How much can the Wordpress home page be customized? I tried setting one up last night using the Wordpress ETC Dynamic Home Page, but it didn't look very appealing. Maybe that could be fixed with css, but not sure where to edit that. Or would I be better off starting with a static home page. I've seen shortcode for cross selling for best sellers, but is there shortcode for new products?

Currently I'm using the Tempera Theme and their presentation page which I've customized with my menus, slider, widget columns, and extra text fields. You can see my current home page at https://www.decorativepaintingstore.com

What I would like is a page that looks similar but is laid out as follows. Is this possible? Could I just add shortcode to the Tempera Presentation Page?

My Site Header
Image Slider with embedded links for each slide (short code from my WP Slideshow plugin)
Navigation Menu

Custom Headline

New Products
4 columns columns with
2 rows

Links to Key Categories

Best Sellers
same format 4 columns with 2 rows

Footer

Image of what I'm envisioning...

Hi Sharon
The ECT Dynamic Home Page is designed to get a good looking home page with slider and featured products up quickly, but you can have any wordpress homepage you like. And if you want to make your own home page you can use the [ect_crosssell] shortcode to add the cross-sell features, which I think is what you want to do. There are more details about the cross sell shortcode and the parameters you can use to adjust it here...
https://www.ecommercetemplates.com/wordpress/wp-plugins.asp#crosssell

Vince

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I've been playing with the Dynamic Home Page trying to fine tune it to my needs.

1. Is it possible to make the Slideshow full site width? and make the images clickable links to urls?

2. Is there a way to style the dividers (edit: I found the style and was able to change the background color) between each section so good with that.
Can the order be rearranged or is it possible to add a new section? I had to use the News page to add some links.

I also experimented with a version by editing the Tempera Presentation Page and was able to add the crosssell shortcode for recommended products into the extra text fields. This version allowed me to keep my current slider shortcode. But it needed some work styling the cross sell products (images were too small - but they are also too small on by bestseller page now although ok on the ECT Dynamic Home Page). Again weird css issues.

Hi Sharon

quote:

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1. Is it possible to make the Slideshow full site width? and make the images clickable links to urls?

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You could add this Custom CSS...

div.ecthomepage {
max-width: none;
}

But I'm not sure that it's a good idea not to have a limit to the width. (But also, what do I know. )

quote:

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Can the order be rearranged or is it possible to add a new section? I had to use the News page to add some links.

---

You are pretty much limited to the number of sections. But you can re-purpose them as you've found.

Vince

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I guess no limit to the page width isn't quite what I meant, but actually to have it the same width of 1920px which I set for the Tempera presentation page.

I worked on the home page yesterday and I'm ok with the way things are looking now, except not having links on the images in the slideshow. and it would also be nice to have links on the images in the Brands section. Images on the home page not only make it more interesting, but it would be more user friendly if you could actually click on the images and be directed to what they represent on the website.

I'll play with the layout again today and try to add the slider images with links to my "News" page.

My other alternative is to go back to the Tempera Presentation page and try again. I was able to set up the Recommended Products shortcode using the Extra Text field, but couldn't get the Best Sellers group to show up. Could you just confirm this is the correct format to add the shortcode for the Bestsellers (I have reviewed the CSS tutorial page for recommended, but still get lost on how to customize it) ...

[ect_crosssell crosssellaction="bestsellers" csbestsellerstitle="SOME OF OUR CURRENT BEST SELLERS" csproductpagelayout="productimage,productid,productname,price"]

Hi Sharon
Yes, that looks like the correct format for the shortcode but I'm really confused about using the extra text field to set it up.

Vince

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It was a total experiment on my part trying to get to my ideal home page layout. I added the short code for 'recommended products' to the extra text section top field and it came right up and recommended products showed above the cryout columns. The only problem was I kept having a random </table> tag at the end of the products list.

I thought this is great and I can style my home page within Tempera's Presentation page which has my slideshow(with linked images), use 3 cryout columns for links to key categories in the middle of th epage, and put Best Sellers below. But then I added the shortcode for Best Sellers to the extra text bottom field which should show below the Cryout Columns, but that didn't work and nothing appeared.

I'm happy with the look of my ECT Dynamic Front Page now, with the exception that it would help to have a slideshow with linked images. I know I keep whining about this, but I use the home page slideshow to drive customers to special sales pages and to some affiliate sites where I earn commissions. I add this slideshow to my Tempera Presentation page by pasting in the Slideshow plugin short code and it would be so nice if the Dynamic Home Page had a little more flexibility to do that.

Is there a way to set the time frame for the best seller list on the dynamic front page? It seems to be using maybe a 6 month period. I would like to bring it down to maybe 30 days which is what I used for my best sellers category in the store so it's more trending items. This would reflect changes more often than 6 months totals.

Hi Sharon
There isn't a way to do this through the plugin interface, but you can set this in your includes.php file which should do what you are looking for...

$GLOBALS['bestsellerlimit']=30;

Vince

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I have these settings in my includes.php. Unless I'm overlooking something, I though my bestseller limit is set to 14 days? If I look at my best sellers page, it shows different items than those on the dynamic home page. Some of the items on the dynamic home page haven't sold at all in the last two weeks, so I thought maybe it was getting its instructions from someplace else.

//CROSS-SELL - RECOMMENDED - RELATED - ALSO BOUGHT - BEST SELLERS
$GLOBALS['crosssellaction']='related,bestsellers,alsobought,recommended';
$GLOBALS['bestsellerlimit']=14;
$GLOBALS['crosssellcolumns']=4;
$GLOBALS['crosssellrows']=6;
$GLOBALS['csrecommendedtitle']='Recommended Products';
$GLOBALS['csalsoboughttitle']='Other Customers Also Bought';
$GLOBALS['csrelatedtitle']='Items Related to This Product';
$GLOBALS['csbestsellerstitle']='Best Sellers';
$GLOBALS['csnobuyorcheckout']=FALSE;
$GLOBALS['csnoshowdiscounts']=TRUE;
$GLOBALS['csnoproductoptions']=TRUE;
$GLOBALS['csstyleprefix']="cs";
//

Hi Sharon

quote:

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Some of the items on the dynamic home page haven't sold at all in the last two weeks, so I thought maybe it was getting its instructions from someplace else.

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Is this the Dynamic Home Page you are using now or the cross sell shortcode? It's just that the dynamic home page will use different criteria and isn't as configurable. What the dynamic home page will do is just list your best selling products over all time in descending order.

Vince

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So I understand your answer to be the dynamic home page best seller list can't be changed because it uses different criteria for the bestseller list and isn't affected by the code in includes.php that affects my bestseller page of products.

Hi Sharon
That's correct as it's just using the number of sales.

Vince

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Ok, thanks. I'll just have to deal with it.