {
echo '<div id="home-welcome">';
dynamic_sidebar( 'home-welcome' );
echo '</div><!-- end #home-welcome -->';
}And I changed the home-welcome to "home-wide" the name of my new widget. Like this:
if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-wide' ) ) {
echo '<div id="home-wide">';
dynamic_sidebar( 'home-wide' );
echo '</div><!-- end #home-wide -->';
}It works!
I do have one doubt. Do I also have to add "home-wide" (my new widget's ID) to this string of PHP code that's in the home.php (there's mention of all the widgets on the homepage, so I would guess I need to add my new "home-wide" as well, right?
--------------------------------------
function agency_home_genesis_meta() {
if ( is_active_sidebar( 'home-welcome' ) || is_active_sidebar( 'home-slider' ) || is_active_sidebar( 'home-left' ) || is_active_sidebar( 'home-middle' ) || is_active_sidebar( 'home-right' ) ) {
remove_action( 'genesis_loop', 'genesis_do_loop' );
add_action( 'genesis_after_header', 'agency_home_welcome_helper' );
add_action( 'genesis_loop', 'agency_home_loop_helper' );
add_filter( 'genesis_pre_get_option_site_layout', '__genesis_return_full_width_content' );
add_filter( 'body_class', 'add_body_class' );function add_body_class( $classes ) {
$classes[] = 'agency';
return $classes;
}}
}--------------------------------------
Ok, I got it to work. This might help others with the same problem, so I'm going to post it here.
I got it to work by adding this simple bit of CSS to the Agency style.css to overrride the Slider CSS settings for this rule.
.agency .flexslider .slides img {
max-height: 50%;
}I pulled the code with Firebug, likely out of the stylesheet for the slider plugin. But it did the trick. All I changed was I added .agency and changed the max-height from 100% to 50%. By the way, it works without adding .agency.
By the way... This thread my interest you: http://www.studiopress.community/topic/minimum-theme-best-practices-for-featured-images/
Hi Lizzy, looking forward to the info...
Putting all else aside however, I have to disagree about the image comment. Yes, heavy images are a problem, but it's not the dimensions, it's the file size that's the problem.
While I refuse to run images this big on every post on my minimum site, I don't see it being a problem on the homepage, so long as you save it correctly. You might be doing this already, I don't know. But here it goes anyway...
Always, always, always save your images using Photoshop's "Save for Web." The image file size reduction is VAST compared to any other method I know of. I recommend saving JPEG's at 70% quality. Go up if you can afford to, go down if you have to. But, I usually don't save more compressed than 60%.
Using Save for Web, I get the large homepage image to be about 250Kb. And really, for an image that big, that's not bad at all. That same image saved as a compressed JPEG without using save for web would likely end up at 800kb, give or take. Very bad. So, always... use "Save for Web".
AND, if you ever modify an already optimized image and just hit "save", the file size will jump up from 250kb to 800kb on an image like this, for example. So always modify a source master image, and "save for web" and overwrite your previously optimized image.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU... I'll be here all week 😉
Ha! Hi Lizzy. I did a search for "Minimum" and landed this post. I went and look at the site.. and I LOVED it. The whole time I didn't know it was you because the search doesn't return your avatar in the list. I only realized it was you when I came to post about how much I liked the site!
You, my friend, are my mentor. Don't forget that. Hugs.
However, I had already planned to overlay text and a signup over the main banner image. I'm not biting that off you. Lol. But, I have to say, that little folding page thing to the top right is awesome. I would've not thought of that myself! Genius.
I need to talk to you about featured and banner images. I'm taking a different approach on RW. Minimum is tricky when it comes top banner and feature images. I see you don't actually use any. But I think I found my solution. -Danny
@Kraft - I finally had a chance to try out the plugin and test various sizes.
I see the potential, but I'm afraid there's a small problem with the plugin. The plugin forces whatever image is uploaded through it to fill the entire available area for a banner image above the fold. It doesn't just put the photo in the size I upload it on.
I thought the idea was you could upload at banner photo in a size you want to center above the fold, while using a square image as a featured image. However, whatever I upload as a banner gets blown up huge to fill the entire banner area. Not what I had in mind. I'd like to be able to control the overall size of the banner image. So far, I'm very happy with 1140px as it's the actual width of the content. But the plugin won't allow it to show at the 1140px size uploade. I must use it as a featured image to show at that size. Am I missing something?
@Kraft - Hi, do you by any chance have some links to sites that are running that plugin. Just looking for some examples of what people are doing.
I ran into a site that's not using it, and I tried to pin some images and I see what you mean about the narrow sliver-looking images.
Regards,
Danny
^^^ Oooh, excellent. Thanks for the advice. I use very few categories and they are generally branded... Like, Show and Shine, Editors Corner, Tech Pint, etc. Only the url is slightly keyword targeted. Given the way I use categories and the fact they I only have 4-5 of them, I think I can make great use of tags for more general terms.
Additionally, I have created a custom post type and custom taxonomy that allows the use of the same standard WP post tags the standard blog posts are using. This, can be a way to help tie those 2 sections together to have users easily jump between them.
This is looking good.
^^^ I'm aware. I have set my site however to not convert images - as I usually create my own. To do this, I simply set WP (in the media settings) to 0px x 0px for image resizing. I noticed Genesis and Minimum creates some other sizes on it's own. That's Ok. I actually change the setting in the media settings panels quite often, depending on what I need for a particular article. Most of the time, it's set to not resize.
Haha. Fair enough. I'll load it up and run a some tests. I'll also try and turn the plugin off after I have some posts running with it and see the results I get from that. Maybe I can put together a good workflow with default sizes so that if anything goes wrong in the future, it can still work and look somewhat good regardless. I'm not opposed to using featured images that center above the fold, yet still fit within the content column (740px). Not as dramatic, but definitely safer. I'll try and have WP resize some images for me and check the results. I think WP could give me good results if it resized down from 1600px and gave me a large image for lightboxes (900px) plus medium images at (740px) plus a thumbnail. If I do that only for the featured images, I could get good results.
The site's running on a development domain right now anyway... So I'm free to try whatever and take my time fine-tuning while the current Thesis site chugs away on the real domain for now.
For reference, the development domain is http://rightisbackside.com for RallyWays.com
Thanks for all the help Brandon. -Danny