echoz

This plugin provides functions to retrieve the parent category of any particular post should it be assigned to a sub category of that parent category.
Using this feature, the plugin is also able to modify the WordPress Loop to redirect any category page generation to the parent category. This is especially useful when theme developers want to be able to specify category-x.php templates and have all related posts, be it those assigned to the category or the sub categories use that template for page generation.
So for example the current category structure is as follows.
<ul>
<li>Main Category (has category-x.php template)
<ul>
<li>Sub Category 1</li>
<li>Sub Category 2</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
A post is assigned to “Sub Category 2”.
When the post is requested the plugin will automatically detect if it has a parent category. If so, it will modify the WP variables to set the current category as the parent category and add a new variable stating the actual category of the post. This affects the WordPress Loop to category-x.php template defined for the parent
<h3>Usable Commands for Theme Developers</h3>
The PHP commands for theme developers to use are pretty straight forward.
get_category_child() returns the current post child category ID.
is_parent() checks if the current post is at the parent category.
get_category_title($id) gets the title of the category that is $id.
get_category_parent() returns the current post’s parent category ID.

Elevate Parent Category Template

Elevates parent category template to top of WordPress Loop.

Bill Erickson

The Genesis Grid plugin was design to allow users of the Genesis theme to easily display their posts in a grid format.
“Features” are full-width posts at the top of the listing. “Teasers” are the posts broken into columns. You can set the number of Features and Teasers for both the homepage and inner pages, and how many columns the teasers are broken into.
You can also specify the image sizes used for Features and Teasers. I recommend setting Features for Large, and Teasers for Medium. Then go to Settings > Reading and set the dimensions of those images as needed. If you have already uploaded images, use the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin to rebuild the thumbnails at these dimensions. If images aren’t showing up, make sure you have “Include featured images” checked in Genesis > Theme Settings > Content Archives
Finally, you can specify where the grid loop is used by checking Home, Category Archives, Tag Archives, Taxonomy Archives, Author Archives, and/or Search Results. See the Developers section for more fine-grained control.
<a href="https://github.com/billerickson/Genesis-Grid/wiki" rel="nofollow ugc">Documentation</a>
No support will be provided by the developer

Genesis Grid

Customize your archive pages in Genesis to use a grid layout. Requires the Genesis theme.

Elevate Parent Category Template vs Genesis Grid