An Introduction to Genesis Home Page Options
Most Genesis child themes use a widgetized home page. This means the home page is not set up as a regular page. Instead it is a combination of theme settings and content within preset widget areas.
Having a widgetized home page is preferred because it gives website end users maximum flexibility in creating a home page for their website or blog. It allows you to change options and content to fit your specific needs.
We design our child themes with specific types of content in mind for each area of the home page. Even though we do this, it does not mean that you can’t put other content into these areas. We’re just trying to give you a head start and a push in the right direction.
Keep in mind – WordPress has 20,000+ plugins, which leads to thousands and thousands of options for widget usage on a child theme’s home page. We can’t begin to style for all of those options, so content replacement on the home page may need some additional tweaking to the CSS file. While many plugins and/or content changes will look great, not all will. So you’re free to replace out the widget suggestions we have for your own content or widgets, but remember you might need a little extra styling done for this addition or change.
Setting Up the Home Page and Blog Page
- Go to Pages –> Add New and create a page for your Home page
- In the right hand side of the page edit screen look for the Page Attributes settings
- In the Page Attributes selection select Home from the drop down under the Template setting
- Publish/Update that page
- Go to Pages –> Add New and create a page for your Blog page (this page can use the Default page template)
- Next, go to Settings -> Reading
- Look at the the Front page displays section there near the top
- Set the Front page setting to the page you want to be your Home page
- Set the Posts page setting to the page you want to be your Blog page
- Click the Save Changes button
Now visit the other topic posts within you’re theme’s instructions to learn how to set up each content area.
Using the Genesis Blog Page Template
The core Genesis theme framework comes with a blog page template. You can optionally use this page template per Genesis normal instead of setting a Posts page in your Settings –> Reading settings.
Additionally you have the option to use the Genesis Blog Page template to create category archives and such. Please see this documentation at StudioPress for more information on how to do that.
