Talisman

[Talisman]

Finally back to playing with this, so I’m going to give this a shot and see what works. I went ahead and uploaded the new Bottega, but I don’t see any changes other than the static front page disappearing (which was covered in another support topic, so no need to reply on that!). I’m going to double-check my tweaks to make sure they work in the new version, but so far, so good!

Cheers,
J.

[Talisman]

Sounds fine. I’ll download the updated theme and try it out in a secondary directory. I’m just dying to get the responsive features in place–way better than any mobile plugin!

Thanks,
J.

[Talisman]

I definitely want to update to the responsive version of this wonderful theme, but I’m concerned about losing all my work on our current front page. It sounds like I might have to redo it, if I’m understanding your step-by-step instructions here. Or will the new “Home” page pick up my current static homepage settings and stick them into the new template? Just want to check before jumping in.

Thanks!

J.

[Talisman]

Thanks. That helps!

Have a great Sunday rest!

Warmly,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Many thanks! I knew it had to be something I was overlooking.

Best,
Jennie

[Talisman]

I did it! I answered my own question. All you have to do is create a page and label it “Menu” or whatever (as long as it isn’t identical to what is in the site’s own regular menu), then put the menu items into it (I just copied and pasted from the full “Menus” page). WPTouch then “sees” the page and makes it an optional menu item in its own taxonomy.

So in WPTouch’s settings, I unchecked the box next to “Menus” (which is what is used in the theme’s own menu) and checked the box by “Menu,” which is my mobile version page. Works like a charm. You can check it out if you visit thetalismanrestaurant.com/main on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android device.

I do love figuring out a workaround! No need to buy the pro version, either. 😉

All the best,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Got it all fixed. I had missed two places in the contact widget. Amazing how many times you can look through code and still miss something! My hat is off to theme developers.

Many, many thanks for the over-the-top technical support. My client is thrilled with her site, and I know it’s going to be a winner for the non-tech guys who will be updating the menu and events from time to time. Another designer insisted on creating a Joomla-based site for this restaurant, which would have required someone creating a new page in Adobe every time something changed. Ridiculous! I love WordPress for its ease of use, and custom themes like Bottega make it easy to create a custom look without sweating too much over CSS.

Warmly,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Ah– I figured I must have missed something else in the CSS. I’ll see if I can modify those areas.

What can I do to add a clickable email link (reservations@thetalismanrestaurant.com) in the footer. I’m kind of surprised the theme doesn’t just have a little email button like it does for YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Have you considered adding one? Then there’s an easy email click link on every footer….

Just a thought!

All the best,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Duh. Fuzzy head cleared, and I figured out how to change the menu text color. So no need for help there! Still can’t figure out how to change the Contact widget to allow more fields….

Best,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Yep, that fixed it. I never cease to be amazed how a single extra bracket can throw off an entire page! LOL! Thanks.

We’ll see what the guy from SliderPro can tell me, but, so far, I am far more impressed with how easy Bottega is to customize!

Thanks for all the help today.

J.

[Talisman]

Hmmm… I just noticed that the Contact widget is now scaling larger. I didn’t alter any tags or height/width attributes on that sidebar or widget. Any idea why it is skewing tall instead of keeping to the 300px height?

I wrote the creator of SliderPro, and he is taking a look at the code to see what the problem is. He says the slider’s skins aren’t loading because the paths are incorrect. No clue why, as it was a straight plugin install, but we’ll see what he can figure out….

All the best,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Well, I played around in the Stylesheet.css and managed to lose the shadowbox and center the review slider. But I see that the appearance attributes from the Bottega Theme Options are overriding the slider’s own attributes (like font style, size, bold, italics, etc.). Not sure how to work around that. It’s also possible that Bottega is overriding the slider’s skins, which would explain why I can’t see them even in preview mode.

Still, even with the text pulling in as it should, I hate SliderPro’s goofy transitions. It just ruins the elegant simplicity of Bottega, IMHO.

Any thoughts?

Warmly,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Okaaaay… So, I technically got the slider working (see http://thetalismanrestaurant.com/main). I see I’d need to get rid of (or widen) the shadowbox that you have on your widgets (not sure how to do that), but, frankly, I am just not impressed with SliderPro! I cannot get the “skins” (background, slider arrows) to show up, and their documentation isn’t helping. They offer over 100 different skins to change the look of the slider, but none of them show up in preview or when I publish. Very weird. But even without the skins, I don’t like the annoying transitions between slides. SliderPro will not let me choose a single transition but does an array of them by default. Ick.

Frankly, I love the simple elegance of your image slider below the header. But I don’t want to have to make an image of each review for a second slider. I want to be able to have the slider pull the review text from all posts tagged “review,” which is what SliderPro can do. But SP is just plain ugly and has those goofy transitions… Oy.

Is there a way to duplicate your wonderful slider code but tell it to pull from review posts? For instance, your code is:

‘slide’, ‘posts_per_page’ => ‘-1’, ‘orderby’=>’menu_order’, ‘order’=>’ASC’ ) ); ?>
have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); ?>
ID, “slideurl”, TRUE); ?>” rel=”bookmark”> ”.get_the_title().”, ‘title’ => ”.get_the_title().”)); ?>

What if I duplicated and made the id “slider2” and made the post_type “post” and had a query to pull only posts with the “review” tag on them? That’s how SliderPro works (it can also do images, but I really only need text).

I really appreciate the help in adding this final feature. I definitely want us to have a review slider on the front page, but I have yet to find a plugin or widget that works properly.

Thanks,
Jennie

[Talisman]

Hmmm… Yep, I wondered about just adding another widget, but I didn’t see how it would fit if I already had the Facebook and Google map widgets in place. But if I set the new widget to be full-width, I guess it will just be forced to appear above the other two? I think I’ll go experiment…. My one concern is that forcing the new slider widget to go full-width will make the page non-functional for mobile devices.

Lemme play around a bit and see what I can do on my own. Thanks for the help!

Very, very excited about getting off E-Junkie for the very reason you gave–doesn’t work on non-flash devices, which means no sales on mobile connections! I just talked to the guy who redesigned my whole site and put it onto a WordPress platform in 2010, and he says he loves WooCommerce and is thrilled I want to move to it. Would never have known about it without your tweet, so thanks!

All the best,
Jennie

[Talisman]

I see the code that creates the active sidebar on the front page:

It seems like I should be able to create another (similar) bit of code named ‘home2’ or something like that and embed it in home.php. Problem is, I don’t know how to create home2 in CSS so that it can be “called” into the page. This is where my WordPress know-how runs out. 😉

If you can tell me how to create that second sidebar (and have it show up when I click “Widgets” under Appearance), I’d be all set.

I’m set to show off the new site to the restaurant owner tomorrow, and I’d love to get the review slider in place if I can, but no pressure…. 😉

Warmly,
Jennie

PS – I’m “sspatterns” on Twitter and I am SO thrilled about WooCommerce. This is going to really change my own site for the better. I’m so tired of the limitations of E-Junkie but didn’t know where to go. So many thanks!

[Talisman]

Hi, Bill!

I actually have a plugin called SliderPro that lets me have a dynamic slider that can pull content from certain tagged posts. I am entering reviews of the restaurant and want them to display that way. Since SliderPro acts like a widget, I can just insert it into the page that way if I have a second widget area on the front page. I want to keep the bottom widget area for the Google map and Facebook widgets you already have in the theme.

Thanks!

Jennie

[Talisman]

Super! That makes sense.

[Talisman]

Once again, thanks! That was very easy.

I am really enjoying this theme and how nicely it customizes. I think my client is going to be really happy — it’s a VAST improvement over their non-mobile-friendly, PDF-heavy site!

Warmly,
Jennie

[Talisman]

DId you hear the shriek of amazement all the way from Kenya? You NAILED it! Why on earth that worked is beyond me (the mysteries of WordPress), but it DID!

I am so excited to see the menus showing up so beautifully! Incredible.

Okay, another question: Is it possible to have all the staff bios show up on a single page together, or do I have to keep them separate with the submenu option?

Smiling broadly,
Jennie

[Author]

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