Post featured pics & excerpts in pres. page columns

Hi, thanks for the work on the theme. I like that it’s so easy to customize and that you let us try out the full version free and ask a modest sum for support, instead of giving out a hobbled version and asking a big sum for the real thing, like Brand X (and Y and Z).

The main thing that’s missing for me is the way the presentation page column photos and texts are permanent fixtures that only change when you edit them manually. I’d really like an option for those front page columns to draw text excerpts and featured pics from recent or random posts.

Along the same lines, I’d love an alternative “category with intro” template with posts in columns. looking similar to the pres. page, instead of stacked vertically in traditional blog style.

I’m thinking I might be able to do these mods, either by reprogramming a child template or adding the Types plugin, which I’ve seen used to do roughly the same. Wondering which of those routes would be less hassle.

Other than just one minor thing: it seems that to select a Google font with custom CSS, say for the site title or anything else without a font customization option, if that font isn’t used anywhere except in custom CSS, one must edit the header.php file to add the Google font API link and activate that font. I don’t terribly mind doing that, but ideally there could be an option to activate additional Google fonts, to be used in custom CSS, without having to change any php. Or more ideally there could be font options for every last style in the theme.