Blog Posts (customizing and functionality)

[jhayles]

I still have the same issues…

1. I have previously assigned these layouts, but since removed the assignments because I didn’t know what the difference was between single and archive layouts. Now I understand the difference. However, your response didn’t answer my question asking why is it pulling in all of my content from my home page? You said it’s because they aren’t assigned, but as I mentioned, I previously had the Single Posts Layout assigned to Posts, but it was still pulling in my Home Page content when I used the dynamic “Content” option.

2. I’m assuming your answer to this question for creating a blog post template is to use the Layout, Single Type layout. That’s fine, but the problem with that is when I assign that Layout to Blog Posts, then I try to edit a blog post, the Template has hard-coded everything into it and I can’t edit anything, and I can’t add sections, etc. So I’m obviously not understanding how this works. If I’m supposed to use the Layout, Single Type Layout option to create a blog post template, why will it not allow me to edit anything when I try to edit a post?

3. This was my next question: " I didn’t know what I was doing when I created the Posts Archives Layout. How do I change that to an Archive Layout? I don’t see the option to do that."

I was asking how do I change the “Type” after I’ve created a Layout? I obviously made a mistake when I created one. I should have used an Archive Template for this Layout: https://experiencethesprings.com/pro/layouts/305 but didn’t understand the difference between the two, now I do. But I need to know how to change the Type of a layout after I’ve created it.

4. That worked for the height of the blog post, but the bottom of the blog post card will not stay put. It “shrinks” up in accordance to how much text is there. I want all four borders of the blog post card to stay put. What setting do I use for that?

This is the page I want for my Archives ( I need to change the Layout type to an Archive, but I don’t know how) : https://experiencethesprings.com/pro/layouts/305

This is the Layout I want to use for my Blog Posts (I’m still not done building it out): https://experiencethesprings.com/pro/layouts/330

Feel free to log in and make any changes you seem fit.

Thank you for hanging in there with me through all of this. I feel like we’re almost there.

[ruenel]

Hello @jhayles,

#4. That worked for the height of the blog post, but the bottom of the blog post card will not stay put. It “shrinks” up in accordance to how much text is there. I want all four borders of the blog postcard to stay put. What setting do I use for that?

• The border style from the “Article” element must be removed. It should added the border and the border-radius to the “Post” element instead so that the columns will have a border that will serve as the card.
  
  

#3. This was my next question: " I didn’t know what I was doing when I created the Posts Archives Layout. How do I change that to an Archive Layout? I don’t see the option to do that."

• To save us time, I went ahead and converted the “Posts Archives Layout” single layout into an archive layout.
  

  

• I also assigned it to display for your blog index and all the archive pages.
  

  

How did I do the conversion?

• I save the template in the layout tab, named it “Archive Template”
  
  
• I deleted the “Posts Archives Layout” single layout
• I created a new “Posts Archives Layout” and made sure that the type is “Archive”
  
  
• And then I loaded the saved Archive Template into the newly created archive layout.

#1. I have previously assigned these layouts, but since removed the assignments because I didn’t know what the difference was between single and archive layouts. Now I understand the difference. However, your response didn’t answer my question asking why is it pulling in all of my content from my home page? You said it’s because they aren’t assigned, but as I mentioned, I previously had the Single Posts Layout assigned to Posts, but it was still pulling in my Home Page content when I used the dynamic “Content” option.

#2. I’m assuming your answer to this question for creating a blog post template is to use the Layout, Single Type layout. That’s fine, but the problem with that is when I assign that Layout to Blog Posts, then I try to edit a blog post, the Template has hard-coded everything into it and I can’t edit anything, and I can’t add sections, etc. So I’m obviously not understanding how this works. If I’m supposed to use the Layout, Single Type Layout option to create a blog post template, why will it not allow me to edit anything when I try to edit a post?

• After setting the condition to your single layout,
  
  

You can preview the single layout by setting which post should be displayed in the builder:

I made some modifications to your single layout and I added “The Content” dynamic element. This is now how it looks in the builder preview:

Please check one of your single posts here:

• https://experiencethesprings.com/another-post-12/

Check out the blog index here:

• https://experiencethesprings.com/blog/

Check out the category page here:

• https://experiencethesprings.com/category/real-estate/
• https://experiencethesprings.com/category/moving/

I had to modify your Posts Archive Layout by removing all the Looper providers so that you can have pagination on your archive pages. Just imagine if you have more post items, you shall be having paged archive pages then. You can check out the pagination in action in your blog index though we still have a slight issue with the post items.

Hope this helps you understand how the layout builder works.

[jhayles]

This helps, thank you for the adjustments. I have a lot of studying to do in order to learn how this all works. I feel like the docs sections on ThemeCo do not cover this kind of material in-depth. Do you have more thorough resources you can point me to?

If you can clarify these last items I will leave you alone. You’ve been very patient.

1. The background for my pages and posts are an off-white color. I want the background to be a pure white, to match my white header. I’ve looked in all the settings and can’t find that option to change the background.

2. I’ve searched for “The Content” but can’t find it inside the elements. Where am I missing it? And can you point me to some tutorials that explain what this dynamic content element is best used for? If I plan on creating new posts inside the editor by either writing it using Text element, or by pasting in text from a word document, why would I need to use The Content element?

[ruenel]

Hello @jhayles,

Have you checked out our video tutorials? It covers more extensively than the documentation. You can check out this playlist:

1.) Actually, your background color is already pure white (#fff). It may look like an off-white because of the box-shadow property that you added in your custom header. Please edit your header and remove the box shadow in the bar settings.

To make sure that your background color is white, you can go to Pro > Theme Options > Layout and Design . Background Color.

2.) “The Content” dynamic element is only available if you are editing the single layout.

If you are editing the Archive layout, you can only insert the “The Excerpt” dynamic content.

You do not need the “The Content” or “The Excerpt” dynamic element if you are editing a page or a post.

This element will display the post description or the content that you have added for a post. For example, if you edit post #12 (https://experiencethesprings.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=354&action=edit), I only used the WP Editor in creating this post. As you can see, I added “Lorem Ipsum” as the post content. When you view this post on the live view, the layout is using your custom single layout with “The Content” dynamic element in charge in displaying the post description which is the “Lorem Ipsum” texts.

Another case here, I created post #13 using Cornerstone, https://experiencethesprings.com/pro/content/362. I added some sections and other elements. “The Content” dynamic element is the content area for the posts. When you view this post in a live view, it will still be using the single layout: https://experiencethesprings.com/post-13/

To sum it up, you use the “The Content” dynamic element in your single layout so that the post content or any content even if you are using Cornerstone in creating the post, will display in your custom single layout.

Hope this makes sense.

[jhayles]

Thank you! I will look at the tutorials. On this page: https://experiencethesprings.com/category/moving/

the category elements used to be aligned horizontally, which is what I want. They seem to be stacked vertically now. How do I change that?

[ruenel]

Hey @jhayles,

You can insert a DIV element that will contain the categories element.

This is the current layout element structure:

Having that structure should resolve the issue.