The SNO Report: Getting griddy with it

Ever wanted to try a “Humans of New York”-style feature on your site, using multiple photographs and short anecdotes or interviews for each? You’re not alone! We’ve gotten zillions of questions about the best way to design these stories, and after scratching our heads for a while, we’ve come up with a story page template that makes creating “stories within stories” a snap. Meet the grid template!

This template has more moving parts than your average story, so it can be a little confusing at first to set up. Just follow these guidelines, and you’ll be on your way.

Like the longform and side-by-side templates,the grid template requires a “container” story as well as “chapter” stories in order to work properly. You should create the container story first. When you create the chapters, you’ll need to make sure each is associated with the container–you’ll be able to choose this from a drop-down menu when you select the grid chapter template.

Your container should be set to at least one category, as usual. Your chapters, however, should remain uncategorized, to prevent them from displaying individually in your category widgets.

Use crisp, clear featured images for each chapter. You’ll get the best results if all of them are the same size and horizontally oriented.

Your container can make use of an immersive featured image. If you decide to go this route, make sure the featured image is larger than normal (we recommend 1500×1000) so that it doesn’t get blurry when expanded.

Having trouble viewing the final product? Make sure all pieces of the story (chapters and container) are fully published.

You can see some more information about the grid template on our help site. Not feeling the Humans of Wherever thing? That’s OK! There are as many possibilities for this template as there are stars in the sky. (Well, almost.) Check out The Little Hawk’s story on freshman athletes to watch.