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Blog (Standard Posts)

The Total theme of course also includes support for a blog via the standard posts and you have 3 methods you can use to create your “main” blog page. You can use the blog template, use the WordPress reading settings or use the WPBakery Page Builder or Elementor to insert your posts on any page. Below…

Blog Page Setup

The Total theme includes a related posts section for your portfolio items, staff member pages and your blog posts, this section displays more items from the same post type that are included in the same category(ies) as the current post. These queries can be altered very easily via a child theme. Have a look at…

Alter The Related Posts Query

Total includes the ability to add, remove and re-order pre-built “blocks” from both your blog entries and blog posts. To modify your blog entry elements simply go to Appearance > Customize > Blog > Archives & Entries and down a bit to the “Entry Layout Elements” setting. Custom Cards If you want a fully custom entry design…

Blog Entry Builder: Re-Order & Change Blog Entry Elements

Total includes various post formats for standard posts such as gallery, video, quote and audio. So to add a video all you need to do is select the Video format then add in your video URL in the page settings. See the screenshots below: Using the Classic Editor Using Gutenberg Result As a result the…

Adding Videos To Standard Posts

Remember you can always create Dynamic Templates for your posts to fully control the post design. By default the blog post media (image, video, audio..etc) is displayed at the top of your content for singular posts which means if you have a sidebar it would be on the same container as the content. However, the…

Blog Post Media Position

The Total theme includes various “Blog Styles” for your standard post entries. This will allow you to show your posts in the default way but also as a grid or in a left/right layout. Default Style – Large image and content below Grid Style – Choose between 2, 3, 4 columns (masonry or fitrows) Left Thumbnail…

Blog Styles

Total of course supports category and taxonomy descriptions. These by default are added as the “subheading” under the main page header but can also be altered to display at the top of the posts via the customizer setting at Appearance > Customize > Blog > Archives & Entries > Category Description Position. For WooCommerce categories…

Category Description Placement

By default the main page header displays the word “Blog” for the title. This can be easily altered in the customizer at Appearance > Customize > Blog > Single Display Custom Text You can select to display custom text for your page header title. Display Primary Category Name Or you can choose to display the…

How To Change The Main Header Title On Blog Posts

By default in the Total theme you can select from various preset “blocks” for your singular blog post design including elements like the title, featured image, tags, author bio, post meta, comments, related posts and more. These blocks can be enabled, disabled and re-ordered. Go to Appearance > Customize > Blog > Single Post >…

Blog Single Post Builder: Re-order & Enable/Disable Blog Post Sections

By default the Total theme displays custom excerpts for the blog entries. If it’s showing the full text instead it’s because excerpts have been disabled. Log into WordPress then go to Appearance > Customize > Blog > Archives & Entries and make sure that “Auto Excerpts” is enabled. Note: If Auto excerpts is enabled but it’s showing…

Enable Excerpts For Blog Posts

Note: In Total 5.0+ you can now also create fully custom templates for your categories! The Total theme comes with advanced options to make adjustments to individual standard post categories via the admin so you can easily change the layout, columns, excerpt length…etc on a per-category basis. Simply log into WordPress and go to Posts…

Custom Category Layouts & Options

The Total theme includes a custom taxonomy called Post Series which is available for your standard (blog) posts so that you can easily create “Post Series” if you want to have Tutorials or simply group posts together that should be read in a specific order. This is different than using categories and tags because when…

Blog Post Series

Total includes an option to automatically enable Lightbox for your blog entry featured images. This is disabled by default (by default blog entries link to the posts). To enable this function log into WordPress and go to Appearance > Customize > Blog > Archives & Entries and check the box to enable “Image Lightbox”.

Enable Lightbox For Blog Entries

The Total theme includes support for the “Gallery” format which when selected will display an image slider on your blog posts instead of the default Featured image. All you need to do is select the Gallery format for your post and then define the images you want displayed in the slider under the “Image Gallery”…

Post Featured Image Gallery Slider

The Total theme already includes a built-in option for excluding categories from your main blog page due to the high requests. Simply log into WordPress and go to Appearance > Customize > Blog > General and enter the ID’s of the categories you wish to exclude into the field that says “Exclude Categories From Blog“. If…

Exclude Categories From Your Main Blog Page

By default the Total theme displays auto excerpts generated from your blog content for the archive entries, this uses the WordPress function wp_trim_words which strips out all HTML. This can be easily disabled via the Customizer but you can also make use of the WordPress “more” tag to define custom excerpts that also keep all HTML/images/videos..etc.…

How to Use The “More” Tag For Blog Entries

The total theme includes the ability to display audio for your blog posts either via oEmbed (WordPress function) or self-hosted HTML5 audio. Simply create a new standard post, select the “Audio” post format then add your audio URL via the page settings metabox. The audio will display on the single post like the screenshot below.…

Adding Audio (self-hosted, Sound Cloud or other) To Posts

Via the WordPress customizer at Appearance > Customize > Blog > Archives & Entries you can easily alter the default text for your blog entries readmore button (see screenshot below). If you want to conditionally alter the text this can also be done via a function in your child theme.

Alter The Blog Readmore Button Text

New Dynamic Templates: You can now create a custom layout for your Portfolio Posts using the WPBakery template via a “Dynamic Template” learn more → Total includes an advanced function so you can easily re-order and also add and remove blocks from both your blog posts and your default blog entry layout. This of course…

Blog Post Builder: Re-Order & Change Blog Post Elements

The blog “meta” is the section that displays by default under your post title for blog entries and posts. This can be easily disabled in the theme Customizer. See the screenshots below: Appearance > Customize > Blog > Archives & Entries Appearance > Customize > Blog > Single

Disable Blog Meta (category, author, date, comments)

By default the Total theme displays a little bio under the blog posts with the author information like the screenshot below: This can be enabled or disabled in the Customizer under Appearance > Customize > Blog > Single Post > Single Layout Elements. So if you aren’t seeing the bio section on your site make…

How to Display Author Bio Below Posts

Total has a built-in functionality called “Dynamic Templates” which allow you to create custom layouts for pages/posts on your site using WBakery templates along with various dynamic modules in the theme so you could override the default theme post design with a template (Customers using Elementor can use the “Theme Builder” functionality in Elementor Pro…

Custom Blog Post Design using a WPBakery Template
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