Add New Widget Before Left & Right Widgets To Serenity Themes Home Page

Oct 30, 2013

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By default, the serenity themes home page includes a featured left and right widget areas which split the content area at the start of the home page.

In this tutorial. i’ll provide the code which enables you to add a new widget area after the header and before the 2 default featured widgets.

Here’s the new look which also includes a second home bottom widget area as another option.

And here’s the code.

Please copy the PHP code from the view raw link.

The home.php code goes in your child themes home.php file around line 8-9.
The functions.php code goes at the end of your child themes functions.php file.

Its best practice to use a code editor like Notepad++ when copying and pasting code.

Comments

7 responses to “Add New Widget Before Left & Right Widgets To Serenity Themes Home Page”

Charles

August 7, 2014

Hi Brad,

I was able to make the featured top post appear on my widgets menu. Instead of putting the code on the bottom of the functions.php, I placed it in the beginning of the //*Register widget areas. However, I still have that problem that it pushed my primary sidebar down below the rest of the content. Thanks

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1. Brad Dalton
  
  August 8, 2014
  
  Hello Charles
  
  The code generates exactly what you see in the screenshot.
  
  Maybe the posted the PHP code in the wrong position in the file.
  
  Maybe a plugin is causing problems as i see you use a floating social bar which uses CSS and JS.
  
  I would convert your theme from XHTML to HTML 5 which may help solve the problem however i would nee to review the code in your files to troubleshoot further.
  
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Charles

August 7, 2014

Hi Brad,

This is really great stuff you have here. I followed your code and was able to put up the Featured top post area on my serenity theme. My problems are the following: 1) The Featured top doesn’t appear in my widgets control page, so I cant populate it with anything. 2) The code seemed to have pushed all my right sidebars down so that they now appear below my featured bottom. Is this due to updates made by WordPress, genesis, or serenity? Thank you for your post, I hope you can help me with this matter. Thank you!

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Lisa

December 17, 2013

Hello Brad,

I’m trying to add a new header left widget that will show my custom social media icons above the logo… I followed the above steps, and the new widget does not appear.

Thank you in advance for your help with this.

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1. Brad Dalton
  
  December 18, 2013
  
  This post isn’t about adding a header left widget.
  
  Try this http://wpsites.net/web-design/add-header-left-widget-genesis/
  
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Lauren

November 5, 2013

How does one force content to load in Serenity’s ‘Top Posts’ widget on the right side of the home page? Also, can that be replaced by the ‘Popular Posts’ widget. Sorry – I’m a WP nube 🙂

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1. Brad Dalton
  
  November 5, 2013
  
  Lauren
  
  You can use any widget in any widget area.
  
  Forcing content to load? Please clarify.
  
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