Newspaper/Magazine Grid Format Question


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Author Message
Dave

Posted: 6/22/2012
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I'm trying to figure out how to put together a grid layout format for a WordPress theme using Artisteer. Has anyone had any luck with this type of format? I've tried using others' templates but the spacing grid format that I want also screws up widget placement and other plugins working correctly - and also the templates all come with tracking code and other stuff I don't like. But does anyone have any examples of being able to do this?
 
speedyp

Posted: 6/22/2012
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Hi Dave

Some people like to use the "website" layout in artisteer, and then cut & paste the html code into their worpress theme - there's lots of posts & advice about this on the forum - look out for author "gcm".

I personally just use Templateer which is an add on for Artisteer. It gives you tons of layout options and extra features too.

 
Dave

Posted: 6/24/2012
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I have to be honest here, speedyp, I have no idea what you're talking about.
I know HTML and WordPress pretty well, but haven't heard of the "website" layout before. I'll look up "gcm," for more.

Also, I've heard of Templateer before, but heard it was quite expensive; so (if it is) I'm stuck with Artisteer and HTML and WordPress and lots of goofy widgets to work with (which is still alot). I'm also hoping the Artisteer update coming up with have extra "perks."
 
speedyp

Posted: 6/24/2012
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In Artisteer, you have a choice of basic layout formats when you build a new theme. (File / Change Template).

You can choose:
Website or blog / Joomla / Wordpress / blogger / asp etc etc.............

The Templateer add on costs @$30. That is fantastic value for all the extra layout options, including many multi column and "magazine styles" it gives you IMHO.
 
dave

Posted: 7/17/2012
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Now that we have the new Artisteer beta out, there should be a way to create a newspaper-type grid layout, shouldn't there? I tried one of the "magazine" themes and uploaded it and tested it, but it still did not create a grid layout.

Can anyone shed light on this? I feel like there is a way to do this with the new beta out, but so far I have not been able to create it so that it presents 6-9 post summaries in a grid format like a newspaper layout. There are a few free WordPress themes, but I'm still trying to see if I can do this with the new Artisteer beta.

Any thoughts or advice from anyone? :-(
 
Nick

Posted: 7/18/2012
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Hey dave, can you point us to a web site you are trying to imitate? Because with the page layouts and styles, you can do pretty much anything you want.

My suggestion would be to start playing with the content layouts and stylings, under the edit menu.
 
speedyp

Posted: 7/18/2012
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And don't forget there are 8 widget areas available: (4 top & 4 bottom).

For example, if you add free featured posts plugins there, you can set them to display post excerpts from different chosen categories or tags, including any featured image etc.

So, if you added your featured post widget to the first top 3 widget areas, and the 4 bottom widget areas, set each one to display one post excerpt from 1 chosen category... you'd have a row of 3 post excerpt "blocks", with another row of 4 underneath.

The "blocks" can be styled as posts or blocks, and will follow whatever styling you applied in artisteer...

 
dave

Posted: 7/18/2012
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Here's my website: http://www.InterraceToday.com.

My SEO is probably weak since I'm not getting many comments from the US yet, but the site itself is about a month old as well. I like the grid format with the page summaries up front - maybe it's something in the theme that makes it work in such a way and not the WordPress core?
 
dave

Posted: 7/18/2012
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Also, what's weird with the new beta is that sometimes I click on "edit" and it isn't there or the area is grayed-out and can't be clicked on. Do you know what's going on with that?
 
dave

Posted: 7/20/2012
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I guess the question should be:

If I export a grid layout, how would I import my blog posts into that layout without losing the content?

I could create a grid layout theme, export it, export the content, but the big question is if I try to switch the blog listing into the grid layout page created, would it come out correctly with summaries or automatically revert to the tried and true scrolling down format?


 
Nick

Posted: 7/20/2012
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By default these areas (in the layouts) are for static content.

The way I look at it, you have 2 choices:

- You need to custom code the theme to display posts in the areas you want them to show up.

- Find a plugin that will pull up posts and show them in the page with shortcodes.

Out of the box, I am not sure what you want is possible, I could be wrong. I know most "premium" templates work the way you want to, but those specifically coded for that.
 
Nick

Posted: 7/20/2012
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Here I found one.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/site-layout-customizer/
 
dave

Posted: 7/20/2012
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That's a good plugin. Thanks. I'm still messing around with it to see what it can do for me. But it does help alot. Adding that plugin to the Artisteer update really give me alot more freedom so that I really don't need to think about Templateer. :-D
 
BrandonL

Posted: 8/4/2012
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I was going to comment but I'm late to the party. That layout customizer is a great drop, thanks Nick. @ Dave your website is great and so is your blogtalk. Keep up your website!
 
Nick

Posted: 8/5/2012
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There is a better one, but it is not free. It is by elegant themes...

Check out their video: http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/theme-releases/introducing-the-elegant-themes-builder

It is the best plugin that I own, period, along with the ET-Shortcodes plugin.
 
ddye

Posted: 8/5/2012
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Dave, a little advice, if I could be so bold...

Your site looks great but you have the header slideshow changing slides so fast that some things don't get done loading before they are replaced. That happens a lot when I'm building a site and stuff gets in my cache, so I don't notice the load times...

Quote dave:

Here's my website: http://www.InterraceToday.com.

My SEO is probably weak since I'm not getting many comments from the US yet, but the site itself is about a month old as well. I like the grid format with the page summaries up front - maybe it's something in the theme that makes it work in such a way and not the WordPress core?


 
Bluehorizon

Posted: 8/6/2012
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Quote Nick:

There is a better one, but it is not free. It is by elegant themes...

Check out their video: http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/theme-releases/introducing-the-elegant-themes-builder

It is the best plugin that I own, period, along with the ET-Shortcodes plugin.


Nick

Does this work well with Artisteer?
 
Nick

Posted: 8/6/2012
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Absolutely. They both work well with ANY theme. For ALL existing clients the plugins were free. New customers would have to sign up as a developer to get the layout builder.

They get my full endorsement, even though it means absolutely nothing, since I'm a nobody!!!

Artisteer page layouts are great, but once you import your content into WP, they don't look the same in the editor, which makes things weird if you want to update the page, or add more contents to it. With the elegant themes page builder, you don't have such problems.

I use Artisteer templates over any premium template, so I have total creative control very easily, and I use 3 plugins from elegant themes. THe layoutr builder, the shortcuts, and handheld. Handheld is the best plugin to handle mobile devices. I'm hoping that very soon I won't use handheld, once Artisteer STARTS CREATING RESPONSIVE DESIGN TEMPLATES !!! WINK, WINK !!!

And before I get hate mail, no, I do not work for elegant themes, although the owners name is also Nick (very cool name don't you think? !!!).
 
Rosemary

Posted: 8/6/2012
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Hi Nick,

I went over to Elegant themes to take a look. Very impressive, the themes and the plugins...although, I surfed to the same site url's on my Kindle Fire, where they were supper-buggy.

What exactly do you mean by:

Quote :
I use Artisteer templates over any premium template, so I have total creative control very easily


OVER??? What/how do you mean, exactly?

Thanks
 
Nick

Posted: 8/6/2012
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Although with my membership over there I can download everything, the themes and the plugins, I don't use their themes, so I can control the design. I use Artisteer to create my own themes. However, I use the 3 plugins that I mentioned before with my own Artisteer templates.

The only themes I would consider from their vast collection, are the responsive design ones. They currently have about 10 of them, and it seems that all the new themes will be responsive designs. When/if Artisteer starts creating responsive designs, I will have no use for their templates, just their plugins.

Their themes, along with any good looking theme that are not free, that have built in control panels, shopping carts, shortcodes, slideshows, page templates, etc... are considered "premium templates". Themeforest is another site that offers "premium templates". The Templates that are not free, but have a lot more bells and whistles than the average free templates compared to the ones that you can download from WordPress.org for example.

With Artisteer's 4.0 new features (the new page edit controls in the WP backsite), and the elegant themes plugins, I can very easily re create most "premium templates", thus having total creative control.

With Artisteer 4.0, on a page level, you can turn off any of the sidebars, change the header image, or not having a header for a page, among other things. Artisteer 4.0 has new widgets areas, like the header widget, so re creating most "premium template" can be accomplished, with almost no coding.

Artisteer added exceptional new features for WordPress, but they have not advertised them very well, which only God knows why. Once you discover all the possibilities, a whole new world opens up. Oh, yeah, one more new addition. With Artisteer 4.0 WP templates, you can now decide which pages a widget will show up. By default, they will be displayed in every page/post, but now you can change that behavior, and decide where each widget will show up, thus making everything dynamic, not just your pages, and posts, but also, your header, sidebars, and footer. Very powerful stuff!

I hope that was satisfactory Rosemary. May be I should have used the term "instead", and not "over".
 
ddye

Posted: 8/7/2012
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Nick, I am in the same boat, but I have a different experience (maybe you can help answer my question).

I also have an Elegant Themes membership. We bought it when we were jjust getting into WordPress, but as soon as I learned Artisteer I stopped using their themes. I found out about the plugins in this forum, and since I still had time on my membership I downloaded them.

The first one I tried was Handheld. But I couldn't figure out how to access the features I read about. I wrote the following to the Elegant Themes forum ( t hasn't been responded to yet):

Thanks in advance. When we got into WordPress last year we bought an Elegant Themes membership, but soon after we started building from scratch. Lately I saw your plugins, so I decided to upload the Handheld.

The "View The Details" page talks about "plethera of Shortcodes, Page Templates and Theme Options give you control." The Gallery Section says "Adjust general settings such as post counts and colorschemes;" Under Plugin Options it shows a color selector.

But in ET Mobile Options, none of this is there. There are no docs I can find that tell how to use (or even how to find) the features mentioned above. I have had to go in and mess around looking for this kind of thing in free plugins, but not in a commercial plugin like this one.

Am I missing something obvious? Where are the docs? Where are the things the "View The Details" page talks about?

If it matters, I am using an Artisteer theme with Templateer built in... I found out about this plugin in the Artisteer forum. Thanks again.


Nick, of you have an answer I would greatly appreciate it!

Doug
 
Nick

Posted: 8/7/2012
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Hi Doug,

All the shortcodes they are talking about are present only if you use their themes (wait, I have good news). Since you are not using their themes, you don't get the shortcodes that come with them. Last month, they released a plugin called et-shortcodes. This works with any theme, including Artisteer - ok, that's the good news.

The handheld plugin is for mobile devices (tablets, and phones), has nothing to do with shortcodes. About a week or so ago, they release the third and best plugin, the layout builder.

So if you install the et-shortcode, handheld, and the layout builder plugins, and use Artisteer to generate your themes, you can have:

1. All the shortcodes they are advertising (slideshows, tabs, buttons, accordions, and a million other shortcuts that they promised you),
2. Have THE best way to create page layouts in the backsite,
3. Taking care of mobile devices.
4. Total creative control over the look of the site, since you designed it with Artisteer.

I can't think of better tools to work with, Artisteer + Elegant Themes plugins.
 
ddye

Posted: 8/8/2012
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Nick,

Thanks for the info. I already use Virtual Composer for page layouts, is Elegant Themes' layout builder appreciably better?

But the main question is still unanswered (both here and on the Elegant Themes forum): Where are all of the features for Handheld mentioned on their website?

Here's the link:
http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/handheld/

I can't find ANY of that stuff.

Doug
Quote Nick:

Hi Doug,

All the shortcodes they are talking about are present only if you use their themes (wait, I have good news). Since you are not using their themes, you don't get the shortcodes that come with them. Last month, they released a plugin called et-shortcodes. This works with any theme, including Artisteer - ok, that's the good news.

The handheld plugin is for mobile devices (tablets, and phones), has nothing to do with shortcodes. About a week or so ago, they release the third and best plugin, the layout builder.

So if you install the et-shortcode, handheld, and the layout builder plugins, and use Artisteer to generate your themes, you can have:

1. All the shortcodes they are advertising (slideshows, tabs, buttons, accordions, and a million other shortcuts that they promised you),
2. Have THE best way to create page layouts in the backsite,
3. Taking care of mobile devices.
4. Total creative control over the look of the site, since you designed it with Artisteer.

I can't think of better tools to work with, Artisteer + Elegant Themes plugins.


 
Nick

Posted: 8/8/2012
Quote message 

Hi Doug,

I guess I have to do a better job explaining things:

Plugins -> Handheld -> Settings.

The rest of the stuff are embedded in their themes, like page templates, and the shortcodes, etc... So, they will be available ONLY if you use their themes, or use their et-shortcodes plugin, with a third party theme.

You have to use their themes to get all the advertised features. If you don't (and I don't, I prefer Artisteer made themes), along with their et-shortcuts plugin to have those features.

I have no experience about Virtual Composer, I will check it out, thanks. You can never have enough firepower to build professional web sites I guess.

 
ddye

Posted: 8/8/2012
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Nick,

You seem to be the go to guy with Elegant Themes, I hope you don't mind me badgering you...

I just installed the Layout Builder to compare it to Visual Composer. Same thing, where are the freaking docs? I had to waste time experimenting with it to figure out things. I added the Widget Area to a column and I get choices like "Layout Builder Widget 1", "Layout Builder Widget 2", etc. No explanation as to what they're talking about... and it's not like I'm a newbie or anything.

I try to add an image to a text area and there's no way to upload an image. The image GUI looks like something out of Joomla 1.0.

It looks really promising, although I like Visual Composer a lot better. But those guys seem to be terrified at the prospect of telling people how their plugins work. There isn't even a readme file in the plugin edit section.

But thanks again for letting me vent about this! :-)

Quote Nick:

Hi Doug,

I guess I have to do a better job explaining things:

Plugins -> Handheld -> Settings.

The rest of the stuff are embedded in their themes, like page templates, and the shortcodes, etc... So, they will be available ONLY if you use their themes, or use their et-shortcodes plugin, with a third party theme.

You have to use their themes to get all the advertised features. If you don't (and I don't, I prefer Artisteer made themes), along with their et-shortcuts plugin to have those features.

I have no experience about Virtual Composer, I will check it out, thanks. You can never have enough firepower to build professional web sites I guess.



 
Nick

Posted: 8/8/2012
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Doug, it's fine, it's no bother at all.

Since, you are the only one still interested in this, I'll make a video for you explaining and demoing the whole thing.

Hang in there...

BTW, there are no docs, just like Artisteer, you don't really need much documentation. Things can be figured out fairly easily.

NOTE: I do not work for Elegant Themes, or Artisteer, or any other company. I'm self employed. I'm saying this, because in the past I was wrongly accused for working for QuickerSite...
 
Bluehorizon

Posted: 8/8/2012
Quote message 

Quote Nick:

Absolutely. They both work well with ANY theme. For ALL existing clients the plugins were free. New customers would have to sign up as a developer to get the layout builder.

They get my full endorsement, even though it means absolutely nothing, since I'm a nobody!!!

Artisteer page layouts are great, but once you import your content into WP, they don't look the same in the editor, which makes things weird if you want to update the page, or add more contents to it. With the elegant themes page builder, you don't have such problems.

I use Artisteer templates over any premium template, so I have total creative control very easily, and I use 3 plugins from elegant themes. THe layoutr builder, the shortcuts, and handheld. Handheld is the best plugin to handle mobile devices. I'm hoping that very soon I won't use handheld, once Artisteer STARTS CREATING RESPONSIVE DESIGN TEMPLATES !!! WINK, WINK !!!

And before I get hate mail, no, I do not work for elegant themes, although the owners name is also Nick (very cool name don't you think? !!!).


Nick

Thanks for the feedback and information.

I just joined Elegant Themes and I am absolutely delighted. The Page Builder is superb and the other plugins are excellent.

I now have control over all of the page layout issues I've been struggling to work around for years, and everything works perfectly with Artisteer.

Once again, thanks for posting.
 
ddye

Posted: 8/9/2012
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Nick, don't worry about creating a video for me... I'm happy with the mobile app I use, and I don't plan on using Page Builder. As I said, I just had the membership and I was trying them out.

But really, thanks for all of the information you've given me.

Doug
Quote Nick:

Doug, it's fine, it's no bother at all.

Since, you are the only one still interested in this, I'll make a video for you explaining and demoing the whole thing.

Hang in there...

BTW, there are no docs, just like Artisteer, you don't really need much documentation. Things can be figured out fairly easily.

NOTE: I do not work for Elegant Themes, or Artisteer, or any other company. I'm self employed. I'm saying this, because in the past I was wrongly accused for working for QuickerSite...


 
Dawn

Posted: 8/9/2012
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Is this plugin also available for newly joined on the personal package members?

I got a little bit confused

It looks awesome but I wont sign up on the personal package if I cant get the plugin :)
 
Nick

Posted: 8/9/2012
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Hi Dawn,

This plugin is only for ALL current customers, personal or developer, and for new customers who sign up as a Developer, but will not be available for new customers who sign up for a Personal membership.

If you are a web professional, and create many web sites, just like Artisteer, this is worth the price. You will make better looking sites, at a fraction of the time needed with any other tool.
 
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