For those of you who haven't noticed, the latest version of the Nuts and Bolts Media website launched a little over a week ago. (If you're a subscriber reading this offsite, you should stop by and check it out!) Since all our service offerings have changed, I decided it was time for a new look as well.
One of the worst parts of changing your site's design is maintaining the functionality of your old theme. If your old theme used shortcodes, for example, you'll probably want to include the ...
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Things You Should Know Before You Purchase the Genesis Framework
As regular readers know, I'm a huge fan of the Genesis framework; it's all I use to build websites, whether for myself or for clients. I believe Genesis provides the best foundation for any WordPress site, as I've outlined in a previous post.
Last week I received an email from someone who purchased Genesis based on my recommendation and she was... angry. I have no way of knowing what her expectations were, but it's safe to say Genesis did not meet those expectations. She let me know that she ...
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How to Create a Test Site for Customizing Your Genesis Child Theme
Yesterday I responded to a commonly asked question on the StudioPress support forums:
Is there a way I can import my blog to another domain so I can make edits to my Genesis child theme, then move the new design over without annoying my readers?
Since this comes up frequently, it seemed like a good idea for a post. Whether you're using Genesis or another theme/framework for WordPress, it's easy to create a test domain or subdomain where you can customize your Genesis child theme without making ...
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How to Customize Your Genesis Child Theme with Chrome’s Inspector
As a moderator on the StudioPress support forums, I see a lot of questions from Genesis users each week. More often than not, those questions relate to making various changes to Genesis child themes - changing colors, altering padding, and other customizations affecting the way the themes look.
To be honest, sometimes it's a little frustrating to see those questions because it's so easy (in my mind, anyway) to find the answers. I found myself skipping over CSS threads in the forums because I ...
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How to Install the Genesis Framework on Your WordPress Site
Last week a friend of mine took my advice and purchased the Genesis framework with a child theme to use on her blog. About an hour after she bought it, she emailed me and said, "Um, how exactly do I get this installed on my site?"
Sometimes I think designers and developers take their knowledge for granted - we forget that some people are just starting out or may not know how to install a theme yet, especially when it involves both a framework and child theme that need to be uploaded. For this ...
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What the Hook?! What Are Genesis Hooks and How Do I Use Them?
Props to Carrie Dils for inspiring the title of this post!
In my free time (ha!) I volunteer in the StudioPress support forums, where users of the Genesis framework can request help with designing and customizing their websites. People often need help using and understanding Genesis hooks, and while a Google search will turn up a number of resources, I think some of them are just plain hard to understand.
What Are Genesis Hooks?
Think of your Genesis site's structure as a map. No matter ...
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How to Add a Widget Area to a Page Using Genesis
If your website uses the Genesis Framework, you already know how easy it is to do things like change page layouts, widgetize your homepage, or use different sidebars for different parts of your site. Those are just a few of the reasons I love Genesis and recommend it to all my clients.
As part of my effort to give back to the Genesis community, I volunteer in the StudioPress support forums, where users ask questions and look for tips about different customizations. Recently, several people ...
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How to Remove the Genesis Author Box from bbPress Forum Pages
If you have a bbPress forum on a site running the Genesis framework, the bbPress Genesis Extend plugin is a great tool. It helps bbPress integrate with your Genesis child theme so that (hopefully) you don't need to add a lot of CSS changes to your stylesheet.
One thing it may not do is remove the Genesis author box from your forum pages. I nearly lost my mind trying to hide the author box on a client's site; nothing I did was working and the client was becoming frustrated. Today, with the ...
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10 Great (and Simple) Genesis Plugins
One of my favorite things about the Genesis Framework for WordPress (other than everything) is the community of designers, developers, and end users who pool their knowledge to make Genesis better. Unlike some frameworks *cough* Thesis *cough* that seem to thrive on confusing their users, Genesis is constantly evolving to become better and easier to use.
If you're using Genesis for your blog or website, you may have questions about how to do certain things or how to add functionality you've ...
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Why You Should Be Using the Genesis Framework
If you've used WordPress for any length of time, you've probably noticed that a lot of people use and recommend the Genesis framework from StudioPress. (If you haven't noticed, just search for the #genesiswp hashtag on Twitter and you'll see what I'm talking about.) I use Genesis for every single one of my own sites, as well as my clients' sites, and so do all the other designers I know.
Every now and then a potential client will ask why I use Genesis instead of [insert theme or framework ...
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