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Customizing widget area settings for Digital Pro

Digital Pro – what you need to do after running the setup wizard

First activate the navigation bar. Go to…

Appearance > Menus > Manage Locations: In the Header Menu drop down, choose Header Menu.

Setting the header menu in Digital Pro

Now you need to fix the homepage link. Go to…
Appearance > Menus > Edit Menus:
Look for the Home “button”. Click the little arrow to open the box. Change the link to YOUR Home Page.

Fixing the homepage link in the navigation bar of Digital Pro

Genesis Theme Settings

Dashboard > Genesis > Theme Settings

If you click the Reset Settings button, THEN click the Save Settings button, Genesis will automatically set most of these settings to suit your theme.

Save Settings and Reset Settings buttons

I’ve made a video and tutorial all about the Genesis Theme Settings.

Some Genesis Theme Settings you might want to change…

Demo uses single column for pages and posts. Change this if you wish.

Scroll down to the Content Archives section
The settings should be OK. Just change the: Limit content to. Change this from 160 Characters to 0 Characters. A setting of 0 characters will display the full post content up to the more tag.

Make sure the featured image is set to show and the size is 1000 x 700 Right aligned.

Genesis Theme Settings Content Archives

If you use Google Analytics, paste your code into the…
Header and Footer Scripts > Header Scripts: text box.


Editing the front page layout using the Front Page Widget Areas

The front page is made from three main Front Page widget areas.
Front Page 1, Front Page 2 and Front Page 3.

These three widget areas are followed by a short list of blog posts.

And then the footer, which contains three widget areas. Footer 1, Footer 2 and Footer3.

The main front page widget areas

Front Page 1 widget area: is the first section of the homepage, it comes below the site title and navigation bar.

Front Page 1 widget area contains a text widget where you can change the big homepage headline, smaller text and button text.

The pink button that jumps you down to the next section of the home page. Front page 1 has a background image. This is the big image to the right that shows part of a mobile phone, a notepad and pen.

To change the background image go to…

Dashboard > Appearance > Customize > Front Page Image.
Your new image should be 1600 x 1050 pixels.

Frontpage 1 widget area in Digital Pro


Front Page 2 widget area: contains a list on the left hand side and an email signup form on the right hand side. This widget area contains two widgets. The list on the left is in a text widget and the newsletter sign up form uses the Genesis eNews Extended widget.

Front Page 2 widget area Digital Pro


Front page 3 widget area: is the black stripe that contains 3 icons, 3 short paragraphs of text and 3 pink buttons. this widget area is made form four text widgets. The first text widget only contains the words “OUR SERVICES” in the Title: box.

The icons, headlines, paragraphs and buttons are in three text widgets. I’ve made a web page showing you how to customise icons used in StudioPress themes.

Front Page 3 widget area Digital Pro


Our Journal

Below the black bar with the 3 icons, there is an optional section that lists your 3 most recent blog posts. You do not have to do anything to activate this section, it is built into the theme and appears automatically if you use the widgetized front page.

Front Page blog listing Digital Pro

You can remove this short blog listing if you wish.

Go to Appearance > Customize > Front Page Content Settings
In the section labelled Front Page Content Section Display: click the drop down where you can chose to Show or Hide the front page content section.

In the section labelled: Journal Section Heading Text, type a heading to appear above this short list of blog posts.

Appearance Front Page Content Settings
The final section is the footer. It contains 3 widget areas that display in a single row.

Footer Widget Area in Digital Pro
The pink Contact Us section is Footer 1 widget area. The About Us and Follow Us sections are Footer 2 widget area and Footer 3 widget area.

Footer 1 and Footer 2 widget areas contain text widgets with HTML text links.

Footer 3 contains the Simple Social Icons widget.

In the demo site Footer 1 widget area also includes a phone number. This phone number uses special code that can be clicked by mobile phone users to automatically dial the phone number.

If you want to use a similar feature to make the phone number clickable in your site you can find out more on Google’s website.


Adding the fancy first paragraph, more tag and featured images

The demo site uses a CSS class to style the font used in the first paragraph of blog posts, there is also a short underline below this first paragraph. This option is available only for posts and not for pages.

Fancy first paragraph Digital Pro

The code you need to style the fancy first paragraph is…

HTML for fancy first paragraph in Digital Pro posts

The more tag contains the more text, “Continue Reading”.

The more tag with Continue Reading text
The Featured Image is NOT added as a Featured Image in the Set Featured Image section of the post editor. It is the first image that you place in the post.

Put the first image in your blog post AFTER the more tag. This avoids having duplicate images appear in the blog listing.

Put the image below the more tag


Digital Pro theme has a sidebar

The default setting for Digital Pro theme is to use a single column layout on posts and pages. But You can have a left or right hand sidebar on all or just on specific posts and pages.

This setting is in Genesis Theme Settings page AND you can choose on a page by page basis by scrolling down the page as you write a new post and looking for the Layout Settings options.


That’s all folks!

You’ve chosen a great theme. If you spend a little time setting it up and adding some good content you’ll have a great site.