Pro Theme Design Forum » Elemental » Technical Help
Changing the elemental into a 3 column template
- Started 6 months ago by kasinonett
- Latest reply from adamwc
- This topic is
not a support question
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Hi What is the easies way to change the Elemental into a 3 column theme? I need a template that looks something like this layout structure: www . jackpot6000 . com Hope you can help me out.. By the way the theme elemental really looks great! |
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Just to clearify, this is the setup im looking for: http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/perfect-3-column-dimensions.gif |
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What pages do you want the three columns to appear on? Whatever the answer I would make the changes as a child theme and just override any templates I wanted to alter. If you're looking to change a lot of the pages I would use content hooks to add in a new sidebar before the content. |
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Well..Im changing the front page.. All underpages can be changed as i wish within the controll panels given in the template.. Im thinking about just moving one of the two sidebare coloums on each side of the content.. How can I do this? just take a look at the site I linked in the first post. It has a sidebar on each side of the content... Also im having a kinda hard time both changing the footer links and the lang..Im working on translating the en_EN into norwegian.. But im not 100% on how to implement it, as im kinda new to templates with this advanced structure (this last one should have gone into a seperate tread..) I will forward the lang file to you when im done. |
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I will post an image of what I'm trying to do with Elemental - but I would like to know how to make a 3-column template that has all three columns with equal widths... It would kind of be like the footer widgets - but something that I could just use as the Homepage Template --- and then the rest of the pages would use normal Elemental templates. I'm not familiar enough with php and how to make that happen...can you help with that? I'd like the FIRST column (from left to right) pull the most recent post --- the SECOND column to pull the most recent post from a specific category and the THIRD column to be a widget...is any of that possible...? Or I suppose, it would probably be easiest if all three were simply widgetized....can you help me do that? I have a client site that wants that but needs to go live by Friday am. Thanks! |
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I was trying to work out how to describe this but actually I think it could be quite a cool feature to have a couple of custom page layouts that have widgetized columns (a 2 column, a 3 column, and a 4 column page) so that anybody can do this with the theme. I am going to think about how best to do it and get back to you - I may even be able to send you something later today. |
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Ben - that would be amazing if you could add an option like that.......... So it would be a custom page template I'm guessing that would then have three new widgets available in the Widgets section....? And those widgets would be separate from the current widgets that are there.... Is this something you think is doable by end of today or so? I need to know for my client - or I may have to think about moving to a new theme....... |
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Yes to all points :) I've had a quick play and it's mostly working already. I may use you as a guinea pig to make sure it all functions as intended (hope that's ok?). There will be multiple additional widget bar enabled if the custom page template is used on a page. You should also be able to use multiples of the same page. Once I have one template working it will be trivial to add more (2 & 4 column ones). |
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I'd definitely be interested in testing this out as well Ben. I was just about to ask the same thing :) |
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I would love to be a guinea pig as well..Im currently working on the structure on my site..:) just pop me a mail with the files.. |
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I've updated the theme in the accounts control panel. I think it's all working properly. There are three new single page templates that will support either 2, 3, or 4 widget columns. You can then stick any widgets you like in there. You can also use the WordPress options to set one of these pages as your homepage. I did a test on as many pages as I could and it seemed to be working well. Let me know how you get on, hopefully there are no errors |
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Cool! I will check it out now! Thanks for the great help! |
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Testet it now...Its okay. But it not what i was looking for.. What about a page with two coloums, with content, with get_content feature.. This way I can launch this on the first page and feed the latest news straight to the first page..:) |
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I too would be interested in seeing what kasinonett mentioned - but this is a helpful addition to this theme - I think others will like it. One problem I noticed is this. So I went in and chose the 3-column widget custom page template....played around with a few widgets, but then wanted to see what 2 columns looked like. So I switched to 2 columns....and the widgets I had put in first disappeared. So then I switched BACK to the 3-column widget custom page template ( so I could copy the specs of the widgets I had put in..... ) and they had disappeared... Is there no way for them to save what was in them? Otherwise, a lot of work could go into widget preparation etc., and a client could accidentally delete all of that work.... |
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If you could fix it so that it doesn't delete widgets if you switch templates - that would be great. But this is just what I was looking for: see what I did here: http://jinamoore.com This is using the 2-column design which ended up looking best for this particular site...I think it opens up the possibilities of Elemental even more! |
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I think it works rather well myself, that page you have on Jina Moore looks great I did consider the widgets being deleted but that's a standard WordPress thing and I wouldn't know where to start with that. That doesn't mean it won't happen but it's not going to happen quickly. This is a feature I knocked out in a couple of hours without much planning (since you said you were on a deadline) so it will take a while to mature. :) Also if I make changes now it will delete any widgets you have set up... however I am going to do that anyway. There are some things I could do that will improve the vanishing widgets situation. For example if I use the same widget name for the 2, 3, and 4 column widgets then changing template will keep the widgets that have not been removed (ie switching to a 2 column template from a 3 column template will keep the same widgets in the first two columns) This does mean you will have to set up the widgets again but also that it will be more flexible for future additions. |
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Try the theme in the accounts control panel again. There's 2 changes 1) There's a new template that has blog content in the center column. |
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Awesome man - i'll have to give it a shot....you guys do great work! |
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