Growing a website – day 5

If you have been following these posts, you’ll have seen that my home page has looked rather fragmented for a day.

I have been experimenting with the layout:-

  • copying a theme and then modifying it for my own use
  • creating a new home page template, based on the index page but modified
  • creating a new footer
  • creating a new post template, called post1, which will show on the home page only

In fact, it was errors in the new home and post1 templates which have caused the fragmented look.   I made my first set of changes and uploaded them with a reasonable degree of (misplaced!) confidence and no time to test and fix.

So, we have now swapped back to the original index page and now I will work through things slowly, so that I catch any errors I introduce….

  • Changed the footer to include login and other links and display them in an “inline” list
  • Removed those Meta links from the sidebar
  • I’d like the posts on the Home page not to show anything about Comments or Posted by aileen…. maybe we’ll keep the Categories, but maybe not…
  • So, I need a new post template, which I’ve called post1, which I’ll call only from the home page, where it used to call post.
  • Template post1 can be changed to make the post layout on the home page different from any other page.  First, I’ve removed the “posted by” and “comments” sections.
  • This all works nicely now, except that the heading for each post takes up too little room next to the pretty “post date” box.  After some manipulation of the post1 template and the style sheet, I have a satisfactory solution for the short term.
  • Next the sidebar…!

Time: 2 hours