Using WordPress Landing Pages with Genesis

[bamajr]

I'm wondering if anyone has successfully used WordPress Landing Pages with Genesis and/or Genesis Child themes. I'm looking for something where I can do simple A/B testing on landing pages. I was also looking to use Calls to Action and WordPress Leads.

There is a known issue, with using WordPress Landing Pages with Genesis (as can be seen here). I was curious if anyone had run into this and if there was a simple solution.

I know Copyblogger has Premise, but this is a much more enhanced Landing Pages Plugin and the A/B testing options are nice.

http://bamajr.com

[bamajr]

Yes, I know I'm responding to my own request, but the developers at Inbound Now have suggested the following fix:

http://bamajr.us/1dZsn4I with an action & function titled "fix_bad_genesis_filter"

  add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'fix_bad_genesis_filter'); 
  function fix_bad_genesis_filter() {
    // fix for genesis and catalyst framework
    $priority = ( function_exists( 'genesis' ) ) || ( function_exists( 'catalyst_activate' ) ) ? 6 : 50; 
    add_filter('wp_title','wp_title', $priority, 3 );    
  }

Currently, I'm only using the Genesis core, on my website and David Wells (From Inbound Now) is suggesting I add this to my theme's function.php file.

I'm curious if this is the right way for their plugin to handle this issue and how Yoast may have handled this exact same problem.

[Dan]

To be more specific, according to David Wells (one of InboundNow's developers), the problem is that "Genesis does some non wp core actions to the title tags."

InboundNow Landing Pages uses wp_title() to generate the page title. If Genesis has a filter acting on wp_title() it seems to be doing so in a way that results in duplicate, nested title tags in the HTML output. This could be fixed by disabling the Genesis title filter just for the Landing Page CPT created by InboundNow Landing Pages.

It looks like people have reported this problem with other plugins in the past:
http://brimosoft.nl/2012/02/28/what-i-dont-like-about-the-catalyst-and-genesis-framework-themes/

More from David:
https://github.com/inboundnow/landing-pages/issues/75

[Dan]

Looks like we posted at the same time @bamajr.

David's fix results in a 502 Bad Gateway on the frontend with WP Engine/nginx.

[bamajr]

@Dan must have...

I don't give much weight to the Brimsoft report and I'm not going to put this code in my Genesis Core, which is all I'm actually using right now. So many plugins, which have to modify the title, play nicely with Genesis, except this one. So, I find myself thinking this is more of a plugin developer issue, than a theme developer issue.

[bamajr]

The following code SEEMS to fix the title tag problem…

//* Genesis Theming Framework Fix for WordPress Landing Pages
add_action( 'template_redirect', 'child_conditional_actions' );
function child_conditional_actions() {
	  if( 'landing-page' == get_post_type() ) {
	  	  remove_filter( 'wp_title', 'genesis_doctitle_wrap', 20 );
	 }
}

Add this as the last line in your child-theme's function.php file. Whether or not this plugin is worth all the effort, is yet to be seen. So far, all I find is more problems, all of which the developer blames on Genesis.

[bamajr]

...and if you want a little comedic banter, related to this specific plugin issue, and other issues, with the same plugin, check out https://twitter.com/bamajr/status/430897459607261184

I can't stand those who point fingers.

[Dan]

There's no need to point fingers yourself. Trying to stir up some drama isn't funny; we're all just looking for solutions.

Thanks for posting the filter that needed to be removed. Was this from Genesis support?

[bamajr]

@Dan

Look, I'll side with Copyblogger/StudioPress, 99 times out of 100 maybe even 999 out of 1000 when it comes to issues. Sure, developers are people and we all make mistakes, yes, including myself, however I don't get the blame game, from Copyblogger/StudioPress. They are a results driven organization and the effort they give, to provide a quality product, is second to none, in my book. So when a plugin developer's default response is to say it is a Genesis problem, because the StudioPress developers, didn't follow "WordPress Best Practices" when they created it and then citing a questionable article, that is two years old, I call B$! Which is exactly what I did.

I also call B$, when a plugin developer, with retail/premium add-ons, demands access to my production environment, to find a resolution, instead of buying Genesis himself. This is a sure sign, the developer puts zero weight in the product they have built and sell.

Finally, there is no way, I'm giving a no-name developer, from God knows where, admin or FTP access to my website. If the plugin developer doesn't believe in their product enough to test it on the most popular systems, then they deserve all the heat (or as you say, drama) I give them. I'm not letting anyone test and troubleshoot their sketchy plugin, on my website, when they refuse to set up a proper dev environment, of their own.

I would have had a completely different response to this guy, had he not come out of the gate, blaming Genesis. When, in his own context, he has ZERO idea if it is a Genesis issue, as he doesn't have a way to even evaluate the Genesis code - remember, he doesn't own Genesis, and isn't going to spend $100 to buy it (those were his words).

- - - - -

If you want to thank someone, for actually coming up with a temporary solution, you can thank Jennifer Baumann, a Technical Support Advocate, in Copyblogger Media Support. She presented the original option to me and I forwarded it to InboundNow.

However, even after you put this code in, you don't have to search hard, to find other display and functionality issues, which were also, immediately blamed on Genesis. Funny that this is the first plugin, in over a hundred I've used, which has had these types of problems. Other problems, maybe, but never once, did I hear them blame them on Genesis, before at least, taking the time to look into the problem, themselves.

[Dan]

I understood your point the first three times you shared it in two forums and on Twitter.

You're not helping by making it personal, by increasing the volume and repeating yourself. There's no need to browbeat people. They have names, and it's not hard to find out where they are. You don't have to let them on your server, but don't suggest they might be crooks. None of this will help motivate making plugins work better with Genesis.

[bamajr]

I didn't suggest they were crooks. The only thing even remotely close to that was:

I’m not letting anyone test and troubleshoot their sketchy plugin, on my website, when they refuse to set up a proper dev environment, of their own.

...and even that is a leap!

[wendypchef]

this solution didn't work for me 🙁 Any other ideas? (I'm running Parallax Pro)

[Summer]

@bamajr,

So when a plugin developer’s default response is to say it is a Genesis problem, because the StudioPress developers, didn’t follow “WordPress Best Practices” when they created it and then citing a questionable article, that is two years old, I call B$!

Actually, it's not BS.

For me, 3 year's worth of experience "working around" Genesis' non-standard way of handling featured images (breaking standard WP behavior, something that wasn't fixed until G2 came out), plus another year's worth of experience on my part trying to get several WPMU plugins that use CPTs to work with Genesis (a problem that existed in 1.9 and got worse with 2.0) and the result I finally got kinda proves that Genesis does do some non-standard (by WP terms) manipulation of titles and other post info and post meta data.

Genesis may be the most solid platform out there, IMO, but it has problems because of intentional choices to subvert standard WordPress behavior in certain areas that everyone else works with, and they've done it in more than one area... those devs are not exaggerating on that point.

In the past WPMU had to include a "fix" to work around this, and with Genesis 2.0, they had to incorporate another "fix" for those same, now exaggerated, quirks in order to resolve a major issue I had with CPT archives... something SP support repeatedly told me wasn't a Genesis "problem" but a theme problem -- a problem that cropped up on ALL SP child themes and 3rd party child themes I had access to, and something that wasn't a problem on any non-Genesis themes.

And yes, 3 times last year I offered to set WPMU up with a testbed to see if it was their plugins or Genesis where the root cause lay, and to work on a fix, but none of their devs took me up on it until about a month ago, when I offered again. I set up a Genesis test site running the latest versions of everything they needed and full admin access just for them, and the WPMU devs found a fix for MarketPress in less than a day... code added to deal with a Genesis-only non-standard handling.

Yet for a year, SP support told me the problems were theme issues, even when the problem was happening with SP themes, and I unfortunately couldn't afford the rate that Gary Jones quoted me when he offered to look into the problem (at the time he also thought the problem was with the theme, when it was in G2 core).

So while I also love StudioPress and Genesis to death, the way they ignore obvious Genesis core practices that conflict with or subvert standard WordPress behavior, causing new conflicts with plugins that do adhere to that standard behavior, well, it's a terribly frustrating annoyance, especially most of the time when I can't find a workaround or a fix for it.

So when other experienced devs tell me that a problem could be a Genesis issue, I don't ignore that as a possibility anymore.

---

WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

[bamajr]

@wendypchef the developer of this plugin has issued an updated version, which addressed this issue, beyond the fix, discussed above. If you want a little detail about the update I'm referring to, look at the last few comments here (http://bamajr.us/1bFSaVq) and here (http://bamajr.us/1bFTk3c). There was a "soft" update, which did not change any version numbers. However, I think there was a normal update since then, as well.

[bamajr]

@Summer - I'll be the first to admit, I'm probably not as seasoned in Genesis, as you, or many others, for that matter. I was even late to start using WordPress (started with 2.?). However, I have been developing websites and working on various web projects since the mid/late 90's. In the last few years, I've created several custom WordPress themes and probably just as many custom plugins, including one geo-plugin, which was overly complicated and doesn't currently work with Genesis. So, I understand Genesis does some things differently.

I can tell you, over the last 16-18 months, since starting to use Genesis, it has made my life much easier - though I've yet to convert my geo-plugin (I should really do that). It has made theme development easier. It has made theme customization easier. It has made theme management easier. And, their own plugins work great, and provide real value.

The developer IS experienced in WordPress Plugin development and pretty good at it. However until recently, he knew little/nothing about Genesis, except hear/say. While he is probably elbows deep in it by now, at the time, he had no proof of his claim, just a hypothesis.

Did he have a foundation for suspicion? Maybe - hear/say definitely helped him form a hypothesis.

Did he turn out to be right? I think we can all agree, he did!

Did he turn up with a solution? For the most part, yes!

How did he get to the solution? He had to develop for and test on Genesis, which I'm to understand a good samaritan provided to him. However, until he began testing and developing on Genesis, he was simply blaming someone else. Thus, I stand behind the statement you quoted.

[Dan]

@bamajr I'm the "samaritan" who gave Genesis to David while you were kicking dirt on him on Twitter and his forum. David scheduled a screensharing session a few days later, so we could have a pro/con discussion of the plugins. He also helped me diagnose other glitches I ran into and pointed me to gists and documentation to help me out with some questions I had. I'm quite happy using the Leads plugin now with Genesis themes handling landing pages, but given the work they are putting into it I expect the LP and CTA plugins will be in a lot better shape soon.

@Summer Studio Press, Woo Themes, and maybe a few others have such a large market the way they do things becomes standard and has at times influenced the WP core itself in big ways. Plugin developers have to accept that. What is "standard" in the WP core is often legacy stuff that should make you want to laugh or cry, not get upset with theme frameworks that override it; that is their job. That doesn't mean they can do no wrong or that their way of doing things won't cause problems for you. For example, I've never understood why a framework + child themes is seen as a good idea rather than parent themes that use a framework (like Hybrid). Genesis may "do things the WordPress way" by using child themes, but this leaves you no way to substantially modify the theme that will not become an obstacle to future upgrades.

[Summer]

@Dan, I'll be the first one in line to list the problems WordPress core has with image handling (and I might even get elbowed out of the way by a few hundred folks for that spot), but Genesis piling on by taking a left turn at Albuquerque and insisting that Rt 66 is really Rt 10 because they say so doesn't help anyone 🙂

And please, don't get me started on the case study in QA failure that is WooThemes. I could rage on that for days and make the Hulk go crying for his mommy. I was burned by them so badly I went running to WPMU. I will never use their themes or WooCommerce ever again... thus my persistence in getting WPMU's MarketPress to play nicely with Genesis.

When the WPMU dev took me up on my offer of a Genesis sandbox for them to test MarketPress and possibly also Directory and Classifieds, I could have kissed all of them. The fact they found the problem so quickly and were able to fix it (I believe the updated version of MP is available now, or will be soon) brought me great joy 🙂

Don't get me wrong... I love what I've been able to do with Genesis over the years, and I get excited when I see new themes coming out, even though I have a thought in mind for one of my own and just lack the time to sit down and code it. I just wish the intellectual disconnect wasn't so big an obstacle when it comes to doing certain things "backwards" from how WP does it.

If it's a true mod that Genesis has made, I'm okay with that as long as it's documented and instructions are provided as to how to make it work with other WP components. It's arrogant and disrespectful to say "oh, there's no problem here, go pay one of our devs to look into it for you" when several hundred people are complaining about the issue.

Is it so hard to say "Hey, we made this change because we think this achieves the end result better than what WP provides, and here's what to look for if it causes you problems"? If anything, I think that would bring MORE people to Genesis, and I would be the first in line (again) to say "Look what they're doing! How can you not love this?"

I love Genesis, and I think that's why when something's off-kilter it makes me so crazy 🙂

---

WordPress / Genesis Site Design & Troubleshooting: A Touch of Summer | @SummerWebDesign
Slice of SciFi | Writers, After Dark

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