How to Fix the Blog Page Template Issue in Minimum Pro

In Minimum Pro’s theme demo, the homepage has 6 Posts appearing in columns via Settings > Reading with front page set to display latest posts for this. For the standard listing of blog posts, Blog Page Template would need to be applied to a static Page.

As you are probably aware by now, it’s NOT recommended to use Blog Page Template that comes shipped with Genesis.

Let’s see how we can fix this in Minimum Pro.

Step 1

Create a Page named say, Home and another say, Blog. These can be left empty (content-wise). Do not apply Blog Page Template to the Blog Page.

Step 2

Edit front-page.php.

a) In minimum_front_page_genesis_meta(), comment out or remove the is_home() if conditional (lines 32 and 48).

b) Replace

	//* Genesis grid loop
	function minimum_grid_loop_helper() {
	if ( function_exists( 'genesis_grid_loop' ) ) {
	genesis_grid_loop( array(
	'features' => 0,
	'feature_image_size' => 0,
	'feature_content_limit' => 0,
	'grid_image_size' => 0,
	'grid_content_limit' => 250,
	'more' => __( '[Read more]', 'minimum' ),
	) );
	} else {
	genesis_standard_loop();
	}
	}

view raw gistfile1.php hosted with by GitHub

with

	//* Genesis grid loop
	function minimum_grid_loop_helper() {
	global $paged;
	// Fix for the WordPress 3.0 "paged" bug.
	$paged = 1;
	if ( get_query_var( 'paged' ) ) {
	$paged = get_query_var( 'paged' );
	}
	if ( get_query_var( 'page' ) ) {
	$paged = get_query_var( 'page' );
	}
	$paged = intval( $paged );
	// arguments, adjust as needed
	$args = array(
	'posts_per_page' => 6,
	'paged' => $paged
	);
	/**
	* Display as Columns
	*
	*/
	function sk_grid_post_class( $classes ) {
	global $wp_query;
	$classes[] = 'genesis-grid';
	$classes[] = ( $wp_query->current_post % 2 == 0 ) ? 'genesis-grid-odd' : 'genesis-grid-even';
	return $classes;
	}
	add_filter( 'post_class', 'sk_grid_post_class' );
	// Force content limit
	add_filter( 'genesis_pre_get_option_content_archive_limit', 'sk_content_limit' );
	genesis_custom_loop( $args );
	}

view raw gistfile2.php hosted with by GitHub

Step 3

Add the following in Minimum Pro’s functions.php:

	// Set content limit to 250 words
	function sk_content_limit() {
	return '250';
	}
	// Modify the Genesis content limit read more link
	add_filter( 'get_the_content_more_link', 'sp_read_more_link' );
	function sp_read_more_link() {
	return '... <a class="more-link" href="' . get_permalink() . '">[Read more]</a>';
	}

view raw functions.php hosted with by GitHub

Step 4

At Settings > Reading, set Front page to display a static page with Home as the Front page and Blog as the Posts page.

Thanks to Chinmoy for providing the code that takes care of fixing the issue with pagination in custom loops.