Customizing the header in the Grid One theme

Hi Eric-

Thanks for reaching out, and thanks for using one of our Platinum WordPress Hosting partners, DreamHost.

First, if you’re still getting started on your site design and you’re open to a change, you might consider switching to our latest-and-greatest theme, Crio, which gives you full control over your header layout without any coding. Crio Pro is included at no extra cost with your hosting subscription at DreamHost.

If you do want to stick with Grid One and go for the custom coding, here’s how I’d accomplish it with your header. As you mentioned, you can go with a Child Theme, but you can also do this easily with a plugin like Code Snippets, which lets you add custom PHP functions without modifying your actual theme files.

First, the code snippet:

This snippet filters the BoldGrid Theme Framework configuration to move the logo to the right column, add the primary menu logic to the “below header” position (you’ll want to do this so the menu is mobile-responsive), and finally set up a new widget location in the left column for your “Alerts.”

Then, you’ll need a little bit of custom CSS as well. You can add this in your Customize > Advanced > Custom JS & CSS menu:

@media only screen and (min-width: 992px) {
	.site-title, .site-description { text-align: right; }
}
h3.site-description { display: none; }
#masthead .well { margin-bottom: 0px; padding: 0px; }

This will make sure your logo is aligned to the right on larger screens, and take out all the extra “vertical space” to keep it tight.

Hi Eric-

Crio is our “Version 2” theme framework, whereas Grid One was based on “Version 1.” It has tons of additional features, most prominently for you the ability to either choose from a number of preset header layouts or design one from scratch without any custom code. All of the configuration changes I mentioned in the code above now have graphical controls in the Customizer.

In terms of “how the site’s look would change,” if you start a new site in BoldGrid Inspirations, there is a direct copy of Grid One’s styles recreated in Crio:

You could navigate to Inspirations > Start Over With a New Inspiration (make a backup first, just in case), install the Crio version of Grid One, and recover your existing posts and pages from the Trash and you’d be ready to go.

Crio Pro is an annual license at $30/year, so if you did decide to migrate away from DreamHost you could keep it at that cost. If you didn’t need to utilize the Pro features (for example, if you get the site looking the way you like and you don’t need to customize any more), you can continue using the free version of Crio. It’s available in the WordPress.org repository, so you can use it on any self-hosted WordPress site.

There’s developer-level documentation available for configuring the BoldGrid theme framework available here: https://www.boldgrid.com/docs/configuration-file.

Hi Eric-

Thanks for the detailed update, I sent your report to Crio’s developers and they’re working to release a fix within the next few days, and I’ll update you here as soon as we have an update for you.