You don’t have to be a genius to follow these guides. But you do need to be competent using WordPress and have a good basic understanding of three widgets that we will be using again and again.
- The Text Widget
- The Genesis Featured Post Widget
- The Genesis eNews Extended Widget
- You may also find these core skills useful
The image below shows the boxes available in the Altitude Pro Flexible layout grids…
As you drag more widgets into a Flexible Widget Area the grid layout changes. Put three widgets into the widget area to get the three box layout. Put four widgets into the widget area to get a four box layout.
But remember. Only certain themes have Flexible Layouts.
Building the layout grids
I want to make it as easy as possible for you to build good looking home pages for your site. By the way, if you use Genesis Column Classes HTML you can build layout grids for landing pages and blog posts.
But to start with I’ll be sticking to the home page.
I will be building the layout grids using…
Flexible layouts are ready made grid layouts that are built into some modern Genesis child themes.
What if your theme does not have a flexible front page layout, but does have widget areas on the front page?
You can use the Widget CSS Classes plugin to add a CSS class to any individual widget. For instance you could add the one-third class to three widgets. The three widgets will then display side by side on a single row, each taking up one-third of that row’s width.
Will you need to write code?
I will provide the basic code you need to follow along with the layout grid tutorials.
To style the content after I build the layout the grids I will be using a premium plugin. But if you choose you could write CSS by hand. However these tutorials will not teach you CSS. You would need a book or Google to help with that.
Are your skills up too scratch?
If you’re new to WordPress I highly recommend that you invest in the WP101.com training videos. If you are on a really tight budget, WPbeginner provide some of the WP101 videos for free.