Just bought Genesis, what now?

[G9Stuart4]

Hi everyone,

Let me firstly introduce myself. I am Stuart, I am predominantly a web designer, however I'm getting interested in development and I want that to be my next step in my career. Hence why I have bought Genesis after careful consideration and reading lots of posts and reviews. Anyway, that being said, I know HTML, CSS, jQuery and some PHP (basic level of PHP).

With all that being said, could anyone point me in the right direction of where to go next? I have just last night bought Genesis, and spent last night and today following the Treehouse courses tailored for Genesis. My goal is to be able to create a completely bespoke Genesis theme as I believe that is truly the best way to learn.

I hope someone here would be able to point me to a few places or guides, etc. that I can learn from and go about creating a bespoke Genesis theme whilst learning about the framework.

Thank you for your time, and nice to meet everyone!

[emasai]

The best way to learn is hands on once you understand the basics. A lot of the customization can be done with css, however some require adding or removing elements from the functions.php file. If you have access to all the themes, you can look at the code and the functions and then try customizing them yourself.

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[MoodyRiviera]

Welcome to the Genesis world, Stuart.

Everyone who answers your post will probably have a different way of answering your question. My response is:

You have the Genesis framework. Not sure if you have any Genesis child themes, but if you don't have one of those, get one...either on StudioPress or somewhere else.

Then, using what you may have learned already, before you start trying to *create* a theme...I recommend that you start with just creating a web site using the Genesis framework and one of the child themes.

And then try another child theme. Check to see what the Genesis framework can actually do.

This shouldn't take too long, and might help you get a feel for how Genesis actually works before you start trying to build a theme yourself.

*MoodyRiviera*

[marybaum]

I'll second Moody's suggestion and elaborate a bit - you definitely want one of the themes with Pro in the name, since those are the ones that use html5. I would also recommend one of the most recent ones, or even two, that have features that crop up a lot in your day-to-day.

Wanna see how we handle parallax and sticky headers? Grab Parallax Pro or Altitude Pro.

Wanna see how we do a centered logo with main nav menus on either side? Modern Studio Pro came out just as I was launching a site with that very feature. (Thanks, Sridhar Katakam!)

Then, when you've built a site with those themes and dug through their code, you'll be ready to mess with the several starter child themes that are around. StudioPress has Genesis Sample, and I believe there are some that have Bootstrap and various other things baked in. I have one with Foundation 5 that I use to start client work - dunno how ready it is for prime time, but I do have it up on Github (/marybaum if you feel like kicking the tires).

Welcome and have fun!

Mary Baum

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