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devParticipant
I heard back from the Genesis support people after putting in a ticket. Bottom line, they say to make all changes to the child theme. They tell me that child themes are not updated too often and that all the important updates are done in the parent theme, i.e. the Gen framework. They said that when child themes are updated to check the change-log to see what code was affected. I received the impression from the Gen folks that when it comes to child themes, updates are simply not an issue to worry about... all the magic is done in the parent. Fine with me. One less thing to worry about.
devParticipantPlease understand that my post was not and is not intended to be anything more than just one person's experience with the plugin after ONLY a few hours using it. It would not be accurate for anyone to make a buy/no-buy assessment based on my short use of the product. First of all, you don't know if I have any credibility here at all, much less with WP or programming. Second, you don't know if I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
To base an opinion of anything on the ramblings of just one anonymous person is at best foolish and at worst, wrong. (I don't believe people should "review" products from the darkness. The producers of the product should know who "their accusers" are and that is why I put a link to me and our company in the post. I don't know if "sigs" are allowed here as I'm fairly new to Gen-world.")
When I have more experience with the plugin I will contribute more to the analysis of it. I hope others will also.
As for spending money, and while this might sound like a "knock" on open-source products, where my business is concerned I would rather use so-called "premium" software... where there is a person or a company who has their reputation on the line and who has a vested interest in making it work and solving problems.
People can get websites for free... but they come to us and pay us to do it "right" (which we do most of the time! 🙂 )"Community support" is often very good, but often very bad. If I have a serious issue, I like knowing I can submit a "help ticket" to Genesis (and Catalyst) and get a reply from someone who is (should be!) intimately familiar with the (their) product. To me, that is what I'm paying for... not the framework or the plugin.
So much of open-source software is the proverbial "camel," which as we all know is a horse designed by a committee!
I agree with you that perhaps Catalyst could have put out a plugin with a sub-set of its features... or maybe a time-limited product (like how the Mac editor Coda does... seven day trial and then it locks.)
More to come as I find the time. I think the Catalyst people would be well served to give a free copy of Extender to credible writers/bloggers in Gen-world to review it. I am NOT in that refined group of software engineers... but maybe I'm closer to it than others. As for the price, well nothing is really free. I can't tell you how much Pepto I've had to buy over the years working with free WP themes, free CRM systems, free editors, etc. Of course, YMMV.
devParticipantI'm about 3 hours into using the Extender plugin, so these are just some first impressions... as you know first impressions are often wrong.
1. This thing is great for creating widgetized homepages in like 3 clicks. They have two methods... their EZ method and a Custom method. I've only used EZ and it really is EASY! They give you a huge menu of layout options where you can have widget areas below the header and above the footer... like 2,3,1 meaning you get 2 boxes at top, 3 in the middle, and 1 wide one at the bottom. Or you can have two boxes at top but one that is 3/4 of the width and the other 1/4. Yes, you could easily write the code and then set the .css widths, but this is so much easier and faster. I've not tried the custom method yet, which gives you greater flexibility from what I saw on their video.
2. Their CSS Builder is OK, but I think it still needs some development. I would like it to show me every class on the homepage, but it just shows the main classes , I guess those that are endemic to Genesis. Finding the exact "item" in their menu to change is not easy because I didn't find it accurate. However, once you figure out what you are changing, their menus for changing colors and borders and backgrounds seems to work well... and it is in real time. I don't yet know where the changes go. Maybe it writes out a custom .css file somewhere or maybe it shoves these into the database and pulls them out when page is generated. (I hope it isn't in the DB... as it would probably be serialized data in the wp-options table and if something in WP is going to break, it will be serialized data in that table. We've all been there!)
Conclusion: I think the ability to create rather complex widgetized homepages in a few clicks makes this plugin ultra-valuable to people who don't want to mess with code.. even though the Genesis code to do this... registering the areas and then creating them... is not that hard... this is still so much quicker... and my bet is that the Custom method is even better (but probably not as fast.)
As for CSS... well I find it faster for me to find what I need to change via the Chrome "Inspect Element" process and test out my change and if it works, add it to the style.css theme file. But perhaps as I get a better grip on how the CSS builder works I might find it faster/better than the old "search, change, and hope" method of dealing with .css.
More to come, assuming anyone is interested.
You can reach me via this site if you wish. (I don't know if I'm allowed to put name/company so I'll just put a link and hope no one is offended.)
devParticipantI posted a query a week or so ago asking if any had tried this plugin and what there experience has been. No one answered. I'm going to spring for the $44 product and when I get a chance I'll post back here about it. From what I can see, it doesn't do anything you can't do in code... but we're looking at it as a "replacement" to Framework Option... which is a PITA to configure (IMO.) I wish there was a way to "turn off" certain Extender options because I don't think most clients will want all 800+ of them! We'll see how this beast works next week.
devParticipantWhat is Multipress? Do you mean Multisite Network? If so, I have Genesis on multisite and it runs fine, at least with the Sample theme you get with Genesis for free.
I'm sure that if Genesis didn't work with WP-multisite that there would be a ton of posts here and on the net about it.
February 9, 2013 at 10:31 am in reply to: Soon to be ex-Thesis user wondering how to change content width in Metro theme #19232devParticipantWouldn't you just do this via a .css override or direct change? I don't have Metro but on other themes it would be .the-sidebar-class {width: XXXpx;} You might have to change padding and magins as well. There are lots of tools to find ou the name of "the-sidebar-class"... we use Inspect Element of Chrome but somewhere there is a plugin that will show all the major classes on the screen.
Maybe there is a better way do to this in code but we never use code if something is possible in .css.
devParticipantYes, you are right about Catalyst... I've done extensive research in the past couple of days. The person who developed Catalyst (Eric Hamm) is well-regarded in the WP community as is his framework, Catalyst.
The Extender is relatively new, as is his Dynamik theme for Genesis. They basically ported much of Catalyst over to Genesis.
The one thing I have an issue with is that Extender (and I believe Dynamik) puts all CSS changes into the database. So if you develop a derivation from a Genesis child theme locally or on your server, you will have to export the database when you install on the client's server. They told me they have and export and import feature for CSS settings, but I've not seen any independent corroboration on it... how/if it works.
I rather like the idea of using Extender on the bare-bones, Genesis "free" Sample "starter" theme to develop our own themes for clients. I was hoping that someone more experienced with Genesis in this community would have some thoughts about Extender to help guide me in my analysis of the product... perhaps save me some time in testing it. I don't mind the cost... it's the time I don't have... so if anyone here has used it I hope they will share their opinions on it for the rest of us.
January 29, 2013 at 5:29 pm in reply to: Need minor help with Option Framework or Option Tree #16195devParticipantI'm not wedded to Option Framework... I'll use anything that works well with Genesis. I absolutely must incorporate a few CSS options that the client can change... maybe 10 or so. I just don't understand the process OR code in getting an embedded style command(s) into the output of the page so it will override the style.css.
I will check out both links above. Maybe they are easier than Option Framework or Option Tree?
devParticipantThanks for the info.
Is it the height of the logo or is it the width that is telling Genesis/WP "Hey, you need to crop this thing?"
You know what would be good? It would be good to have a "header-left" widget area. They give us a header-right area , so why there no a "left?" That way we could dump anything we want into the area via Genesis-Featured-Page/Post widget. (Is there a Featured-Image plugin? I think there is somewhere.)
Oh well, I doubt my wish is Genesis's command! I'll play with the code or the CSS and see what I can do to get my little 2 inch x 1 inch logo to display.
devParticipantCan someone point me in the right direction on how to use the 1152 grid with Genesis. Will this help me make a totally widgetized homepage?
Thanks.
January 25, 2013 at 1:26 am in reply to: How can I remove StudioPress – Genesis attribution link from footer? #14557devParticipantIn your functions.php put in this... but make your own text and link, obviously:
add_filter( 'genesis_footer_creds_text', 'custom_footer_creds_text' );
function custom_footer_creds_text() {
echo '<div class="creds"><p>';
echo 'Copyright © ';
echo date('Y');
echo ' · Designed by <a href="http://newmediawebsitedesign.com" target="_blank">NewMedia Website Design</a> ·</a>';
echo '</p></div>';
}devParticipantNot sure if you are using text but if so you could code an embedded style:
<p style="color:red;">The color of the font in this section will be red. </p>
Of course, the style.css might be a better option if you can figure out what the right selectors are.
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