Update: Prose is not a theme suited to modification and therefore suggest you choose another theme if you want to modify the functionality of Genesis via a child theme. As of November 2015, Prose is no longer available.
David Decker from Decker Web has recently developed a new plugin named Genesis Prose Extras. The plugin only works with the Prose child theme and includes a heap of functions which help you customize the Prose child theme by StudioPress themes.
On top of this, the plugin also works with other Genesis plugins like the Genesis Layout Extras plugin. This plugin enables you to choose different layouts on your home/front page, single posts, pages and different archive pages like your category archives and blog page archives.
Home Page Widgets
Here’s an example of what these 3 widgets will look like after enabling them for your home page.
Layout Options
This uses the default content-sidebar layout on the home page. You can change this layout and still uses all 3 widgets by installing the Genesis Layout Extras plugin.
The above configuration uses the Genesis Responsive Slider plugin.
Then you could display a image slider full width and increase the width of both home left and home right widgets.
The above configuration uses the Soliloquy Slider plugin. Another good free slider plugin is named Easing Slider ‘Lite’.
Default Layouts
Once you install the Genesis Prose Extras plugin, you’ll find 3 extra layout options have been added to the default Genesis > Theme Settings > Default Layouts.
Custom Width for Home Left & Home Right Widget Areas
Simply adjust the width for both the home left and home right widgets to your own preferences leaving 4px difference.
All custom CSS code should be pasted into the Genesis > Custom Code > Custom CSS box included in the Prose child theme only.
Add Slider Home Page Prose
Prefer code to plugins? You can also easily add a slider to the Prose theme home page or anywhere else.
Conclusion
The Genesis Prose Extras plugin also enables you to simply check a few boxes and enable widget areas after all single posts and pages. On top of this, there’s a few other features you might find useful like flexible Navigation Menu Position options and removing the footer widgets on the home page only.
Check out more Genesis plugins which make customizing your WordPress powered site easy if you install Genesis first.
No matter what I do, I cannot get the prose extras to add the Prose home top widget area. I also tried to do it with code but no success. Any suggestions?
You can’t use code and a plugin for the same thing at the same time.
Please ask any questions relating to the Prose Extra’s plugin on the forum support page for the plugin.
Otherwise, you can add a widget using the Custom Functions box in Prose but it may not work if you have plugins activated which do the same thing.