This info is deprecated, since AF+ now does not rely on Thematic anymore.
… and comes with a sample child-theme of its own, which I highly recommend to use!!
The updated HowTo is here. Yes, it is still necessary!
As you can see on the frontpage, I am using autofocus+ Pro for this blog. I got it today and started to add some content and pimp it to my likings. And I stumbled into a little problem that seems hard to solve but actually isn’t.
The theme has a couple of options. One of them is that you can define a template for a blog page. But: You can only pick just one category that is used for this special page. If you want to use the blog-template for another page which only holds articles with a different category — in my case the KnowHow-page — you are stuck.
So what to do?
You could ask the author of the theme for help. Pro or not Pro-version (paid or not paid), he will point you to — yes, right — google, in order to find solutions for creating your own templates. You can do that of course — or read on…
I solved the problem myself the following way.
I copied the blog-template.php from the theme. Best is to download it with a ftp-client (I use the client integrated in Totalcommander). Then rename the file to a meaningful name. For example, if the page you are going to use it for, is called “Design”, name it design-template.php.
Edit the renamed file with an editor of your choice (I recommend notepad++) and change the name of the template in line 3 to Design Template (or whatever you want it to be).
!! If you miss this step, the template will never appear in the dropdown-menu on the right when you edit/create a page.
Look for a line that looks like this
$af_blog_catid = get_cat_ID($af_blog_cat);
and change it to
$af_blog_catid = 19;
!! whereas 19 is the ID of the category I use for the given page. For you the number may differ! This means you have to create this category first. You can see the ID (the number) in the bottom left corner of your browser, when you hover over the category in the category-menu (this is useful for many purposes!).
Upload the new template to the theme-directory on your webspace.
Then you create the new page called Design (or whatever) and attach the appropriate template (e.g. design-template) to it. On this page only articles with the defined category-ID will appear.
Nifty 
And in case you want to create another page for another category of articles simply repeat the same steps (download, copy, rename, find out the category-ID, edit, upload, assign to new page …) and you’re done.
Oh, and this should work as well for the free version of the autofocus+-theme.
Hi Michael,
The site looks fantastic. I bought the Autofocus+ Pro theme yesterday but have no idea how to get the front page you have set up. Currently I can have a column of two images down the center or 3 using the portfolio view. What I would ideally like is the layed effect you have o your photo’s going down. HOW????
Thanks!
TJ
Hi TJ,
I think, you simply have to add some more posts with photos. I didn’t do anything special about it. Did you follow the instructions here?
me again…
I just noticed that after updating Thematic my site looked like you described it as well. And I don’t like the new look.
So… I just downgraded again to Thematic 0.9.6.2. This did the trick.
Hello,
Are you aware of a way to hack this theme to allow the “post-image” on the actual post, show a flash slideshow like NextGEN at the top instead of the post-image, yet, at the same time allow the post image to stay published on the frontpage?
~J
Hello Jason
I’m sorry I did not reply earlier, but I had zero time for maintaining my blogs. I’ll have a look and let you know if I find a solution — or if I don’t.
Michael
So…
I just tested a bit, and the answer is: yes, it is possible. Without any hack.
As you may have seen I’m using the FIA gallery, which I can recommend anyway.
You can have a slideshow with photos from the FIA gallery on top of a post AND define a different pic as post-image that appears on the frontpage.
BUT for some reason this pic must not be in the FIA gallery itself, but should reside in the media-library instead. This not a problem though. You can simply add a post-image of your choice and you’re done.
awesome, that did the trick. yeah, i don’t know how the sizing was set to those values, i thought it was weird myself but apparently it was the default as i don’t recall changing them.
anyway, thanks again, you’ve been extremely helpful.
–nash
I’m glad I could help.
Cheers
Michael
thanks, yeah, i’ve been stumbling around trying to figure this out and am slowly chipping away.
i’ve got the slideshow working, but am wondering what specific skin your using. all the skins i’ve tried end up with rather small viewers compared to what you have going on. is this the skin itself or a modification that can be made to the plugin?
thanks again,
Nash
I’m using Midnight international which is one of two standard-skins. I just pimped some colors to my liking.
Did you check ALL the options of FIAGAllery?
Are your photos too small maybe?
I upload them all with 800px on the longest side and adjust FIAGallery accordingly.
You seem to restrict the height of the viewer to 500px…
But the dropdown menu looks okay now, no?
I think I found the problem.
You set the flash-gallery-size to 100% x 500px.
It should be something like 800x800.
That should do the trick.
cheers
i’m curious what you’re using for the slideshow in your portfolio pages, and for that matter, how you got those drop down menus to work in autofocus. your page is almost exactly what i want for my portfolio site.
thanks,
Nash
Hi,
the slideshow is this one.
It is free, fast and serves the purpose.
As for the drop-down-menu: I did not need to change anything. At least I don’t remember
Might be a pro-feature though.
I have a question about this theme. I have it myself and I am having a really big problem getting it so that the image doesn’t show up twice! I have no idea which one I want to keep or anything, I mean I think I wanna keep the one on the top, but the problem is, I have no idea how to stop the bottom one from showing up! I know that the layout uses a photo from each post as a header, but I don’t want that to happen! What do I do?
Hi Ashley,
where does this occur? On the frontpage or in the article-view when you are editing?
I see no double photos…
You have the mentioned behaviour as well on your site, i.e. here: http://www.grainworks.eu/wp/200/knowhow/fluxbox-is-fast-and-sexy/
Cheers
Jens
Not really. It only looks that way, as I used the very same photo twice. Once as featured image and once in the post. I actually wanted to change that later, but forgot. I was fiddling with a new lightbox-plugin that day, but had made only one scrot of my fluxbox-desk. As long as you use (at least) two different pictures, all is fine…