Link to Categories in Front Page 1 of the Refined Theme

In this tutorial, I will show you how to Link to Categories in Front Page 1 of the Refined Theme by Restored 316:

The Refined theme displays three Genesis Featured Page widgets in the Front Page 1 widget location. They link to three separate pages on the site (About, Shop, Blog). In the Restored 316 Facebook group, someone asked about linking to Category Pages instead of the other pages.

The Problem

If you replace the Genesis Featured Page Widgets with Genesis Featured Posts widgets, and add your three categories, it will link to the latest post in those categories; as you add more content in those categories, the featured image will change to the featured image of that particular blog post.

What if you want to link to three separate pages, representing your chosen categories, so that when the visitor clicked on the image assigned to that page, they would be taken to ALL the post in that category (rather than the latest post). There are at least 3 ways of accomplishing this:

Link to Categories in Front Page 1 of the Refined Theme: Method One – Use Text widgets to add images.

In this method, you can add text widgets (or image widgets, or custom HTML widgets) instead of the three featured pages, linking to your category archives.

Go to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Front Page 1 > drag three text widgets, add your featured images, and link to your category archives (click on link here to see how to link to category archives).

The finished result:

 

The images click through to the desired categories, as requested. But, you don’t get the nice page overlay as you do in the demo. You could skip adding the title to the widget, and add an overlay in an image editing tool such as Canva Design Wizard, or Picmonkey if you like.

Link to Categories in Front Page 1 of the Refined Theme: Method Two – Create Category Blog Pages.

In this method, you need to start by creating separate category blog pages. To do this follow the instructions here.

Once you’ve published the pages, navigate back to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Front Page 1 > add three Genesis Featured Page widgets, and link to your newly created pages (following the theme setup instructions for image size etc.)

The finished result:

This looks great on the home page, and when you click on the images, you are taken to the category archives. Great! Except, it’s laid out in the same manner as the blog archive of the theme, rather than the Category Grid Archive of the theme:

If you’re happy with this look, great. But, if you want the posts to display like the category grid archive, we’ll need to move on to Method Three:

Link to Categories in Front Page 1 of the Refined Theme: Method Three – Create Category Pages, with a custom redirect URL

1. Start by creating three pages, using the “default” template
2. Give each page the same title as your desired Category
3. In the Theme SEO Settings, add a “Custom Redirect URL” – add the URL of your desired category
4. Add a Featured Image
5. Publish the Page

If you don’t see the Theme SEO settings, you likely have the Yoast plugin or another SEO plugin active. In order to use the Custom Redirect URL option, you’ll need to temporarily deactivate the plugin. You can activate it again once you’ve completed this step.

Once you’ve published the pages, navigate back to Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets > Front Page 1 > add three Genesis Featured Page widgets, and link to your newly created pages (following the theme setup instructions for image size etc.)

The finished result:

Once again, it looks like the theme demo, linking to your desired category pages in Method Two above, but in this case, you are directed to the Category Grid Archives, just like the demo.

If you’re using the Restored 316 Refined Theme, or any other theme built on the Genesis Framework, and are interested in having me implement this for you, send me a note!

Did you know I offer a theme setup service? Get your Restored 316 theme installed and set up like the demo in under 24 hours. Learn more here.
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