1. Making Your Own WordPress
Theme with Genesis
I often ask the visitors here what they would like to me write about and
the most common subject people mention is making your own
WordPress theme.
WordPress is a powerful publishing platform which can be made to act
and look like just about any kind of website.
What are WordPress themes and
how do you make them?
Themes are a collection of PHP, CSS and image files that change the
design or “skin” of your website. But they also do much more than that.
They can also change the interface, producing different templates for
different pages, etc.
There are two main ways to create a new theme for WordPress:
•
First you get use an existing simple theme like Starkers and modify it
to produce your own theme

2. •
Secondly, and this is the method I recommend, you can get a theme
framework like Genesis or Thesis and create a child theme to run on
top of the framework.
Setting up a child theme on a framework sounds more complicated but
it actually simplifies the process of creating a website.
Using a theme framework makes your WordPress website future proof
as these frameworks will be updated along with the WordPress core
updates so there’s no way your site will suddenly stop working when
you update WordPress.
Theme frameworks
The benefit of using a framework is that the core theme coding is
already done and done right. When you create your own custom theme,
you are responsible for everything – so if anything goes wrong it’s up to
you to fix.
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder
developer:“Child themes are the only way you
should build your WordPress site on top of a
framework, andGenesis has great support for child
themes and other WordPress functionality.”
I used to create WordPress themes from scratch but when I wanted to
add improvements to them, like nested comments for example, I found it
would conflict with another element of the theme and fixing it would
mean starting again from scratch.
Even if you think you know everything, you will always be asked to do
something you’re not quite sure how to accomplish. When using a
WordPress theme framework like Genesis you have the support of
thousands of top quality developers – and amongst them there is bound
to be someone who knows the exact and best solution to any query.
Here are some other advantages of using theme frameworks:

3. •
Good for SEO. Frameworks such as Genesis and Thesis are much
better structured for SEO. WordPress SEO expert Joost de Valk
gives Genesis 5 out of 5 for SEO. The SEO controls are so good you
don’t even need an SEO plug-in, although if you do want one it’s fully
compatible and transferable with Yoast’s WordPress SEO plug-in and
others.
•
Quicker to develop with. Because it is all expertly coded and
follows best practices it allows you to cherry pick the best elements
(drop down menus, post thumbnails, jQuery sliders) and drop them
into your design.
•
WYSIWYG controls. Theme frameworks have robust settings
sections and widgetized areas, enabling drag-and-drop control over
the website’s elements, allowing design changes without coding.
The reasons I use Genesis
I’ve been using Genesis for most of this year and I can honestly say that
I’ll never go back to writing themes on my own again. I can do
everything I want with Genesis and I can do it quicker.
Yes, I’m using affiliate links in this article so if you make a purchase
through one of the links I may get a commission. However, I would
never recommend something to you that I don’t use myself. And this is
why I use Genesis:
•
Support. The documentation and developer support is awesome.
You can ask how to do something through their forums and an expert
developer will tell you within hours.

4. •
Future-proof. Studiopress are always looking to the future. The next
release, Genesis 1.8, will be responsive and create different devicedependent versions of the site for mobiles, iPads, tablets, etc. This is
a big winner for me because the mobile web is going to be huge and
so far the WordPress mobile plug-ins are not very customizable.
•
Compatibility. It’s totally compatible with all the major WordPress
extensions such as Gravity Forms, bbPress, WordPress MultiLingual, etc.
•
Price. It is, actually, rediculously cheap. And cheaper than Thesis or
Headway. Just $60 for the framework – which is all you need. You
can create as many sites as you want and have access to the
support. $60 is a small price to pay for total certainty in SEO,
security, and website development.
•
Darren Rowse – Founder
ProBlogger.net:“Genesis lets me sleep easy.
Knowing my blog is well optimized, secure and easy
to update lets me get on with developing content,
community and building a business from my
blogging.”
Creating a child theme on the
Genesis framework for WordPress
I have just made 10 videos explaining how I create websites – from the
Photoshop mock-up to the finished site online. I’ll be writing blog posts
about every stage of the process over the next few weeks. You can see
all the videos on my YouTube channel now.
Here is the first video where I create a Genesis child theme for
WordPress.
I always start to create a WordPress theme and website locally on my
computer before loading it up to a host for final tweaking. It only takes a
few seconds to install WAMP (PC) or MAMP (Mac) on your computer

5. and run WordPress locally and I recommend you do so when creating
themes.
Once you have WordPress up and running you need to install your
Genesis theme framework and your child theme. You will get your copy
of Genesis as soon as you make the purchase. Un-zip it and put it in the
/themes/ folder which, as you know, can be found in /wp-content/
amongst your WordPress files. No need to touch that folder ever again
– all your theme changes will go in your child theme.
And then to load your child theme download a sample child theme from
the StudioPress website or here:
You may want to re-name the child theme by changing the folder name
and editing the style.css and the functions.php, but put the child theme
next to the Genesis theme in the /theme/ folder and activate it in the
WordPress back-end.

6. 90% of the changes you make to the child theme will be to the CSS file.
The other 10% – adding custom page templates, removing certain
elements from certain pages, adding widgetized areas, etc., these
changes can all be put in the functions.php file. Here is
the functions.php file of the above sample child theme.
<?php
/** Start the engine */
require_once( get_template_directory() . '/lib/init.php' );
/** Child theme (do not remove) */
define( 'CHILD_THEME_NAME', 'Sample Child Theme' );
define( 'CHILD_THEME_URL',
'http://www.studiopress.com/themes/genesis' );
If you add any code to the above, make sure it’s below
the '/lib/init.php' ); line and that there are no spaces after the last
character in the file.
Don’t worry about getting your hands dirty with PHP. The solution to any
requirement you have of Genesis will either be in the documentation or
will be sorted out in the forums. There are also a couple of Genesis
plug-ins (Simple Hooks and Simple Edits) which further simplify the
process. And once you start pasting in PHP you begin to understand
the logic behind it.
What do you think?
I’m really looking forward to sharing my methods of developing websites
– there are more videos to come!
And, is there anything else you would like to know about creating
WordPress sites?
Be sure to leave your comments and questions here.