WordPress 4.7 was recently released, and it ships with an all new default theme, Twenty Seventeen.
Twenty Seventeen is a big departure from the typical blog or magazine style theme we’ve come to expect with WordPress over the years. Small business owners, or service type freelancers, can now enjoy a default theme which is aimed to help them promote their work.
That’s not to say that Twenty Seventeen isn’t a good solution for bloggers, in fact, if you’re new-age blogger/entrepreneur, this theme could prove useful for showcasing your membership offering or even your e-book.
At the end of the day, I enjoy Twenty Seventeen, and I’m excited to see the new direction it’s headed in.
The Twenty Seventeen theme tutorial
In this video tutorial, I provide a complete overview of the options available in Twenty Seventeen, and work through setting up the custom home page options.
Here’s the timestamp outline, which you can actually click on when watching in the YouTube player:
00:15 Thoughts on Twenty Seventeen theme
00:50 Using the theme; overview
01:38 How the home page is structured
02:48 How a page/content section is created
03:40 Add a read more link in the home page content sections
04:40 Using the theme customizer
05:38 Edit the top image/video of the theme
07:00 Customizing the theme colors
08:44 Customizing the home page content sections
10:05 Customizing CSS
10:56 Recap and final thoughts
Watch the Twenty Seventeen theme tutorial
Building the Twenty Seventeen home page
Not only is this the first business focused theme that WordPress.org has shipped with a release, but it also includes new page building-like capabilities.
I’m still on the fence about how the theme actually builds the home page sections, but as you can see in the screenshot above, you assign pages to the various sections. Each page has to be created in the admin first, drop in whatever content you want, and that content will display prominently on the front page. Again, be sure to watch the video to see this in action.
I feel like it could be confusing for first-time users to think of pages as “blocks of content” for a home page, but I understand why they went about it this way.
Using pages, as you see above, gives a user increased flexibility with the content displayed. For example, You can craft a services page with a lot of content, shorten the display of that content by using the read more link, and then add a thumbnail, right justified.
What you get is a nice little summary, with a supportive graphic, neatly positioned on the homepage. You can also assign an engaging featured image, which acts as a full-screen “takeover” as a visitor scrolls down.
Where I think it might lack in setup, Twenty Seventeen exceeds in it’s style.
Be sure to watch the video above to learn how to setup the theme, and use it for your business. Have some feedback about Twenty Seventeen, leave them in the comments below!
Hi Matt, great presentation of twenty seventeen theme. I am very new at WordPress love it so far. I have been hired to do a ecommerce website with woocommerce plugins . I am using the twenty seventeen theme for this site. I am totally confused with this theme on how to do the site. Do you recommend using the twenty seventeen theme for this type of website?? The website will be for a jewelry store. Do you have any recommendations for a theme that would be easy to use for a store like this. any suggestions you would have would be greatly appreciated Thank you in advance.
Thanks for stopping by, Peggy. Always a tough question to answer, the first thing you need to look at is how you (and your client) want to present the content of the website. Ask yourself, does TwentySeventeen line up with those expectations? See how the homepage lays out, and the interior pages, does that work for them? Next, will this theme work well with WooCommerce? Can I promote products to the homepage or generally have good looking product pages? The answer is: not easily. So you generally have to have a well-rounded plan to decide on a theme before the project begins. There’s a lot to this question, maybe I’ll make a video about it.