Can you add additional multi-panel pages in WordPress Twenty Seventeen?
October 26, 2017 6:56 AM Subscribe
I'm developing a WordPress site (with Twenty Seventeen as the theme) in which I'd like to have more than one page that behave the way the Twenty Seventeen front page works - pages that string together multiple panels separated by large images with parallax scrolling. Can anyone point me in the direction of a plugin or code or hack that would accomplish this? New to WordPress (most of my work has been with Drupal), but not new to coding, css, etc.
I looked at the couple of sites that I manage that use 2017 and I do not see a way to accomplish what you are attempting to do. I was expecting to see a template under the Page Attributes, and I didn't. I think if it is important that the site look the way you envisage that you switch themes.
posted by terrapin at 8:27 AM on October 26, 2017
posted by terrapin at 8:27 AM on October 26, 2017
It looks like the static front page for twentyseventeen is served from themes/twentyseventeen/front-page.php. What you'll need to do is copy that content into a new file, then paste a comment like:
/*
* Template Name: Front Page
* Template Post Type: post, page // or whatever you want
*/
into the top of the file. Then you should be able to choose this template for the defined post types from the page attributes menu when creating posts, as described here.
There will probably be some additional code changes necessary to get what you want, but that should get you on your way.
posted by Kwine at 8:49 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
/*
* Template Name: Front Page
* Template Post Type: post, page // or whatever you want
*/
into the top of the file. Then you should be able to choose this template for the defined post types from the page attributes menu when creating posts, as described here.
There will probably be some additional code changes necessary to get what you want, but that should get you on your way.
posted by Kwine at 8:49 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
What 2017 is doing is allowing you to stack multiple Pages onto your Home. Each Page has a featured image and its block of content and they stack like blocks. You get the illusion of a single, unified layout, but it's really pulling from multiple Pages in the admin. So, if you have 4 stacked blocks, you're managing that content across 4 separate Pages.
The Pages are assigned using the Theme options of the Customizer. Because this goes beyond a simple template, you will not be able to simply clone frontpage.php and save it as a Page Template.
You have 3 options, which I can't get into too much depth right now:
1) Expand the Customizer options to allow you to assign Pages to a specific interior page. This requires messing with your functions.php to add Customizer options and then cloning how frontpage.php works to stitch everything together.
2) Install or write a plugin that allows you to generate additional "meta boxes" on a single Page. This allows you to attach a variety of discrete bits of content on the Page level, instead of considering each Page type a piece of content. This is what I do on all my projects (I use metabox.io as my API), but the downside is if you switch Themes, your new one won't realize all these additional meta boxes exist, so they'll disappear.
3) Find a plugin that lets you create advanced layouts to use in the WYSIWYG. I don't use these, so can't give any recs, sorry.
Long story short, WordPress is still very bad at plonking anything other than a Title, WYSIWYG field, Featured Image, and misc meta data into a layout, and advanced layouts require you extend how content management works.
posted by Wossname at 9:26 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Pages are assigned using the Theme options of the Customizer. Because this goes beyond a simple template, you will not be able to simply clone frontpage.php and save it as a Page Template.
You have 3 options, which I can't get into too much depth right now:
1) Expand the Customizer options to allow you to assign Pages to a specific interior page. This requires messing with your functions.php to add Customizer options and then cloning how frontpage.php works to stitch everything together.
2) Install or write a plugin that allows you to generate additional "meta boxes" on a single Page. This allows you to attach a variety of discrete bits of content on the Page level, instead of considering each Page type a piece of content. This is what I do on all my projects (I use metabox.io as my API), but the downside is if you switch Themes, your new one won't realize all these additional meta boxes exist, so they'll disappear.
3) Find a plugin that lets you create advanced layouts to use in the WYSIWYG. I don't use these, so can't give any recs, sorry.
Long story short, WordPress is still very bad at plonking anything other than a Title, WYSIWYG field, Featured Image, and misc meta data into a layout, and advanced layouts require you extend how content management works.
posted by Wossname at 9:26 AM on October 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
« Older Tell me about your IKEA Kitchen reno | Massachusetts License, Speeding Ticket in Vermont Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Chanther at 7:08 AM on October 26, 2017