Frontpage based on pages

In this theme we’ve added a new way to build frontpages that makes things easier than ever, even for WordPress beginners!  Instead of a widget-based homepage that requires fiddling with settings and rules, we now use a brand-new page template called Frontpage, which populates its content using subpages.

This new feature will be extremely useful for users who can’t or don’t wish to our quickstart package to install WordPress along with the theme and widgets as a new installation, as they will not need to manually place and configure the widgets, which can be tedious.

If you’re looking to install the theme manually, you need only perform a few simple steps:

  1. Ensure any published widgets are moved to the ‘Inactive Widgets’ area until installation is complete to prevent them affecting the frontpage of your site.
  2. Download and install the gk_storefront.zip package in your WordPress theme manager.
  3. Install our News Show Pro widget, available here.
  4. (Optional) Install WooCommerce if you wish to have a ecommerce solution with Storefront.
  5. Import the WXR content for Storefront — more information on importing may be found here.
  6. In your WordPress menu, select Settings>Reading and change the Front Page displays option to ‘A static page’
  7. Select the ‘Storefront Template’ as your static front page and save changes.

screen-frontpage2

 

Once done, your site will have a full frontpage ready to go. By adding subpages to the frontpage template, you may define additional areas, tabs, product or article previews and more.

Alternatively, you may manually create the subpages one-by-one. To do this:

  1. Follow steps 1-3 as above, but stop at step 4 — you won’t need to import any content in this case.
  2. Create a new page and name it what you wish. However, the page slug must be set as “storefront-source”. As such, we recommend that you name your frontpage “Storefront Source” or manually change the slug after creating the page (to show the ‘slug’ field, click on ‘Screen options’ at the top of the page when editing the page and click the tickbox labeled ‘Slug’; the field will appear underneath the page keywords and description section).
  3. In the ‘Page Attributes’ section on the right-hand side of the page edit screen, leave the ‘Parent’ field as “(no parent)”, but change the ‘Template’ field to ‘Frontpage’.
  4. Save the page. You may now start adding subpages to the frontpage which will be used to create your frontpage content.

How does it work?

The ‘Frontpage’ page template acts like a framework of a house; it has the basic shape, but it needs the content. When building a house, you might add to the framework by adding a room; with the StoreFront frontpage, you can create a new ‘room’ by adding a subpage to your “Frontpage” page. Each subpage will have different features, depending on its position and content, and whether it has its own subpages or not; however, the first subpage of the frontpage will always be a header slideshow.

Think of it as adding furniture to your room; the ‘Frontpage’ page creates the basic structure, the subpages of the frontpage create the rooms, and the subpages of the subpages create the decoration for the room if needed.

The order that elements will appear on your frontpage depends on the publish date of the subpages; for example, if you have 5 subpages created one after the other, the subpage that was created first would appear in the header position of the theme, the second subpage would appear underneath the header, and so on until there are no more frontpage subpages.

frontpage-description

Want to know more? Learn how to create each section in the following links: