Home Page Widget Content – sizing problems

[Shari Sullivan]

Apologies if I missed this already, but I’m having trouble controlling the home page widgets as I’d like.

The client wants to include internal page snapshots. Widget height is around 550 px, and worked great while I was controlling content and keeping it short. Now that they’ve taken control of content, the pages have grown and are overflowing the boxes. If I set the widget to auto, they’re much too long. If I set a character limit, the images don’t show (and it’s an art organization)

Is there a work-around that I’m missing here? Thanks a ton in advance. Love the themes!

[Bill Robbins]

Shari,

Good question. It is possible to set the size of an individual widget or a group of like widgets. If you don’t mind, could you send the URL you’re working on and let me know which widgets you’d like to change? That way I send back instructions specific to your needs.

Thanks,
Bill

[Shari Sullivan]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the quick reply.

The page is currently at http://www.artcentermorrobay.com/art1st/ however they want to shift it to the primary site later today and it will just be at http://www.artcentermorrobay.com

You can see the problem on the homepage. Again, I had a work-around, but the client wants full control, including design control, so the whole shebang is morphing seriously and my ‘patch’ isn’t going to cut it!

Thanks again,
Shari

[Bill Robbins]

Sheri,

I do see what you mean. That’s tricky too. It looks like you have the featured page widget set to use the_content vs. the_content_limit, which is great. No problem there.

What would you think about changing it just a bit more to also the “more” quick tag. Generally it’s used for posts to set where you’d like them to cut off in the archive view. It can be used with pages too, just with a bit of editing.

Here’s what I would suggest. Go to the Appearance section and select Edit (or use the editor of your choice). Choose widget-featured-page.php from the list of files on your right. Look for this section:

				if(!empty($instance['show_content'])) :
				
					if(empty($instance['content_limit'])) :
						the_content($instance['more_text']);
					else :
						the_content_limit( (int)$instance['content_limit'], esc_html( $instance['more_text'] ) );
					endif;
					
				endif;

and replace that with this;

global $more;
$more = 0;

the_content('Continue Reading');

Then save your changes. I believe with that change you can then insert a “more” tag where you’d like to have the page “break” on the front page. It’ll then place a link to the inside page at that point. It’s not a perfect solution, but you can get your clients to insert the tag so that their content won’t overflow the container, it’ll show their images above the tag and it will keep you from having to set the widgets to height: auto.

I hope that helps out. Let me know if you need anything else,
Bill

[Shari Sullivan]

Thank you! Client opted for a funny work-around, so that site all is solved, but I’ll try this out as I have a couple more sites in the works.

Shari

[Bill Robbins]

There are lots of roads to take you to the same destination. I’m glad they found something that works for them. If I can help with anything else, let me know.

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