Force Content Sidebar Layout On Genesis Blog Page

Jourdain asked this question on the forums recently which is a fairly common problem some new Genesis users need help with

I need to add the primary sidebar to the blog page currently my default layout in the Genesis settings is set to full width. I have manually set the Blog page to content + right sidebar but the changes have not taken affect and the sidebar is not displayed on the Blog page. Am I missing something here?

Jourdain has chosen to set the default Layout settings to full width.

If you go to Genesis > Theme Settings > Default Layout, you’ll find this settings box:

This makes all pages and posts use the full width layout globally.

To try and display the sidebar on the blog page ( posts page ) only, Jourdain has edited the blog post page and changed the Layout Settings to Content Sidebar.

This hasn’t worked as the Default Layout settings are over riding the Edit Page settings.

Note: You will find changing the Layout Settings to Content Sidebar on the Edit Page screen will work if you save the Content Sidebar settings twice otherwise you can use the following solution.

Here’s 1 solution i tested on exactly the same theme as Jourdain uses, which works.

Create Custom Blog Page Template

1. Simply create a new file using your favorite code editor like Notepad++
2. Copy the PHP code from the Gist labelled page_blog.php and paste it into your new file.
3. Name your new file page_blog.php and save it.
4. Then you can upload the file to your child themes root directory.
5. Create a new page or edit your existing blog page and select the custom blog page template from the Page Attributes setting on the Edit Page screen.

And here’s the code you use to do this.

This solution also enables you to add content before your blog page using your editor.