Blog Page Formatting Issues

So you would prefer to see the entire post displayed instead of an excerpt? Have you tried going to Settings > Reading from the admin dashboard and selecting Full Text for For each article in a feed, show?

I would probably also add some CSS so that the content fills in the empty white space on the left. It looks like the theme has a custom CSS option, so try adding these rules:

.with_aside .section_wrapper {
    box-sizing: border-box;
    padding: 0 15px;
}

.post.no-meta .post_wrapper {
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

.post.no-meta .post_wrapper .desc {
    box-sizing: border-box;
    width: 100%;
    float: none;
    padding-top: 0;
    margin-left: 0;
}

.post.no-meta .post_wrapper .post_photo {
    float: right;
    margin-left: 10px;
}

It floats the post image to the right, instead of the left, and the post text then flows around the image. I tried using some CSS to make a full width photo at the top of the post, but the image itself doesn’t seem to be wide enough to span the entire width of the column.

The setting was already on Full Text for For each article in a feed, show.

I just used your code and it looks much better! Any idea how to fix the formatting. If you compare it to the way it looks inside the actual blog post it’s not supposed to be just one big paragraph of text.

So I’m trying to fix the formatting as well as the title and image – I’d like it to look like my old blog, like this:

POST TITLE
IMAGE
BLOG POST

But the title is next to the image and the picture is cropped funny. Any ideas?

Or better yet, where in the theme can I go to edit this myself? I know a bit of CSS and all, I just can’t figure out which file to open to change the way the individual posts look on my blog page.

The setting was already on Full Text for For each article in a feed, show.

Unfortunately, some themes (like the one you’re using) ignore that setting.

Any idea how to fix the formatting. If you compare it to the way it looks inside the actual blog post it’s not supposed to be just one big paragraph of text.
…
Or better yet, where in the theme can I go to edit this myself?

By default, WordPress strips out all HTML tags on post excerpts, so there is typically no formatting, including paragraph breaks. The reasoning behind it is that if there is an opening tag somewhere in the excerpt, but the closing tag doesn’t come until after the last word in the excerpt, then it could throw off the formatting for the rest of the entire page. There are plugins that you can try that will output fully formatted excerpts. Advanced Excerpt looks like it might fit what you need.

Or, if you would rather display the entire post instead of the post excerpt, you can substitute the_excerpt() with the_content() and you should get the entire post content. The syntax is fairly easy, just read the documentation for the function. You would edit the same file where you found the_excerpt() (typically postformat.php or content.php, depending upon the theme).

One thing to note, though, that you should not edit the theme files directly. If the theme gets upgraded/updated because of a bug fix, security patch, or feature enhancement, your changes will be lost. The recommended procedure for making changes to a theme is to first create a child theme, then make changes to a copy of the file that you want to modify. Then if the parent theme gets updated, your changes will still be intact in the child theme.

Wow.

Thank you so much, CrouchingBruin. You’ve been a massive help. That plugin worked perfectly and saved me from tearing apart my theme files. I never even thought of that possibility, I need to make child themes so I don’t lose my work.

It’s looking heaps better already. I hate to ask so much of you, but could you point me towards making the classic format of Title on top of the Image with the body underneath? I’ve been fiddling with that and haven’t come up with an answer as of yet.

Thank you!

Take a look at the same file where you altered the the_excerpt() function. You should be able to see the lines of code which output the post image and the post title, and switch the order.

Edit: Just took a look at your new site and it looks like you figured it out. Congrats!

I think I’ve got a pretty good setup going now. It’s slow going, but I at least have it in the order I want. Thanks so much for the help on that.