Mixing Features Or Template Designs

[Tammy Scott-Wigens]

Hi Bill,

I have a lifetime membership so I have access to all of your themes. If I like certain aspects from different themes can those features be pulled over to the theme I’m working with? In my case, I’m building our website from the Finesse template but like the ‘Contact’ area in the Elite theme. I would like to create a linked page using the Elite layout (background image with the text on the left and the Google map on the right).

Is this a simple widget or plugin that is added to the Finesse theme or would I need to download the Elite theme and then pull over the specific coding &/or widget/plugin?

Thanks,

Tammy

[Bill Robbins]

Hi Tammy,

Let’s start with this specific situation. You can recreate the layout from the Elite theme’s contact widget pretty easily in Finesse. Just create a row and set it to have two columns. Make one of them 2/3 width and the other 1/3 or something similar. In the 1/3 width one, add a text widget or a visual editor widget. This is where you’ll place your contact information and hours. In the 2/3 wide one, add a text widget. Place the embed code for your Google map there. Update your page and you just recreated that widget.

Now for the question about combining elements from various themes. It can be done, though it’s not typically just a drag and drop proposition. Typically moving a widget involves copying the widget file to the new theme (preferably a child theme) and then loading it via the functions.php file. Then you’ll also need to add any CSS and javascript that the widget needs to the new theme.

I’d call that an intermediate level project. It’ll require some php, html, css and js knowledge for most situations like this. Most of the time it can be done, it’ll just take some work.

Take care,
Bill

[Tammy Scott-Wigens]

Hi Bill,

Having a little trouble with Google map and the text on the right is double spacing for some reason. Only the web address is showing vs. the visual interactive map. Not sure I know how to properly ’embed’.

Also, how do you create the page link to the bottom/social navigation menu. This contact/map page should be linked to the ‘General Info’ menu tab. There doesn’t seem to be a way to link the page to a ‘Parent’ or menu. The ‘Blog’ link works and the ‘News/Media’ work but ‘General Info’ and ‘Newsletter’ link to the content for the ‘News/Media’.

Thanks,

Tammy

[Bill Robbins]

Hi Tammy,

For single spacing either use the standard text widget that’s part of the WordPress core and set it to not automatically add paragraphs, or use the text side of the visual editor widget. That way each return doesn’t create a separate paragraph.

Also use either a standard text widget or the text side of the visual editor to embed your map. Make sure it’s not just the URL to the Google map, but is the embed code. It should start with <iframe>. Google Maps don’t embed just by URL like a YouTube video does.

You can link to portions of a page typically if it has an ID in the HTML element. You can view the page and then it’s source code. Look through the code until you find the section you want to link to. Spot an ID there you can link to, it might look like this:

<aside id="text-11" class="widget widget_text clear fix">

The ID here is #text-11 so to link to that spot from inside this page the link would be like:

<a href="#text-11">link text</a>

and to link to this section from another page it would be like:

<a href="http://yoursite.com/page#text-11">link text</a>

where everything before the #text-11 is the URL to the page where you’ll be linking inside of.

Hope that helps out,
Bill

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