Designs By Nick the Geek

Genesis Based WordPress Development and Tutorials for Everyone

Genesis Explained eBook Coming Soon

Hey folks, I just want to let everyone know about what is going on with the Genesis Explained eBook. I have been editing my Genesis Explained series, finding typos and grammar mistakes, as well as updating the illustrations and examples. I’m about half way through the first revision on the existing articles and I’m mapping out two parts that aren’t in the existing series.

Style Sheets Explained

Style Sheets Explained will go over how the CSS works in Genesis. This will mostly be an explanation of the basic structure of the style sheet, but it will focus on 3 parts that tend to confuse folks who are editing style sheets in StudioPress child themes.

  • Layouts: These have been in the style sheets from the beginning. Understanding how the body classes assigned by the layouts are handled in the style sheet is key to understanding how to make key changes like the width of various elements.
  • Color Options: These are newer and do not appear in all style sheets, but they are very easy to implement with the new to Genesis 1.8 features and once understood will let you further extend your themes.
  • Responsive Design: This is the newest feature in the style sheets. Many find it very confusing and have been very frustrated with losing responsiveness when making other changes. It shouldn’t be a nightmare and like the rest of Genesis Explained, I will break it down into information novices and experts alike can make use of.

This section will be published on this blog in the next couple of weeks.

Your First Child Theme

I am building a child theme I’m currently calling Fluid Two. It is intentionally a merger of multiple child themes with some totally new features not found in any of them.

  • Fluid: This is my free child theme that is the only fluid width child theme I’m aware of.
  • Streamline 2.0: I have based this site and my personal site on this theme. It is my favorite right now.
  • Minstream: The latest theme from StudioPress to support post formats, and Fluid Two does support post formats
  • Nick Geek Custom: I’m pulling features I added to my personal blog and putting it in Fluid Two. While my blog is built on Streamline 2.0 now it wasn’t until quite recently. The custom features are a carry over from the previous theme.

I’ll be pulling in a few other themes’ features, but not nearly as noticeably. I’m also building in some unique features. I intentionally want to make a kind of Frankentheme (maybe I should rename Fluid Two that) because I am always being asked, “how do I add feature x from theme y to theme z?” A big part of this section will be showing how to merge parts from existing themes, which is super simple in Genesis Child Themes.

Once Fluid Two (or Frankentheme) is completed I will go through the internal documentation and make sure each function and important line of code is clearly explained within the files. That will be a section of the book itself. Then I will write up the equivalent of a step by step instructional explaining what each part does and how to pull various sections out of other themes or create your own new content.

Additionally, this information will be used throughout the book to illustrate the points with instructions on how to make further changes so the reader can edit their theme while reading and see how it is changed live on their site. How cool is that?

This theme will be included free with the book along with this new section and all the new examples that will be added to the existing sections.

Getting a Free Draft of the Genesis Explained eBook

OK, time for some marketing. Folks I respect tell me that I should be doing a better job of converting readers into followers … or something like that. I’ll be honest I’m not a marketer and when people start saying words like “conversion” and “followers” I start having flashbacks to my personal evangelism classes in Bible college. It’s weird to me because the Church is trying to look and act more corporate while the corporate world is using tactics that church use to use (some still do). That is a topic for my other blog though.

In any case I’m not much of a marketer, even though I’ve apparently been doing it for most of my life. That said I know it is important to push my newsletter. So everyone on the newsletter list will get a free draft of the Genesis Explained eBook once I’m done with the first revision. This will include the existing sections and the new Style Sheets Explained section, but not the new “Your First Child Theme” or the free theme. The first revision will not have the new examples either, but it will be updated with the latest changes and information as of now.

So, all you have to do is put your email address in my subscribe box on the top right and you will get your first draft copy of Genesis Explained for free when it is finished.

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Comments

  3. When will Fluid 2.0 be released? Will be it part of the StudioPress Pro pack which I have bought recently

    I am looking for a responsive 2 column theme for my blog

    thanks

    Mahesh

    • Fluid 2.0 (or whatever I end up calling this theme) will be released after Genesis 1.9 comes out. It is nto being developed by StudioPress so it isn’t part of the ProPlus package. In fact it isn’t going to be a normal release per se. It is going to be included free with the Genesis Explained eBook to be used as an example illustrating how Genesis interacts with child themes and how actions, filters, and the other aspects covered in the book work in a practical sense.

  4. This is great! A book like this should be a must-have for everybody using Genesis as base for their websites. Lucky I’m in the list.

  5. Really looking forward to this book…The CSS styles especially, I think there is a gap that needs to be filled there…

    • Actually I’m curious about that too. I am looking into similar products and trying to find something that is competitive, but also pays me for all the work I’m putting into it.

  8. Nick this is very exciting, I can’t wait to see what you’ve packed into the ebook if your tutorials are anything to go by, I have no doubt it’ll be excellent and looking forward to it. How far are you?

  9. Wow, this is great. I know I will learn a lot in this book! Can’t wait. Will you also be doing a print version? Would be great to have in my collection.

    • At this time I’m only planning electronic versions. I will be looking into self publishing platforms and if anyone knows a publisher looking for this type of material I’m not opposed to working with the big boys, but the niche is probably too small for large run publishing.

      • Yea, It would be awesome to get a printed version of this book as well. I have the WordPress for DUMMIES book by Lisa Sabin-Wilson. I wonder if you could do something with the Dummies series for the Genesis Explained.

        http://www.dummies.com/

  10. Hi Nick, I would be VERY interested in a tutorial or explanation of how you merged Streamline with Mindstream (to make your current theme).
    I spent many hours yesterday trying to do this on my site (http://sandeeferman.com) and was not successful in getting the Mindstream post format icons to show up on the Streamline theme. I am currently running Mindstream because I like the icons, but I really want Streamline with the icons.
    I started with the basic Streamline theme, modified functions.php to register post format types, and modified the stylesheet. The result was post images no longer displayed, post header info was duplicated, and post format icons did not display. Very frustrating. I’m not an advanced coder and could not locate what was breaking what.
    Finally I reverted to Mindstream and am asking for your help.
    Any pointers in the right direction would be awesome.

    • Sandee, The Genesis Explained ebook will include Fluid-two (aka Frankentheme) with instructions on how to pull out various features from Genesis child themes to create you own custom theme. I don’t know that I will release a tutorial explicitly on this, but it isn’t super difficult. You have to copy the code from the functions.php file that adds theme support for the post formats and post format icons in the Mindstream functions.php file to the Streamline functions.php file. You also have to copy the entire post-format-images folder from the Mindstream images folder into the Streamline images folder. Then you have to copy the post format image CSS out of the Mindstream style sheet and put that in the Streamline style sheet. Be sure to set the .post or .hentry to have position relative. There might be a few CSS adjustments from there, but that is the big part of the work.

      • Thanks, Nick. I did all the actions you suggested EXCEPT

        Be sure to set the .post or .hentry to have position relative.

        I didn’t try modifying that part of the css.

        I was essentially trying to make my own version of Frankentheme (I do like that name, I think that’s what you should call Fluid-Two).

        Because I don’t quite understand all the ins and outs of the code, I couldn’t figure out why the post header info was duplicated. I probably was calling two different functions using the same name and one was duplicating the other. (But since I couldn’t quite tell what was calling what, I wasn’t sure where I was goofing.)

        Well, if this book of yours is coming to fruition soon, and if it includes a copy of your current theme with a way to make all these elements work without digging through the code 🙂 then I’m a candidate for it. When do you think it’ll be available? And will it cost less than $30?

        Thanks again for your reply to my earlier question. Your site is nice and clean — I want one like that!

  11. Just a layout comment. Your subscribe box is at the bottom of the page on my mobile phone. It stays on the bottom even if I choose ‘desktop view’. Your signup instructions say it’s located at the top-right corner.

    • Brad, sorry for any confusion there, things do move around on mobile and there isn’t really a desktop version. On teh upside, I am planning on moving it from the sidebar to under the posts, which will make the placement more consistent.

  12. Sign me up, I can’t wait to read your book. Have you heard of Packt Publishing? They publish a lot of books that sound like this. That contain time-sensitive coding information, and push e-books. I think this would be right up their alley. If you want, submit your book idea to them, I’d love to buy it in paper form!!
    http://www.packtpub.com/title-idea-submission-form?utm_source=title_idea_submission&utm_medium=homepage_block&utm_campaign=new_title_ideas

  13. Hello Nick, just to let you know I’m one of those eagerly awaiting your ebook. Being hoping to get the draft.

  14. I don’t use feedburner and can’t signup using your email box above. Any other way to get my name on your list for the genesis book?