Some WordPress.com features aren’t available by default on self-hosted sites, but many can be added through the Jetpack plugin.
In terms of the galleries, if you’re talking about the tiled gallery and carousel features, you can get that on self-hosted sites with Jetpack, by activating the Tiled Galleries and Carousel modules.
For the sidebar, could you provide links to both sites so I can compare the two to be able to help you better?
Kathryn,
Thanks for your response. The two sites are:
The following site was created with the Sketch theme downloaded from WordPress.com. The image galleries work fine:
http://www.maureenshepherd.wordpress.com
The following site was created with the Sketch theme downloaded from WordPress.org. The site content is the same — long story but in short I wanted to get my WordPress Sketch site up in my longtime host Startlogic.com. The image galleries in the site below do not work.
http://www.maureenshepherd.com
FYI: A coder friend of mine has just compared some html from the two above sites and he says the code is slightly different. Huh!!
Yup, looks like you want at least the Carousel option from Jetpack if you’re looking for the effect you have on the WordPress.com site.
http://jetpack.me/support/carousel/
In terms of the sidebar, what’s happening now is that you’ve linked the images in your galleries to the “attachment page” – which has a sidebar. Because your WordPress.com site had the Carousel option selected for your galleries, you never saw the page with the sidebar.
Try installing Jetpack and activating the Carousel module, and then activating it on your galleries. I think that’ll get you closer to what you’re looking for. 🙂
Let me know how it goes!
Hey, you just cheered me up! That solution sounds like it could work. I will try it in the morning. Way too tired right now after spending all day building these duplicate sites.
thanks! I’ll let you know how it goes.
Maureen
Sounds good! Looks like you already have Jetpack installed since you’re using the portfolio feature, so all you need to do is activate the Carousel module. 🙂 Let me know how it goes!
Kathryn,
The Carousel feature was easy to activate and worked perfectly. The sidebar isn’t an issue anymore, but now that I know about the attachment pages, I’m wondering if they’re necessary. Is it okay to link the galleries to “nothing”? I didn’t want to screw up my site by trying. 🙂
One more question arose: Is it possible to keep the main menu from collapsing. I would prefer to have to the “Home” and “About Me” options revealed on each page. I did a few searches but didn’t find anything on this topic.
Thanks again!!
Maureen
The Carousel feature was easy to activate and worked perfectly.
Great!
now that I know about the attachment pages, I’m wondering if they’re necessary. Is it okay to link the galleries to “nothing”? I didn’t want to screw up my site by trying. 🙂
Yes, totally fine – you won’t screw anything up. 🙂 When you have the Carousel active, that will override anything else you select for your galleries to link to – whether you choose attachment pages, media file, or none, the galleries will still open in the Carousel.
I’ll look at your menu question separately.
One more question arose: Is it possible to keep the main menu from collapsing. I would prefer to have to the “Home” and “About Me” options revealed on each page.
Sketch displays a full menu at wider browser window sizes. When the window is below 1280px wide, the menu collapses into the icon format. This makes it so that the mobile menu is visible on most tablets, but the full menu is visible on most laptops and desktops, although there are some exceptions for really small laptop and netbook screens, and of course older low-resolution monitors.
This is part of the theme’s responsive styling, designed to adapt the site to smaller devices. Changing the responsive menu behaviour would be a bit tricky because it involves a lot of CSS, but it might be possible to do with some experimentation.
Kathryn,
Thanks for the information. I will let well enough alone on the menu style. My site is working beautifully now, including mobile devices!
Regards,
Maureen
Sounds good – glad things are working well. Enjoy the theme and happy blogging!
Wondering why the attachment page images are so small. Is there a way to make them larger?
cathnat – please start a new thread (this one is about something else and was marked as resolved four months ago) and provide a link to your site so we can take a look. Thanks! You can start a new thread here:
https://wordpress.org/support/theme/sketch#postform
