I recently received a support ticket from someone wanting to add in an additional widget area to their site using the Fun theme, like John & Sherry had done on their Young House Love blog, which also uses Fun. I love the way that John and Sherry have personalized the Fun theme to give their own spin on it, from additional widgets on the home page, to specific category layouts (which may be a post for another day - I helped John just a little with the site - I just love visiting their site!)

Anyway, the additional widget is above the footer widgets, and below the Home Blog Featured Widget. There are three steps in the process of adding a widget:

1. Register the widget
2. Hook the widget
3. Style the widget

To register the widget, open up your functions.php file, and add the following code:

I recommend adding it immediately below the other home page widgets.

Once you have added that to your functions.php file, we need to "hook" the widget. (Hooking the widget means defining which Genesis Hook the widget is to be associated with). So, open up your front-page.php file, and add this:

The location of this is very important, because this is what will determine the location of the widget on your front page. We want the new widget to display below the Home Blog Posts Featured widget, so add that code immediately below it, so that it looks like this:

Finally, we'll want to add a little styling (in this instance, we want to make sure there is a dividing line between the Home Blog Posts Featured widget and the footer, and that the look of the widget corresponds to the other home page widgets.

Finally, open up your stylesheet, and in the section under /* Home Page Widget, add in the following:

.home-new {
border-top: 1px solid #000;
margin: 0 auto 20px;
padding-bottom: 7px;
max-width: 1140px;
}

Then, look for:

.home-products .widget {
margin-top: 30px;
}

.home-products .widgettitle {
margin-bottom: 4px;
}

Replace that section with:

.home-products .widget,
.home-new .widget {
margin-top: 30px;
}

.home-products .widgettitle,
.home-new .widgettitle {
margin-bottom: 4px;
}

Voila! You now have a new home page widget which displays above your footer. (See the screenshot!)

As always, anytime you make adjustments to your functions.php file, you want to be very careful - a false move will crash your site.

If you prefer to hire me to make the change for you, send me a note!

A post is an entry that will display in chronological order with your most recent post at the top on any page using the "blog" template. Posts will publish to your site's RSS feed.To create a post:

1. Log into your WordPress Dashboard
2. Click the Posts tab
3. Click Add New
4. Start writing by entering a Post Title,
5. and then adding content into the main post editing box.
6. If desired, add a category
7. Add Tags
8. To add a Featured Image click on the "Set Featured Image" link in the Featured Image field. Navigate to your desired image in your media library (or upload a new image), then Click the "Set Featured Image" button.
9. When ready, click Publish.

For more information on creating a post, refer to the WordPress codex.

For additional WordPress Resources.

The Genesis Simple Share plugin is a valuable plugin, allowing your site visitors to share your posts on their own social media accounts.

By default, the plugin gives you the option to display the icons as an "outline", or "filled" - the colors are the "default" colors of the various social media sites.

If you want to customize the colors, you would need to add in some styling to your Stylesheet. For my Happy School Days theme, I wanted to use one of the colors of the theme, rather than the default colors, so I added the code below to my stylesheet:

The end result looks like this:

Pretty, right?

Go ahead and share this post on your social media by clicking one of the icons below!