Genesis Snippets

A reference for Genesis theme developers

Modifying the $content_width variable in Genesis

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WordPress looks for the $content_width variable when determining the width of oEmbed items. To define this variable, you would put this in the functions.php file:

if ( ! isset( $content_width ) )
	$content_width = 600;

However this is kind of limiting especially since we can have multiple layouts in Genesis. So the Genesis team has made it easy to define different $content_widths. For Genesis child themes, we would use this instead:

$content_width = apply_filters( 'content_width', 580, 480, 900 );

The 3 numbers correspond to the content width of the default, small and large layouts. The default layout refers to 2-column layouts; small refers to 3-column layouts and large refers to the full-width content layout.

You can combine this with the following method (borrowed from Twenty Twelve) to apply a different $content_width to different contexts and page templates.

function twentytwelve_content_width() {
	if ( is_page_template( 'page-templates/full-width.php' ) || is_attachment() || ! is_active_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ) ) {
		global $content_width;
		$content_width = 960;
	}
}
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'twentytwelve_content_width' );

See also: Brad Dalton on How To Change Content Width For Media Embeds Conditionally

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Comments

  1. Hi David, great post!

    I’ve seen this function in child themes, but I never thought about what those three parameters were.

    I’m trying to build a custom layout that displays only the secondary sidebar and content. (using this method from genesistutorials.com). It seems like genesis_content_width called in that filter uses the name of the layout to determine which variable to use. But even though mine is named “secondary-content” it is still returning the $small size.

    Do you have any idea how I could force it to return the $default width?

    • Hi Monte, 2 thoughts:

      1. If it’s a 2-column layout why don’t you just remove_action( 'genesis_sidebar', 'genesis_do_sidebar' ); and add_action( 'genesis_sidebar_alt', 'genesis_do_sidebar' ); for that layout?

      2. Perhaps you could pass the $content_width variable manually for that layout?