Featured Section and Lightbox question

Amateur that’s learning as he goes here…

I have been working and modifying this amazing theme and As it stands now, I have two questions:

  1. I want to create a permanent “featured” section just below the logo section that allows me to put some “about us,” details as well as a plugin or two for social buttons. I’ve inserted what I have in the index file, but what’s the easiest way to turn this section into something I can freely change–preferably through a field rather than through the css and also add to a child theme instead of in the current files?

  2. Is there a specific way I can utilize lightbox to open the whole post itself upon clicking rather than going to the posting page itself? I’d prefer my users to now leave the front page if at all possible.

Thank you in advance!

  1. This could be done via WordPress Theme Customizer and the best tutorials on this topic is this one. You can also read more about it on WordPress official documentation but there is not much information about it.

You could create a custom text/html fields and add any information there and later call for it from index.php. This tutorials will help you to get it up and running in no time.
This can be done via child theme as well, just make sure to add customizer settings via Child Theme functions.php file and index.php is part from WordPress template files, so you can just copy/paste it from parent theme to Child Theme and edit it there and WordPress will use this file instead of default one.

  1. To get this done you would need some AJAX powered solution but I am not aware if there is any plugin that could help you to get started. Building it from scratch might be difficult.