Designs By Nick the Geek

Genesis Based WordPress Development and Tutorials for Everyone

Genesis Style Select

I am working on a plugin to make it easier to change style sheets in the Genesis child themes.

Currently AgentPress is the only theme that offers additional color options via the style sheets, but other themes may be added that support multiple style sheets, or new color sheets might be made available for the existing themes.

Prior to this plugin, changing colors in the AgentPress child theme involved changing code or file names. With this plugin you can switch style sheets via the Genesis theme settings.

Note: This is a beta. I have personally tested this and have received feedback and updates from moderators here before releasing this, but there could be scenarios where it does not perform as expected.

This is a simple plugin and I do not expect it to interfere with other plugins, but this is why I’m releasing it as a beta and asking people to help test it in real world conditions.

Note: I am not employed by StudioPress and this is not an official StudioPress plugin. I have asked their advice and permission, but I wanted to make this clear.

Ok, the notes aside, here is the details on the plugin.

Installation:

  1. Download the plugin.
  2. Install via the add new plugins > upload menu or upload via FTP to the wp-content/plugins/ directory.
  3. Activate plugin
  4. Go to Genesis Theme Settings and select the desired style sheet from the new box (Style Select)
  5. Save your settings

You may use the existing theme colors, or develop new theme style sheets. You will need to copy the head of the style sheet (the comment box at the top) and save the new style sheet to the theme directory, on the same level as the style.css or the new style sheet will not show up in the list.

Potential Uses:

Clearly this makes selecting the color for AgentPress much easier but there are other potential uses.

  • Change the look of your site for a holiday or other short term change. You could have a few changes for the holiday by copying your stylesheet and making the changes, then switching on the holiday and switching back after very easily.
  • Have multiple style sheets available in a WordPress MU or 3.0 with networking enabled installation. Each site could select from available style sheets without affecting the other sites using the theme.
  • Development of new looks for your/a client site without changing any of the style sheets that come with the theme.

    • Feedback requested:

    This is a beta and I’m very interested in making it better. I have already been through several revisions before putting it out here and I believe it is ready to be considered stable, but I am amazed at the suggestions I received that I never considered. This plugin is much better because of these suggestions.

    If you experience a bug of any kind, please post it here with as much detail as you can. What version of WordPress, Genesis, and the Child theme? What plugins are you running? What kind of server are you running on? What version of PHP? All of those will help me to workout why the bug occurred. If you don’t have all the information, post what you can.

    If you have a suggestion for a feature, please post that as well.

    Download

    Latest Version: 0.6.1b

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Comments

  1. Hi Nick,
    Is the plugin you mentioned above for changing the color of genesis child themes such as AgentPress available and working? I did find it in the plugins download, but am not seeing it under the genesis tab on the left side bar. Did I download/install it wrong?

  2. Hello Nick,
    I must say, the potential for this is HUGE (in my opinion). I have obsessed myself in coming up with a “base” style structure while defining rules wherein slight changes on the stylesheet can completely change the layout of the site.

    For testing purposes, I would separate elements of my stylesheet (such as header, footer, structure, etc) into individual css files while pulling them together via linking with the styles.css file. This allows me to create multiple possibilities but rendering a final product based on a mix-n-match of stylesheet elements.

    Your plugin has given me an opportunity to create many styles.css versions which would then link from different combinations of external stylesheet files. So instead of renaming the styles.css file, I would simply select the option to choose the one I would like to see for testing.

    I hope this makes sense but I would like to contribute to your efforts on finding (or programming a solution) that would make the process of automating stylesheet development and making it a simple process of mix-n-match. Hope this makes sense.

  3. Hi Nick,

    Thank you very much for this fantastic tool.

    Not sure if you are able to help me out or not, but I am trying to change the stylesheet from outside of the admin area–e.g. allow a simple, non-registered site visitor to change the style of the site from either a button or a dropdown.

    I see where the different styles are listed and referenced, but I see no area where i can conditionally set the value.

    Any assistance would be appreciated.

    Thanks…

    Matt