I recently began a project on Summerville Builders website using the Genesis Framework along with the Platinium to do the job.

HOW TO UPGRADE A SITE INTO A BLOG

To upgrade the Summerville Builder site, a site featuring home builders in Summerville, SC and the surrounding area, neighborhoods, current real estate and relocation info, the first step was installing a vanilla WordPress blog.

Next, upload both the Genesis framework/theme and the Platinum child theme.

At this point lots of configuration, and customizations began, but not simply using a bunch of plugins. Checking out the StudioPress community online I noticed a lot of advice to stick, where possible, to native WordPress features. For example, on the subject of switching from the standard blog search to a Google Custom Search (which gives a boost to Adsense revenue) the best advice I found was to incorporate the search box code where you wanted to place it (for example in a text widget in the sidebar) and build a page called ‘Search’ and put the search results code in the page (just avoid editing that in Visual Mode).

WHY UPGRADE A SITE INTO A BLOG?

Well, in this case there were 2 reasons … speed to site re-design and moving to the StudioPress framework. Unlike other Frameworks I’ve read about, StudioPress separate the works very sharply from the info you post and edit. So, for example, if you decide you want to override or add CSS there’s no need to make a child theme for your child theme. You simply edit your child theme’s style.css file. When your Genesis + child theme get updates your work is untouched. So, maybe the next update to the framework effects security and adds an SEO feature or two. These changes are made to core files that you won’t need to edit in order to change you blog.

Future Post: Genesis Hooks.

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Posted in Blogging by George | No Comments Yet