Custom Divi Blog Layout for Eindhoven City Guide
Industries
🎯 The Challenge
The client was a capable Divi web designer who hit a hard wall. She wanted a homepage block showing the three most recent posts in a category, with the middle card styled differently, plus the same look on category pages. Divi offered no native way to produce this layout, and it had to update automatically whenever a new post was published.
The constraints went deeper as the project progressed. She needed subcategory pages to show only their own posts while main categories displayed everything beneath them, the Hotspots category excluded from the main blog feed, and the date hidden for specific categories only. Each request was custom logic, not a setting.
On top of that sat a long list of visual refinements — exact colours, brand fonts, clickable cards, transparent backgrounds, and hover-state fixes — all to be delivered without breaking Divi's footer or theme styling.
💡 Our Solution
I built the layout with custom PHP for the post query and custom CSS for styling, integrated cleanly into Divi. Rather than hard-coding a single block, I packaged the logic into a shortcode-driven "Info Posts Control System" the client could place on any page or category URL herself, with written documentation so she was never dependent on me.
Key decisions included making the entire card clickable, writing query logic that handled posts belonging to two categories without duplication, and adding a custom exclusion feature so subcategories displayed only their own posts. I applied her exact brand values —
#d8c2a4 accents, "Eindhoven City Guide - Medium" titles, and Plus Jakarta Sans Light body text. When a footer font conflict and a hover shadow issue recurred, I re-debugged them until they held, and I was transparent about a short holiday-related delay.
🏆 The Result
The client received a dynamic, brand-accurate, reusable blog layout that launched her site. Her feedback moved from "It's looking so good!" to "Yes that's perfect!" to "Then I'm perfectly happy with everything you did." The final five-star review read: "Tallhi exceeded my expectations: quick delivery, bug free and super professional. Better than expected and went above and beyond to make it perfect." Total project value reached $135 including a $25 add-on for the final custom feature.