Journal theme is a cool, neat and light-weight Genesis child theme (free) released by the very talented and creative by Rafal Tomal from StudioPress.

It’s very creatively built and ideal for a personal blog.

The minimalist and mobile-first theme has a slew of cool features – an “about the author” area, a fly-out primary sidebar menu, and a super cool full-width single post template.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to replicate the single post template of Journal Theme.

I’ll use a Genesis Sample Theme as a starter theme and modify the functions.php and style.css file to add and remove some code to achieve the desired results.

CAVEAT: If you’re not familiar with modifying theme files using FTP, please don’t risk breaking your site.

Before we move forward, I’d like to share with you a BEFORE and AFTER screenshot of what a single post.

BEFORE (Default Single Post Template in Genesis Sample)

AFTER (Customized Single Post Template to Replicate Journal Theme)

Please, note that the Journal Theme’s single post uses a full-width template. Therefore, you need to choose the full-width template under theme settings as well.

Moreover, you need to use a featured image having a 1400 x 500 dimension.

Let’s Do This

Step #1: Add the following code to your active theme’s functions.php file

https://gist.github.com/topleague/9a75c390364cf64e5ae79b4af763a960

Step #2: Add the following code to your active theme’s style.css file

https://gist.github.com/topleague/6e72e419e337acc4ce6b5a3e4998bc72

Let me know if you have any questions.