Executive Pro – Home Slider & Featured Pages Content

[Ximbalo]

Hello,

I am facing TWO problems I do not see clearly how to resolve with a client site I am building using the Genesis --> Executive Pro Theme.

#1. I need to add customizations -- but Genesis publishes all their themes as Child Themes of Genesis.
SO, this means if I add any custom PHP to the theme page templates, any future updates for Executive Pro will wipe out my work. What to do? Is there a most common, or "best-practices" solution for customizing Genesis Child Themes that still allow, in general, for theme updates?

#2. The home page slider and featured page widget areas are auto-populated with the 1st xxx amount of content from each page indicated as the source. This issue becomes particularly onerous and plain "ugly" when you consider the application of SEO 101 Content Optimization strategies to inner pages. Strong, skillful use of H-Tags at the top of each page's content. The outcome? An illegible mash-up of top-content from each page...

What were well-phrased and strategically placed H2, H3, H4 content header tags -- now get all strung together in a terribly awkward babble of phrases in each slide and featured page box -- and there's no clearly defined way to change it. For a novice, the only solution would be to place a simplified small paragraph at the top of each page.

But that's not cool, and my exact project requirements are "Highly Optimized Pages specifically targeting Key SEO Term Phrases on a page-per-page basis".

Please can somebody, anybody help me to find out how to modify this absurdly rudimentary content-extraction logic to use a "Page Excerpt" custom field instead -- so I can have the control of what content is shown on the home page?

Personally -- I'm amazed the theme would even be sold w/o ( at the very least ) this much control over home-page widget content display methods. I have looked at the font-page.php code -- and am baffled by where to begin to change the logic for what content automatically extracted for each slide and featured page.

Tech support has not offered a practical RESPONSE and we can't deliver this project until this client's home page actually allows for my end-users to directly control their own home-page's widget content.

http://seanchapmanlaw.com/_NEW/

[Brad Dalton]

#1. I need to add customizations.

You can use hooks and filters in your child theme to customize your site so any Genesis updates do not over-ride your custom code. You can also use templates in your child theme. This is the most efficient way to customize WordPress using best practice as qouted by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg here

Child themes and a framework are the only way you should built your WordPress site and Genesis has great support for child themes and other WordPress functionality.

Please post one question at a time starting with a new topic for the customization help you need.

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Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[coralseait]

There's quite a bit in here to digest, but basically from what I believe you are asking

1) Per page / post SEO can be controlled at the page and post level. For even more control install Yoast SEO and tune your metas per page / post along with key phrashing
2) Markup is stripped by default because of excerpting which is standard in wordpress, you can mod that along the lines of http://wpdecoder.com/html/dont-strip-html-from-excerpts-or-content-limit-teasers/
3) child themes by default are the way to preserve your changes over major updates. Some people install genesis extender plugin to keep all their mods in one place, but generally I'm fine modding the child themes. They are generally sound, solid, stable releases that don't change much unless the framework itself is updated

I agree with Brad, you'll get better and more specific answers by asking a single question per thread.

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Coral Sea IT

[Ximbalo]

Thank you Coral See and Brad for the helpful replies.
This is my 1st posting here, so now that I know the prefs -- I will be sure to post any other questions shorter, 1 at a time.

That being said...
RE: Adding ( and not losing ) Customizations to Professional Genesis Child Themes:

While I am very conscious of the value of using strong framework foundations and, of course, prefer to produce all my client sites by building a custom child-theme -- this is actually the 1st site I have done using a pre-built Genesis Child theme -- and I did not see clearly how to apply my customizations w/o having to carefully re-apply them when updates come out for that child theme.

Brad Said: "You can use hooks and filters in your child theme to customize your site so any Genesis updates do not over-ride your custom code. "

Apologies -- but I do not know how to apply this advice as my experience with custom hooks & filters has always been mods to the functions.php -- which is a file that would be overwritten when the child theme gets updated. Can you please expand on this idea for me?

Creating new page templates -- this does not apply to changes that are necessary for header.php and footer.php -- which is where most, if not all, of my custom changes need to be applied.

SO, by way of summary... Question #1:
How can I best add custom changes to header, footer, and functions .PHP files when working with Genesis Child Themes -- and not lose those changes when Child Theme updates are available?

Thanks!

[Ximbalo]

Questsion #2:

I have added a custom field to some inner pages of the Executive Pro Child Theme:
I need to modify the logic that builds the home page Slider and Featured Page Boxes -- so that they will all use my feat-page-excerpt material -- instead of what they are now -- simply the top of an inner page's content.

When I inspect the code found in "front-page.php" file -- I do not see clearly at all -- how or where to apply this change in logic.

Thank You,

[coralseait]

Some of your confusion may rest in that it is the main framework that is updated and not necessarily the child themes. Therefore your customizations will typically remain. Whereas other frameworks' child theme developers may update the themes frequently Genesis updates the framework as needed.

If you want to take that next step, as Brad mentions, you can write your own page templates which won't be overwritten with any possible child theme updates.

Note, in my experience and from the theme archives, it is the main framework that tends to be updated more often than the child themes themselves which seem similar to say a final release. In that regard updating functions.php with filters / hooks or using the hooks plugin is good enough to remain stable over a long period.

In any case you are free to write your own templates which genesis will notice per the correct declaration at the top of the template file and you can then use / set in the drop down section for page type at publish time and they will not be overwritten upon child theme update.

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Coral Sea IT

[Ximbalo]

Aha -- OK. Got it.
Makes sense -- thank you.
I will proceed then with direct mods to the theme files as if they were my own child theme.

Thanks again.

[coralseait]

Yes, just make sure it is the child theme files you are updating and not the main framework. Also keep in mind that child theme updates are possible (but again from the history rare) so good commenting and grouping of your custimization practices will minimize any impact should it occur.

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Coral Sea IT

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