Which themes offer a Widgetized area on the home page…

  • Unknown's avatar
    janabouc · Member ·

    1. Do any themes OTHER then Gridiculous offer a widgetized area on the home page?

    2. Will Gridiculous get the new Portfolio feature?

    3. Would Gridiculous be recommended for hosting portfolios of art even without the portfolio feature? I think galleries will probably work fine.

    I want to add portfolio pages to my blog http://www.Janabouc.wordpress.com to create a full artist website; with a static home page that shows most recent blog post (sticky post) and several text/image widgets that link to my portfolio pages. I suppose I could do the same thing by creating images with text and linking them to the pages and positioning them on the page, but I really like the way it works on Gridiculous with the widgets in the main content area.

    Just not sure that Gridiculous is suitable for a portfolio site.

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

  • Unknown's avatar
    thatrobyn · Member ·

    Hi there! Did you know you could add Galleries to Gridiculous? Here are the instructions, if you’re interested:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/gallery/
    You can absolutely create galleries on Gridiculous pages. I am not certain if Gridiculous will get that portfolio feature or not. I’m only aware of it on these themes thus far:
    http://wordpress.com/portfolios/

    Many other themes also allow for widgets on the homepage. I’ve searched for themes that allow either a left or right sidebar here:
    http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/features/left-sidebar+right-sidebar/?theme-search=sidebar

    And in this search, I looked for photography themes that have a right-hand sidebar:
    http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/features/photography+right-sidebar/

    You can, of course, adjust the search parameters as you desire.

    Please let me know if you have any other questions at all. Thanks much, Jana! :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    janabouc · Member ·

    Thanks but that doesn’t answer my questions. My question wasn’t if other themes allow widgets. It was do they allow widgets IN THE MAIN CONTENT AREA, NOT sidebars. Do you know?

    And I know the theme allows galleries. I even said as much…but was hoping it would also allow portfolios if no other themes allow widgets in the main content area.

  • Unknown's avatar
    thatrobyn · Member ·

    Ah! Thanks for the clarification. When you said, “I think galleries will probably work fine.” I wasn’t sure if you knew that they were available or not. Great!

    While no other theme works exactly as Gridiulous does at the time being, some have similar options widget such as:
    http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/motif/

    Although, it seems as if Gridiculous meets your needs from an aesthetic stand-point better than Motif.

    The great majority of themes do not have existing widget windows built into the main content area of their templates, but many widgets can be embedded directly into a page with shortcode. So, if you fall in love with a template that doesn’t have pre-designed widget areas on the main page, it’s still possible that a widget be installed. It all depends on which widgets you want, and the layout of the theme. It’ll be a more manual process, but it’s still doable in some cases. I’d have to answer that question on a case-by-case basis.

    You mentioned wanting a theme:

    with a static home page that shows most recent blog post (sticky post) and several text/image widgets that link to my portfolio pages.

    I just wanted to clarify that a static page, and a page that displays posts, are two separate options. A static page is not a dynamic page that will update with your latest posts. You’d have to choose a static page, or a post page. You would make that choice in this manner:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/

    Let me know if you have any other questions. Sorry for the confusion! Thanks much.

  • Unknown's avatar
    janabouc · Member ·

    Thank you for the helpful reply. So to clarify, are you saying that it’s not possible to show a post on 2 pages, once at the top of the static home page as a sticky post and also on another page that is the actual blog post page?

    If so I guess I could skip the static home page and just use the design of the theme to put the sticky, most recent post at top, then the 3 widgets that link to the portfolio pages below that and then the rest of the blog posts.

    Not sure that’s quite what I want but it sure is great to get your help BEFORE I put in hours of work and then find out I can’t do it!!!!

    I’ll take a look at motif. I recall checking it out before and liking it. I also would really like to take advantage of the portfolio feature which isn’t available on gridiculous…but I do really like this theme.

  • Unknown's avatar
    thatrobyn · Member ·

    Not sure that’s quite what I want but it sure is great to get your help BEFORE I put in hours of work and then find out I can’t do it!!!!

    I think that’s smart, frankly :)

    So to clarify, are you saying that it’s not possible to show a post on 2 pages, once at the top of the static home page as a sticky post and also on another page that is the actual blog post page?

    A static page, by nature, is completely…static…unchangeable. It doesn’t show any blog posts at all. Let’s say you know you ALWAYS want the exactly same thing to appear on your front page, you’d create a static front page.

    For example, on Gridiculous the following are static pages:
    http://gridiculousprodemo.wordpress.com/full-width-page/
    http://gridiculousprodemo.wordpress.com/pullquotes/

    If you know you want a dynamic front page, that updates as you add new posts, then you do NOT choose a static page as your homepage. The front page of the Gridiculous demo is dynamic. There are static elements, yes, but there is a constantly-updated section where new blog posts appear.

    You can actually show your post on multiple pages. For instance, if you had a main blog page, it would appear there, and if you had a Category called “Landscapes,” your post could also be tagged to appear there as well. You would do that be creating categories:
    en.support.wordpress.com/posts/categories/

    However, if you set your front page as your main blog page (which you would have to in order to display posts), you could not have a secondary main blog post page where all your posts appeared as well. Your main page would be seen as your blog post page.

    I’ll take a look at motif. I recall checking it out before and liking it. I also would really like to take advantage of the portfolio feature which isn’t available on gridiculous…but I do really like this theme.

    One thing you could do, if it appeals to you, is upload several images and create a couple pages and sample blog posts. That way, you could preview some themes and see what your material would look like. When you change themes, while you lose your design settings when they are replaced by the new template, you do not lose any of your site’s content (pages, posts, media). You could keep your site private while you’re doing these tests, so nobody can see your experiments:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/

    Also, I’m not sure if you knew this or not, but if you decided to purchase a Premium theme, and it doesn’t work out ,we offer a full refund up to 30 days from your purchase. I am not trying to sweet-talk you into buying a Premium theme, but I didn’t want you to think your investment would be lost if you changed your mind.

    Ok, that’s a lot of info to digest! Let me know what you decide, or if I can help further.

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