[Resolved] Newbie: Advice on working process

[Malin]

Hi! I’m a newbie and would appreciate some advice if you can spare some.
I have a BIG site with a very OLD theme and have just bought GenPress premium.
https://www.alternativephotography.com/
The site is a free learning resource and consists mainly of articles, galleries, and a small shop and I’m looking for a newspaper/magazine-style theme.
I have looked through the existing themes, but can’t find anything exactly like I want (top menu, top-top menu with social media icons, a sidebar to the right or left). Some of these are near: Rumor, Broadcast, Dispatch, Wordsmith, Volume, Read.
I don’t have any PHP skills, very basic HTML and CSS skills. And my question is:
What is the best way to go about this? Try to modify Generate press to suit or a theme that gets close and modify that? Or something else altogether? The budget is tight, so I can’t afford to hire a developer really… what would you have done?

[David]

Hi there,

Welcome to GPP 🙂

are you looking to replicate the site you have?
As the main feature would be the Post Grid at the head of your page. And the closest site we have to that is the Dispatch Site.

Other elements such as a Top Bar, Sidebars and secondary navigations are all theme options that we can help you set up.

Let me know about replicating the site.

[Malin]

Hi David,
Thank you so much for your quick reply!
Yes, more or less the same layout and structure. Just updated, the current one doesn’t work on mobile very well etc. it’s soon 10 years old!
Dispatch look pretty close, thanks for the advice. So, I install that and then modify it? Do you think the theme options will be enough, or some sort of add ons? I read that it’s not Child themes anymore, but using “hooks”?
Is the Dispatch “future proof”? It will most likely be another 5-10 years before I get around to updating again…
Some advice and help when I get there would be great. This forum the best place for that?
Thank you!
Malin

[Elvin]

Hi Malin,

Dispatch look pretty close, thanks for the advice. So, I install that and then modify it?

That’s right. Few CSS and changes on the post list plugins it uses will have to be done.

Do you think the theme options will be enough, or some sort of add ons? I read that it’s not Child themes anymore, but using “hooks”?

Some parts may need add-ons like the donate function on the sidebar. Did a quick scan of the site and it doesn’t seem like it would require Child theme for templating so GP Elements should be enough. 😀

Design-wise, we can’t say anything is “future-proof”. Design trends come and go and it really is subjective.

If you meant its future against bugs, we release updates every time WordPress releases updates. This should cover it.

[Malin]

Hi,
Thank you so much for your help. I worked all day creating a staged site at Siteground, installed GP premium and Dispatched theme. Making progress, but wondering if someone could point me in the right direction?

Issue 1: Widgets:
They are showing up with the error “The “custom_html” block was affected by errors and may not function properly. Check the developer tools for more details.”. I’ve downloaded the classic widget plugin but the error still occurs and I can’t seem to work with the widgets.
I get the footer widgets to work, but the sidebar and the homepage is not working. All widgets load on every page, in the old site I had some sort of visibility plugin that I could choose which page it displayed on. Any idea how to solve this?
I can’t really figure out where and how to work with widgets.

Issue 2: Template pages:
In the old site I had certain pages made with PHP templates. For example this one:
https://www.alternativephotography.com/all-articles/
So, certain categories, and then the posts for the categories displayed underneath. How can I do this in the current theme? With WP show posts?

Issue 3: Styling:
There are certain styles I would like to keep, such as the big 1, 2, 3 on this page and the way the book is included for sale at the bottom of the page.
https://www.alternativephotography.com/cyanotype-classic-process/
How do I add my own CSS? Just as usual in the CSS editor?
The text in the theme is also displayed all over the image and totally unreadable (see screenshot):
https://snipboard.io/GmjA4P.jpg
So that I somehow need to style as well. What would be the css tag for this? H2 and in some image container?

I really appreciate your time and thank you so much for your help (in advance)!
🙂

[Elvin]

For Issue #1: Can you share any screenshots of the error, and perhaps the error logs?

Check our brief debugging tips here – https://docs.generatepress.com/article/debugging-tips/

For Issue #2:

I believe you can do this with WPSP but you’ll need a helper function in shortcode form to iterate multiple WPSP list depending on the number of currently existing category terms on your site.

Can you open a new topic for this? This is a bit tricky to do and it’ll be good to have it’s own topic so this one doesn’t get too convoluted. Thanks.

For Issue #3:

Here’s a brief guide on how/where to add CSS on your site – https://docs.generatepress.com/article/adding-css/

As for the test overlaying the images on the first WPSP list, this is styled by a custom CSS.

Look for this one:

.wpsp-card, .wpsp-card a, .wpsp-card .wp-show-posts-meta a, .wpsp-card .wp-show-posts-meta a:visited {
    color: #fff;
}

#FFF is white, you can change it to your preferred color.

[Malin]

Hi Elvin,
Thank you so much for your reply.
Issue 1: Widgets.
Screenshot of error messages: most in my old site were “Custom HTML”.
https://snipboard.io/aj6y8m.jpg
https://snipboard.io/iqCHuU.jpg

Will open a new topic and also look into CSS.

Thank you. 🙂

[Elvin]

This looks like a WordPress core issue from its recent updates.

Can you temporarily disable ALL plugins and change to a default WordPress theme (example. Twenty-twenty) and see if the error still occurs?

[David]

Hi there,

seems there are a few bugs with the new Block Widget area. Which no doubt will get ironed out over the next few updates.
Personally i would recommend disabling that until it becomes more stable.

This article provides a PHP Snippet to do that:

https://docs.generatepress.com/article/disable-the-block-editor-in-widgets/

And this article explains how to add the PHP:

https://docs.generatepress.com/article/adding-php/

[Malin]

Hi both:
Elvin: Tried and widget issue is still there when:
Twenty-twenty is the theme and ALL plugins are enabled.
Twenty-twenty is the theme and ALL plugins are disabled.

And thank you for your CSS advice, most things are now under control. 🙂 I can’t seem to style the front page very well though. See pic:
https://snipboard.io/Lqm0oV.jpg
Text to have a background and be readable, but the grey looks awful (maybe more of a gradient?). And also the headline cuts off after a word or two, can’t figure out how to make it longer. I don’t necessarily need to keep the tiles, they look kind of messy… any ideas how to do this better?

The other css issue is that my hero images are not always hi-res, and also they are massive:
https://snipboard.io/urfncw.jpg
How can I reduce these to about 1/3 in height and have the headline underneath instead? I found “Single post hero” in Elements, but when I do changes there they don’t do anything. Any ideas how to fix? 🙂

David: Thanks for the tip. I’m out on deep water here, but I did as you suggested and the widgets started working again. I guess this is a WordPress issue that will be fixed in the future, and then I can remove the plugin again? My Light weight social media icons stopped working when I switched it off. Not a big issue right now, but would like to get them back in the future. 🙂

Thank you both very much!

[Leo]

Is there a chance you can open a separate topic for each of your questions?

It’s getting very hard to track the actual issues here.

Thank you.

[Malin]

Hi Leo!
Ok, sorry!
Here is the front page issue:
https://generatepress.com/forums/topic/dispatch-theme-styling-front-page/#post-1877985
Here is the hero issue:
https://generatepress.com/forums/topic/dispatch-theme-making-heros-on-single-posts-smaller/#post-1877991
You can close this one since I’ve created two new ones. 🙂

[Leo]

Thank you 🙂

[Author]

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