Altering exiting themes can get messy if your changes are extensive. Little tweaks like adjusting text size and changing colors is fine. Changing layouts is where you can start having trouble. I prefer to start with a basic starter theme like _s (underscore S). It doesn’t look like much to start with, but it has all the basic theme functionality that is tedious to develop from scratch.
With a starter theme you can more easily add your own CSS to achieve the look you are after. Where needed, you can alter theme templates as you wish without worrying about updates overwriting your work.
Images are usually styled as blocks so any text that follows ends up below the image. Force the logo to display: inline and the following text will not line feed. However, images are often in their own div block and inline display gets more problematic. The alternate approach is to set the widths of elements in the same row as percentages that add up to 100% or less, then float: left; to get them all in the same row.
Thread Starter
im2020
(@im2020)
Thanks very much bcworkz – just the sort of guidance I was looking for and I’ll get back to work on it later today.
Thread Starter
im2020
(@im2020)
I’ve made quite a bit of progress with the _s Theme but despite specifying my home page as static the standard blog headings (Recent Comments, Archives, Categories, Meta) keep appearing on every page. Any help removing them would be much appreciated.
It sounds like you put a custom query on the global page template (page.php), which would override the default main query on every page. You shouldn’t need a custom query to drive the main loop, the default main query is used to get the right page. If you need additional queries for your home page, make a special template for it that is named “front-page.php”. It’ll only be used on the home page of your site. It can do whatever you like for the home page. It can even ignore the page content from the editor and do something completely different for content. It’s usually a good idea to start with a copy of page.php, renamed to front-page.php, then customized as desired.
Thread Starter
im2020
(@im2020)
As ever thanks for this. I’ll have to acquaint myself better with custom queries. I certainly haven’t knowingly put a custom query anywhere on my _s based Theme.
Mind you, that’s an educated guess at best. Verify in Reading Settings that a page is specified for the front page and the selection is not “–Select–“.
It could be your browser is caching the former blog listing home page. When ever you make a change and don’t get the expected results it’s a good idea to flush the cache.
If the template file either has new WP_Query() or get_posts() or query_posts() on it, it strongly suggests a custom query. It could be an innocent secondary query if the code occurs after the main loop. If before the main loop it’s likely a custom query overriding the default main query.
Thread Starter
im2020
(@im2020)
Checked in Reading Settings that a front ppage is selected.
Flushed the cache but no change.
In my (local) wordpress directory there are 36 files with template in the filename but none of them contain new WP_Query() or get_posts() or query_posts().
Meanwhile in my (local) wordpress directory there are 22 php files containing new WP_Query, 23 php files containing get_posts and 2 php files containing query_posts.
Any ideas which files I should look closer at inside?
Thread Starter
im2020
(@im2020)
Ahaaa. The problem seems to be with limitations of the _s Theme, and indeed with many other starter Themes.
I started checking whether my problem occurred with all Themes. I found a theme called OceanWP that had some extra options for Page Settings including one for a full width page and this pushed all Post headings off the screen.
A bit of googling confirmed that not all Themes have such an option. More googling (with How to Create a Full Width Page in WordPress) led me to a site that showed me how to add a full-width.php to my _s Theme and I’ve now got rid of Recent Comments, Archives, Categories, Meta.
So, it seems my problem may be solved and if so many thanks but I’m sure I’ll need more help as I progress.
The starter theme doesn’t have any template files with the name “template” in it. There are some core files named like that. Don’t mess with those please. The theme template files are in part in the theme’s folder under /wp-content/themes/. A few more are in the theme’s /template-parts/ subfolder. If you are principally creating page content, you are mainly using the page.php template.
Yes, starter themes do not have layout options to start with. You’re expected to develop you own. For pages at least, it’s relatively easy to do with custom page templates.
I think you’re saying the problem content was from sidebar widgets and not the main content. In making a full width template, that’s easy to remove. Start with a copy of the page.php template and rename as you like. Alter the comment header in the file to include the /* Template Name: Example Template */ comment at the top as directed in the above link. Add a class to the primary content area div so its width can be styled differently than other templates. Near the bottom of the page remove the get_sidebar(); call.
When creating or editing a page, select your template from the Page Attributes meta box. Add more CSS to the theme’s style.css as needed to accomplish a full width layout.
