Elegant Themes Modest

The first paragraph of your service pages is also your home page

You sit down to write a service page and begin with a polite introduction: who you are, how long you have been around, how much you care about quality. Inside that page the text does its job. The trouble appears when that same opening rises to the home page and is all a visitor reads of your offer.

In Modest, the three service blocks under the slider come from three ordinary pages, and the "more" tag decides how far each one reads on the home page. That is why the cut matters as much as the text: whatever you leave before that tag has to explain the service without help from the rest.

Modest, by Elegant Themes, is a WordPress theme whose home page is assembled from content you already have on the site: pages and posts. It is not drawn block by block, it is fed by what you publish.

Each area of the home page draws from a different place

Before writing anything, it helps to know what feeds each part, because your task list comes from that:

• Featured slider: with the "Use Pages" option it is built from the pages you choose. Without it, it shows the posts of the category you set as featured.
• Three service blocks: you pick three pages in the Service Page 1, 2 and 3 selectors, and each is trimmed with its "more" tag.
• Small gallery: each item is a post from the category you select, and its image comes from the Thumbnail custom field.

The practical result is that you can refresh the gallery or the slider by publishing a post in the matching category, without opening the home page settings.

ePanel, ads and page templates

The theme is run from ePanel, its own options panel. These are the pieces it brings besides the home page:

• Logo: its address goes in General Settings, and the package includes starter files in the /psd/ folder.
• Ads: images and links are changed in the theme options, and the ET: Advertisement widget places 125x125 banners in a sidebar.
• Shortcodes: new buttons in the text editor insert them so you can lay out content without writing HTML.
• Page templates: chosen in the Templates dropdown and adjusted in the ET Page Templates Settings box.
• Translation: .mo and .po files in the /lang folder.

No visual builder or shop among its features

Among its features there is no visual builder: the home page is organized with selectors in ePanel, not by dragging elements onto the page. There is no shop among them either, nor bookings or quote forms for a service business. The three blocks are text that links to their pages, not a hiring system.

The home page selectors are also three: Service Page 1, 2 and 3. Keep that number in mind when arranging your offer.

Getting started with the sample data

The order that avoids redoing work is this:

1. Upload the .ZIP from Appearance, Themes, and activate it.
2. If you want to start from sample content, use Tools, Import with the sampledata/sample.xml file and tick the Import epanel settings box.
3. Create your three service pages, insert the "more" tag in each and pick them in General Settings, Homepage.
4. Decide whether the slider comes from pages or a category, and select the gallery category.
5. Give each post a full-size featured image. Thumbnails adapt to what the theme asks for, so if you are coming from another theme, regenerate them with a plugin such as Regenerate Thumbnails.

Catalog themes that start from another idea

If you prefer to design by dragging elements onto the real page, Divi, from the same maker, is a theme and visual builder at once. For a business site with little CSS, ExS Business Agency sits around 80 kB. And if your thing is composing post listings from the WordPress editor, PostX Pro adds blocks and a query builder.

Questions when setting up the Modest home page

Can I fill the slider without creating pages?

Yes. Leave "Use Pages" off and choose a featured category: the slider will take its posts.

Where do the gallery images come from?

From the posts of the chosen category, through their Thumbnail custom field.

Can it be translated?

Yes, with the .mo and .po files in the theme's /lang folder.

Do I need to know HTML to lay out content?

Not for the basics: the text editor buttons insert layout shortcodes.