Completely rebuilt with GeneratePress Premium 2.0, Volume ( remastered ) is a fresh clean site for bloggers . With new Post Archive cards, Single Post Heros, Sidebar Author Box and revisited Featured Post Navigation all built with GPP 2.0 Block Elements.

Stripping away 5 custom hook elements and over 350 lines of code you can now restyle entire theme elements with Block Elements and GenerateBlocks.

GP Premium 2.0 Theme Building

GPP 2.0 introduced a major upgrade to the Elements Module. With GPP and GenerateBlocks you can now deliver dynamically generated block built content across your entire site.

If you want more of a low down on Theme Building, check out our YouTube channel where Block master Leo Hsing will walk your through just some of the things you can do with it. But lets dig in and show you where Volume brings these new features to your new GP Site.

Where to begin

There are 3 main interfaces that are used to customize and build the site.

1. The Customizer
   this is where you will find the global styling controls for the theme. From Colors and Typography to Navigation and Widget Areas. If you find theres not a control for one the elements your trying to style then check out #3.
2. The Post Editor
   In Volume our posts are simply Block Based content. But we have included a Manual Excerpt in some of our Posts that is displayed in a Page Hero Block Element and our Custom Archive Post Cards. If theres some content above or below your post that you cannot see in the editor then once again check out #3.
3. The Elements Module
   This is where the cool stuff happens. Across the site you will see a Custom Single Post Hero, Custom Post Cards on our archives, an Author Box at the top of our right sidebar, and Custom Navigation on archives and Single Posts.

Wherever possible we have defined our default styles in the Customizer. However some Elements are directly styled in the Elements Module.

What Elements are in place

Head on over to Dashboard > Appearance > Elements to check out what we have prebuilt for you:

• Archive Navigation
  A simple previous / next Page button configuration located after the post archives and home page.
• Post Navigation
  A previous / next post navigation with post title and featured image background located just before the footer on every single post.
• Author Box
  Positioned over the sidebar, the author box will display Avatar Name, the User Bio and a link to the authors archives.
• Post Cards
  here is our Content Template for our Blog / Post Archives. This is the global style for all cards except for the First Featured Post. Which is using the following Child Element
• – First Post Template
  Set specifically to display for the first post of the first page of your archives.
• Single Post Hero
  The Full Width responsive Hero element for our single posts. Please note the following Merged Header
• Merged Header
  This simply applies a Merged Header for our single post, where custom site header and navigation colors are set to give them their transparent background.

A note on Images

The Volume site preloads a series of images whose sizes are: 1024 by 576 pixels which is a nice 16:9 Aspect ratio. In general the theme has the images set to medium-large which displays the image at 768px x 432px.

You can of course choose to upload large images, but its always best to maintain your images sizes and if you choose to use larger ( or smaller ) image size then try and keep the aspect ratio the same.

In Comparison to the original Volume which required over 350 lines of CSS, Volume remastered uses less that 50. But why do we need CSS when Blocks does it all? I hear you ask. Well there are somethings that i just like to tweak and sometimes a little CSS is required.

The CSS added to the Site can be found in Customizer > Additional CSS. Lets take a closer look at what each of them does

Post navigation

the default behaviour of the Post Navigation Block Element is to display a 50/50 row showing the previous and next post. The following CSS removes the empty space when a user is on the first or last post so the block spans the full width.

/* Custom Post Navigation remove empty classes */
.featured-navigation .gb-grid-column:empty {
    flex: 0 1;
}

@media(min-width: 769px) {
    .featured-navigation .gb-grid-column:not(:empty) {
        flex: 1 0;
    }
}

Single Post Featured Images

the following CSS adjusts the featured image background size for tablet, and removes it from Mobile

/* Single Post Hero image responsive controls */
@media(max-width: 1024px) and (min-width: 769px) {
    .page-hero-block:before {
        background-size: cover;
    }
    .featured-column,
    .featured-column img.wp-post-image {
        width: 100% !important;
    }
}

@media(max-width: 768px) {
    .page-hero-block:before {
        background: none;
    }
}

Post Archives align meta to bottom of post

A simple flex box CSS to push the last element in the post-summary ( the post meta ) to align vertically at the bottom of the post.

/* Post Archives - force post meta to vertically align bottom */
.generate-columns-container .post>.gb-container,
.generate-columns-container .post>.gb-container>.gb-inside-container,
.post-summary>.gb-inside-container {
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: column;
    height: 100%;
}

.post-summary {
    flex: 1;
}

.post-summary>.gb-inside-container>*:last-child {
    margin-top: auto;
}

Border radius on post archive images

/* Add border radius to post archive images */
.generate-columns-container .dynamic-featured-image {
    border-radius: 4px;
}

The colors are defined in the following areas:

1. Customize > Colors
   This controls the global colors for all content.
2. Theme Builder Block Elements
   The majority of colors are inherited from the Customizer, however some colors such as the Next / Previous label are set in the specific block element.
3. Navigation colors in the Merged Sit
   These colors are set in the Appearance > Elements > Single Post Merged header.