Note: Creating a different homepage layout in the Flex Theme does NOT involve selecting a post template. A simple drag and drop of selected widgets should do the trick. Above is the screenshot of various widgets added in different widget areas to create the Flex Blog layout.
Boxed width and Background Image
1. Background: In WordPress Dashboard, go to Appearance > Background. Select any background image and configure various options. Once a background image is selected, the full width layout will automatically switch to the boxed layout.
Header Area of the Flex Blog layout
1. Logo: To add a logo image, go to Appearance > Header section. Use the “Upload Retina Header’ option to upload and display the full width logo image header.
2. Navigation: Go to Appearance > Menus and then select a menu as primary menu to display at this location.
Body Area Widgets of the Flex Blog layout
1. Home Top: Add a ‘Genesis – enews extended’ widget to the ‘Home Top’ widget area. You must install Genesis enews extended plugin for this functionality.
2. Home Middle: Add a ‘Flex – Featured Post’ widget and make sure you select 3 columns layout option in this widget.
3. Home Bottom Left: Add a ‘Flex – Featured Post’ widget and select 1 column layout option. This is followed by a text widget containing link to the blog page.
3. Home Bottom Right: This widget area contain lot of standard widgets like: simple social icons, search, text widget (contain advertisement code), recent posts, categories, archives, tag cloud, text widget (containing call to action code).
Footer Area of the Flex Blog layout
1. Secondary Menu: Navigation bar displayed above the footer widgets is the ‘secondary menu’. Go to Appearance > Menus and select a menu as ‘Secondary Navigation Menu’.
2. Footer Widgets: Go to Appearance > Customize and change number of footer widgets to 3. Then add required widgets to footer widgets 1,2,3 areas.
3. Footer Credits: To change the default footer Credits, go to Appearance > Customize and make changes in the ‘Footer Info’ section.