Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

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Christine
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Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

Post by Christine »

I'm trying to customise the Clean Blog template to make a loose magazine-style layout. I want to have a different look on the home page than subsequent pages. Specifically, the home page would have 7 post previews, with the most recent larger than the others. On the following pages, I'd have 9 evenly sized previews.

I can achieve the look I want on the home page using article:first-of-type in my CSS file, but I don't know how to use it only on that page and not following pages. Is there a way to do this? Would I have to call a separate CSS file just for the home page, and if so, how would I do so?

Also, how would I display 7 entries on the home page, and 9 entries on the other pages?
yellowled
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Re: Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

Post by yellowled »

Christine wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:41 amSpecifically, the home page would have 7 post previews, with the most recent larger than the others. On the following pages, I'd have 9 evenly sized previews.
I'm not entirely sure if this is possible in s9y at all. If it is, it requires a customized index page, which requires you to create a copy of clean-blog and modify that (we call that "forking the theme") because clean-blog is part of the s9y core. Thus, your changes to clean-blog would be overwritten in case of an update.

Why not just set the number of posts (you can do that in the backend in configuration) to a number of entries teasers that's the same for any page? (I also suspect that a different number of entries would mess with archives, but that's just a vague theory.)
Christine wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 9:41 amI can achieve the look I want on the home page using article:first-of-type in my CSS file, but I don't know how to use it only on that page and not following pages. Is there a way to do this? Would I have to call a separate CSS file just for the home page, and if so, how would I do so?
Usually, you would add a class to <body>, but only on the index page. So, in your index.tpl you'd use

Code: Select all

<body{if $view == "start" && $staticpage_pagetitle == ''} class="home"{/if}>
and then prefix all your home-specific styles .home

This is, of course, also something which would require you to fork clean-blog to your own custom theme. If you need help with that, I can explain that later.

YL
Christine
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Re: Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

Post by Christine »

yellowled wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:19 pm Why not just set the number of posts (you can do that in the backend in configuration) to a number of entries teasers that's the same for any page? (I also suspect that a different number of entries would mess with archives, but that's just a vague theory.)
The main reason was to make the newest or a featured post prominent and large on the first page, which wouldn't really make sense on subsequent pages. But I could probably do a workaround where it's the same number of posts, but arranged differently. Thanks for the tip on the archives; that would be a pain.
yellowled wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:19 pm and then prefix all your home-specific styles .home
Brilliant! I didn't think of that, but that's perfect. Thanks :)
yellowled wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:19 pm If you need help with that, I can explain that later.
I copied the template folder to a new one called clean-blog_mod, and changed the name in info.txt to Clean Blog Mod. Is there anything else I need to do?

I have another question, but let me know if it's better suited to another section of the forum. I'd like my readers to be able to switch between two themes - the new one I'm working on, and the old (current) one. I know there's the dropdown theme switch plugin, but I'd like to have a simple button or link that lets you change to the other theme. Is this possible?
yellowled
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Re: Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

Post by yellowled »

Christine wrote: Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:02 amI copied the template folder to a new one called clean-blog_mod, and changed the name in info.txt to Clean Blog Mod. Is there anything else I need to do?
Nope, that's it. Great! :)
Christine wrote: Wed Feb 13, 2019 10:02 amI know there's the dropdown theme switch plugin, but I'd like to have a simple button or link that lets you change to the other theme. Is this possible?
I'm not at all familiar with the theme switcher, but I assume it is. Try asking this again in the plugins forum, maybe the other guys can help you out.

YL
Don Chambers
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Re: Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

Post by Don Chambers »

I would like to point out that much of how your site appears using Clean Blog will not work if your visitors switch themes because the Clean Blog uses theme-specific options that will not be passed to another theme via a style switcher.
=Don=
Christine
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Re: Different CSS, and number of entries, on home page

Post by Christine »

I am fine with that ^, because I just wanted the option for people to return to the original blog style if they prefer it, even with missing features. But I'm finding attempting this with the theme switcher a headache.

I'm considering instead having a link to a version with the original template, at something like old.mydomain.com/blog.

Is it possible to keep two versions of the same blog with the same content (new entries in one appear on both), but with different themes, plugins, etc? Looking around the forum, the answers I found were about (I think) having two separate blogs, writing to the same database with different prefixes, which is a different case.

I have accidentally achieved what I want before, I think maybe from just copying my blog directory to another directory. Should this be enough, or is there more I'd need to do?
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