Blog Pages Display

It looks like the theme developer has a pro version with different blog templates that they offer: https://everestthemes.com/themes/gucherry-blog-free-wordpress-theme/

A custom blog template would need to be developed to bring you the changes you are looking for but I would encourage you to reach out to the theme developer to see what options you have available to you.

You might be able to accomplish what you want with some custom CSS added to the Additional CSS panel of the customizer. For example, as a crude first pass:

.archive.category article.post {
    width: 50%;
    float: left;
}
.archive.category .excerpt {
    display: none;
}

More refinement is necessary: margins, height, small screens, etc.; but this gives you an idea of what’s possible with CSS. Clearly an understanding of CSS coding is necessary, but your browser’s element inspector developer tool lets you experiment without risk of ruining anything. Reload the page and your experiments are gone. Keep this in mind if you want to preserve something. Copy over to Additional CSS first.

The downside is you are still sending out the summaries, using bandwidth, only to hide it with CSS. To avoid this you do need a modified template like Allen suggests. You could try experimenting with a copy of the theme’s category template in a child theme. Removing things by converting code elements into comments isn’t too difficult compared to writing new code.

So who should I contact about modifying the template? Or is there a way to do this myself? Thank you.

You can do it yourself. If you have no coding experience it might be scary and frustrating (or maybe not :)), but it’s within your abilities if you’re willing to apply yourself. In the end I think you’ll find it’s worth the effort. It can be empowering to have such full control over your site. I can give you a few tips and links to get you started if you’re willing to try. You can always back out later if it’s too overwhelming. Simply making code into an inactive comment is a relatively simple task. But it has to be done correctly all the same.

TBH, developing all the appropriate CSS will be the real challenge for the inexperienced. But as I said, the inspector tool makes it mostly a risk free trial and error process.

You can instead hire someone to help you. There are many meetups of WP experts in most major metro areas where you can find expert help and see who you’re hiring face to face. You can instead find experts through sites like https://jobs.wordpress.net/ or https://jetpack.pro/. However, please do not interact with any solicitations resulting from your query here. Unfortunately, it’s not safe. While virtually everyone here is well meaning and honest, it is the open Internet. You just don’t know for sure. It’s also against our guidelines to solicit paid help.