Styling Blog page and posts

[tron]

I’m having a few issues with my blog page and posts I am hoping you can help me with:

Blog Page

1. If on a post I have an excerpt set to control what text is shown on the blog page, the “read more” button for that post does not show. How can I get the “read more” button to show?

2. Is there a way to control the hover effect on the images (link icon and turning black) and the style of the “read more” button other than using custom css?

3. Are there any other controls to styling the blog page other than what is in “theme options” > “blog”. You have amazing controls to customise so many things on the site - yet when it comes to the blog it seems there is very little control.

Blog Posts

4. There don’t appear to be any way to change the appearance of the actual blog posts, except with the Gutenberg editor - is that correct? I was hoping to find a way to change the featured image size and perhaps position.
5. Sidebar widgets - once again the amazing controls you have elsewhere seems to be completely missing - if I wanted for example a styled version of recent posts with images, do I just have to code this? If so can you provide me instructions for how you did the recent posts on this page: http://demo.theme.co/integrity-1/affiliate-marketing-101-self-hosted-video/

Thanks

[christian]

Hey Joanna,

Regretfully, most of your concerns are not yet offered in our themes. But, the Layout Builder is coming which will allow you to build your own blog and single post design. For more details, please check out our status reports in our New Archive.

Here are the specific answers to your questions:

###Blog Page
1. Please add this code in your child theme’s functions.php.

// Manual Excerpt Read More
function manual_excerpt_more( $excerpt ) {
	$excerpt_more = '';
	if( has_excerpt() ) {
    	$excerpt_more = '<br><a href="' . get_permalink() . '" rel="nofollow" class="more-link">Read more</a>';
	}
	return $excerpt . $excerpt_more;
}
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'manual_excerpt_more' );

2. Regretfully, it’s currently only possible using custom CSS.
3. This is because the builder is only currently limited for the content which is constrained by PHP templates so you currently need to be a web developer to edit the said PHP templates. But, with the up coming Layout Builder, you’d be able to build a template and assign it to archives and single posts.

###Blog Posts,

1. You can’t change the layout of single posts but you can use the Content Builder if you plan on designing a complex layout within your post’s content. If the Content Builder is not available for your post type, go to Pro > Settings > Permissions > General enable the post types you wish to use the Content Builder.

2. Our demo uses the Recent Post shortcode inserted inside a Custom HTML widget. For more details about the Recent Post shortcode, please see http://demo.theme.co/integrity-1/shortcodes/recent-posts/

Hope that helps.