The Pretty Creative by Pretty Darn Cute Design is an extremely versatile theme, designed for Creatives, which I think is perfect for those looking for a fully widgetized home page, giving you lots of options to display a Portfolio, Shop, and Blog posts.
As part of providing theme support, I get asked a lot of questions that are outside the scope of theme support* Most recently, I was asked how to relocate a Home Page Widget, so I thought it appropriate to write a post, and tell you how to do just that.
If you have access to make adjustments to your PHP files via your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Dashboard > Appearance > Editor > front-page.php. Look for this:
These are your Home Page Widgets. If you want to change the location of any of these widgets, change the way the order in which they display in the file.
So, for example, to move the Subscription widget to below the Full Width Image widget, move the subscription widget code to below the home-top widget code:
Before (click image for clearer view)
After (click image for clearer view)
The finished result is that the subscription widget location is now below the Full Width Image (and immediately above the Home Portfolio Widget):
If you don’t have access to your WordPress dashboard (some hosting companies disable this functionality), you will need to access your front-page.php via cPanel or FTP to make the update.
As a reminder: Any time you are making adjustments to a PHP file, you will want to have a fresh file available to upload to your site via cPanel or FTP – a misstep when updating your front-page.php file will result in an error message on your site.
* Why is this outside the scope of theme support you may ask? Theme support for any of the Pretty Darn Cute Design themes is limited to setting up the site to look and function like the demo; making any further adjustments to the look and functionality of the theme is customization.
Have you purchased the Pretty Creative theme, but not yet installed it? Did you know I offer a theme setup service? I can have your site set up to match the theme’s demo settings in under 24 hours. You can learn more here: (24 hour theme setup)
If you’ve already installed the theme, and just want assistance with making tweaks? I’m available to do that, too! Just ask here: (talk to Susan!)
Hi, Susan, Thanks so much for this tutorial! I had a quick question regarding further customization. I would like to add 2 or 3 text widget areas between the existing widget areas. Would this method also work for placing additional homepage widgets?
Mike:
This tutorial was for relocating an existing widget. You can relocate other homepage widgets by essentially using the same method; if you want new homepage widgets, you would need to register them first. You may also need to make adjustments to your CSS to accommodate the new widgets.