Social Media Icons, Search Bar and Footer

Search Bar

 I have had real issues with my search bar, at first I tried moving my search bar to my top navigation, but because of the theme I have used it will not allow me to add widgets to my search bar. I was almost expecting this because initially the theme included a search bar that would remain on top of my logo (because my logo is an image rather than text it looked stupid because the search bar concealed some of the logo), so I removed this. I then planned to place the search bar above my main heading but after my navigation on my home page but both times I tried it, the search bar placed itself under the navigation so it was only half visible, or so far down the page there was a large white gap of blank space that couldn't be altered or filled. I decided that I had two options- place the search bar on my footer or give the search bar it's own page (which seemed somewhat wasteful). I could of course include my search bar simply at the bottom of my homepage but I don't think that this is any different to placing it on my footer- at least if its on my footer- the search bar is on every page which means that its available to users at all times. I plan on asking my classmates at crit if they have any suggestions as to what to do with it- and I'll try and address this in my user testing to determine how big of an issue it is.

Social Links

The social links was a category that came within my theme so I didn't have to worry about using/finding a plugin I simply added the links and there titles to the various sections provided.

The Footer

Experiment 1

I didn't have a great deal of layout options on my footer- obviously my pages remain on the bottom row- but depending on how many widgets I included I could incorporate sections to my footer to divide it. Personally I think that the one column layout looks a bit too list like (especially If I opt to include any more).

Experiment 2

I prefer separating out my widgets so they have there own space, I think it will probably look better visually if I employ a three column layout but I can't think of another widget to include so I'm sticking to two until I can think of another one to include.