Better Theme?
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I am trying to combine my existing blogs into a single new one. My main old blog used theme TwentyTen. I tried using ShoreDitch because I wanted to be able to use buttons, but I could not get it to look OK. Now I’ve set up with with Sequential and that looks OK, but it does not support ‘button’.
I find most themes wasteful with respect to screen real estate (all about looks, not much about content). And having nicely looking themes where for instance the text is shown on top of a featured image means that for many featured images, the text becomes unreadable (i.e. light text on light image).
Is there a better theme where I can do what I do now with Sequential? Something that supports blogs (categories), full pages, sidebar, and buttons? I have no problem with paying for a theme and I’m planning to move to a basic paid WordPress.com plan anyway
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Sorry, Sequential does button. I meant a theme that better handles featured images (scalable) and is less wasteful with its huge headers, like TwentyTen is.
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Hi @gctwnl,
I answered the private email you sent into us too but am also going to copy/paste my reply here in case it benefits others. :)
Sequential requires you to have a static front page that’s using the Front Page template in order to add header text/buttons.
If you’d like to have a blog as your front page the perhaps you could consider Radcliffe 2? That theme enables you to display text and buttons in the header, while also displaying your blog posts on the front page.
Gateway is another option. Although Gateway also requires you to set up a static front page before you can insert text into the header, it will also display your three most recent posts on the front page.
Take a look through those options and let me know if you have further questions!
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Thank you. Radcliffe 2 seems not to do what I need. For one, it mangles the featured image to a certain size (and I am setting this up to move existing sites with ~400,000 views and many posts to the new integrated site). For another, I just can add a single button to a home page, and that is not enough.
Gateway seems to work better for me (though I like the looks of Radcliffe2 more), but I haven’t been able to add a page and select the Home Page Template. I’m supposed to “Create a new Page, and assign it the “Home Page” template under Page Attributes”, but there is no such assignment on offer.
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Hi there,
I’m glad you like the look of Gateway! The first step to getting set up like the demo site is to assign a static front page.
After you’ve done that, navigate to the front page’s editor and then choose Page Options from the right sidebar. The following support documentation includes a screenshot of the Template dropdown menu that you’ll find under Page Options:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/page-options/#template
The list of options in the Template dropdown menu will include Home Page, but you may need to scroll down to see it.
If you’re not seeing Home Page in the list of options then would you be able to create a screenshot of exactly what you are seeing? We have guidance for creating a screenshot available here:
If you can upload your screenshot to your Media Library, I’ll be able to see it and help from there.
I also used the Contact on the theme’s info page. Does that end up at the same people?
Messages you send via the contact form will be routed to staff here at WordPress.com, yes. You’re welcome to continue replying to this thread or via private email. If you can route your messages to one place, it’ll help us to respond to you in the most timely way possible.
Thanks!
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I had a look again. I can now create a home page with buttons, but this is a terrible option as you get more or less two headers for a single page. I cannot have a blog page with the buttons. Maybe back to radcliffe.
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Is there no single theme that
– Enables multiple buttons on the home page (like Gateway does)
– Enables the posts on the home page (minimally the last three as Gateway does)
– Doesn’t create a ‘double page’ effect that Gateway does? -
I’m not clear on why you mean by the “double page” effect. Would you be able to provide me with an example from your site?
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Current home page of the site in question. The text on the featured image has a header and a text and so does the page below it. So, you get two headers.
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I’m looking at rnaea.wordpress.com but am only seeing one featured image in the main header. You can add any text you want here.
You can also add text to the actual home page, which will appear beneath the featured image, but that isn’t necessary. You can leave the home page’s editor empty if you don’t want that text to appear beneath the featured image.
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I have emptied both header and text. That leads to an empty header and empty text area, but they are not gone, just some empty white space.
So on that page I get two headers (one on top of the featured image and one below it) and two text blocks (one n top of the featured image and one below it). That is pretty ugly.
Maybe I should forget about the Home Page Template as it unavoidably produces this ‘double’ effect.
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I can leave out the header text on the featured image in the Home Template. I’ve been playing around a bit with using HTML on the Home Page Template. What I have now is somewhat OK. What I would like to know:
– How do I make a buttons an exact width regardless of text length? In worst case: text padding.
– How do I remove the faint table border (though I might keep it, it is somewhat nice).
– Is there a way to make the featured image less tall? -
Hello,
– How do I make a buttons an exact width regardless of text length? In worst case: text padding.
I see you’ve already added some inline styles to the HTML for your buttons. You could also use inline styles to set a width on the buttons. For example:
<a href="http://example.com" class="button" style="width: 200px;">Buy First Item Button</a>– How do I remove the faint table border (though I might keep it, it is somewhat nice).
You’d need to add border: none; to the inline styles you’ve already placed on the table HTML element. Altogether, that would look as follows:
<table style="background-color:rgba(0,0,0,0); border: none;">– Is there a way to make the featured image less tall?
This would require Custom CSS, which you’d be able to add with the WordPress.com Premium or Business plans.
Hope that helps!
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Thank you. Is there a description of button and button-minimal somewhere that tells me what can be set? I noticed that I can set the text size easily, for instance. But what others are there?
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There aren’t further descriptions of the buttons outside of the theme’s documentation. If you’re looking for different styling possibilities, then there’s a wide range of options with CSS. We have some good guidance that covers the basic of CSS here, with links to further resources at the bottom:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/css-basics/
Hope that helps!
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It’s slow going, but I’m almost there. Just a question: why doesn’t https://rnaea.wordpress.com/the-book-edition-iii/ show the featured image?
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Argh! I thought I was almost there! A template that does not support featured image on a normal page is totally unexpected. What other template is there that gives me an image on the individual pages but also what I can do now? Because as is, Gateway makes my pages boring.
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You could manually insert the images you were going to feature to the top of your pages, if you’d like to add a bit more visual decoration to them.
I’m not sure what theme to suggest beyond that as it did seem like Gateway was the only one to match up to your list of specifications, it’d be shame if you had to switch again now.
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