Creating a dynamic home page in twenty-ten theme

  • Unknown's avatar
    dbs2003 · Member ·

    I want to create a dynamic home page for my blog in the twenty-ten theme that displays the most recent blog post, or an excerpt of it, a small ‘About Us’ blurb, a link to photo galleries and our Instagram feed. I have a static home page set up. I am assuming I need to use a plugin. I installed ‘Advanced Custom Fields’ plugin but I don’t know anything about ‘PHP’ or ‘CSS’ and I can’t really get the plugin to work. I must be missing a basic step somewhere. Any advice is appreciated!

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    theakshaydhiman · Member ·

    Hello traveler!

    To show the latest posts on the homepage:

    1. Visit Settings > Reading.
    2. For “Your homepage displays” setting, select “Your latest posts”.
    3. To show excerpts: For “For each article in a feed, show” setting, select “Summary” option.

    To customize your sidebar:

    1. Visit Appearance > Widgets.
    2. Drag and drop the widgets to add the features to your sidebar.

    You may not find some widgets like Instagram pre-installed. For that, visit Plugins > Add new. Then search “Instagram” and you’ll find many plugins that will serve the purpose.

    Personal opinions (if I were the blogger):

    1. I’d remove the “Categories” (it can be found in the navigation bar) and “Meta” (pretty much unnecessary) widgets from the main sidebar.
    2. Remove “Recent posts” widget from the footer sidebar and use the Instagram widget instead.
    3. Use a newer theme because Twenty Ten is eight years old and site design matters.

    And there’s absolutely no need to learn PHP and CSS. Have fun traveling :)

    Hope this helps and let us know if there are any questions.

  • Unknown's avatar
    dbs2003 · Member ·

    Hi theakshaydhiman,

    Thanks for your comments and suggestions. That is really good advice. I started to think after I posted this question that a “posts” front page and widgets might be the way to go but by then I needed a break!

    Do you know if there is a widget to display a photo gallery? I am using foogallery to display photos. I wanted to feature a few on the landing page to encourage people to visit. Is this possible?

    And thanks for the suggestions about the design. It needs a ton of work! I really appreciate it!

  • Unknown's avatar
    theakshaydhiman · Member ·

    Happy to help :)

    When it comes to photo gallery, I’d definitely give the default Gallery widget (pre-installed) a shot.

    If you want advanced features, then there are so many plugins available like Photo Gallery by WD and Photo Gallery by Envira.

    Let me know how it goes!

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