Bill Erickson writes about the merits of an alternative blog template in his article “Don’t Use the Genesis Blog Template”. This could be a custom blog page or the default WordPress blog page.
For those who are not PHP code-savvy and want some level of management over the blog output, this is perhaps not desirable given that it disables all Genesis settings for the ‘Blog Page Template’. However, for others looking to customise code or introduce plugins which interact with the blog page, there are definitely some benefits. So, here’s how to apply Bill’s solution to the ENVY theme.
1) For ENVY versions up to 1.1.4 only, change the theme’s home.php filename to front-page.php. Be sure to remove any copies of home.php or WordPress will pull in this template as the blog by default.
(note: Future versions 1.2+ already contain the renamed file)
2) Go to ‘Pages > All Pages’ and click to edit the Blog.
3) Change the assigned ‘Template’ under Page Attributes to ‘Default Template’. And update.
4) Go to ‘Pages > Add New’ and create a blank page called ‘Home’. And publish.
5) Go to ‘Settings > Reading’ and select ‘Front Page Displays: A static page (select below)‘.
6) Choose Home for the ‘Front page:’ and Blog for the ‘Posts page:’.
Congratulations! You’re done.
Many thanks to Bill Erickson for his recommendations and simple solution.
Best always
Jon
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