Choose your blog style

Prelude Lite comes with several blog styles (at least 6 for the pro version) that you can take advantage of, including a few extra customizing options for various elements relating to the blog. More on this in a moment, but to get started, we will look at our blog styles in relation to the screenshots you see below.

  1. Standard with Right Sidebar
  2. Standard with Left Sidebar
  3. Wide with No Sidebars

 

 

  1. Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Blog Options
  2. Look for the “Blog Style” setting and make your choice
  3. Although this setting will center the above blog styles, it’s best If you plan to use the “Wide with no Sidebars” layout. You can center it by going to the “Center Blog Summaries” setting and check the box:
  4. Click “Save & Publish“

Choose Your Full Post Style

In addition to the blog style, you can also decide on the layout of your full post (Single Post) view.

  1. Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Blog Options
  2. Look for the “Single Full Post Style” setting and make your choice
  3. Click “Save & publish“

Use Excerpts for Post Summaries

For more information about using excerpts, you can refer to this introduction and tutorial before proceeding. However, the following steps below will enable excerpts for your blog post summaries.

IMPORTANT One note to be aware of is that this option will only affect the “Standard Right Sidebar” and the “Standard Left Sidebar” blog styles because the remaining options are coded to only use excerpts.

*Also be aware than when using excerpts, your summary will have all HTML formatting and images stripped out until the full post is viewed. This is a function of WordPress, and not the theme.

  1. Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Blog Options
  2. Look for the “Use Blog Excerpts” setting and make your choice
  3. Click “Save & Publish“

Change Your Excerpt Length

In addition to using excerpts, you can also manage the size (length) of your excerpts. If I remember correctly, the default WordPress excerpt size is 55 words, but Emotions has this set to 50.

  1. Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Blog Options
  2. Look for the “Excerpt Length” setting and change the size to your own preference by typing it in, or you can mouseover and use the up/down arrows on the right side of the field:
  3. Click “Save & Publish“

Turn On/Off Select Blog Elements

There may be some people who don’t want to see certain elements like the author, comments, post date, post navigation, and many other parts of a blog post, so Emotions has made it easy to enable or disable each one. Here is a list of what elements can be managed in this fashion:

Each one has a brief description of what it does, but if you are unsure, you can use the support forum to ask for confirmation.

  1. Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Blog Options
  2. Go through the various settings to choose what to enable (checked boxes) or disable (uncheck the boxes).
  3. Click “Save & Publish“

Blog Left Sidebar Size

If you decide to use the “Standard with Left Sidebar” blog style, your left column will have a set width to it that is a bit larger than a typical blog might have, but you can change this with Emotions. If you decide you want your left column to be a bit smaller and to make your main content column a bit wider, this is how you can do it…

  1. Go to Appearance >> Customize >> Blog Options
  2. Look for the “Small Left Sidebar Column” setting and check the box to make it smaller and your content wider. Or, uncheck the box to go back to the wider column.
  3. Click “Save & Publish”