I’ll be the FIRST to admit that StudioPress themes aren’t the fanciest when it comes to their designs.
They’re pretty simple, but I like that they are clean and not cluttered.
But my faaaaaaaaavorite feature is that WordPress developers have created tons of plugins for them.
Here are some insanely useful, FREE Genesis plugins that will help you either edit your theme or add more functionality.
Simple Hooks Plugin
I love, love, love this plugin!
StudioPress themes are coded so that you can use “PHP hooks” to customize areas of your site.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know or care what a PHP hook is. All I know is they help you edit parts of your theme without digging through some scary code file. 🙂
Simple Hooks allows you add text, images, etc. to any part of your theme by simply inserting data into the appropriate box.
Let’s say you want to add an image or text right before the comment section of your site.
You just add the text, image, code, etc. to the appropriate hook marked “Before Comments.”
And that will populate the area before your comments with whatever you put in the box.
And there are over 30 different areas of your theme to customize with this plugin. Pretty cool!
Genesis eNews Extended
eNews Extended integrates with your mailing list service so you can create an email opt-in widget for your sidebar.
You simply insert your mailing list service data (AWeber, Mail Chimp, etc.) into the appropriate fields and voila… you’ll have a drag and drop email-opt in form that can be inserted in any widget area of your theme.
Simple Social Icons
This plugin adds simple, flat icons to your sidebar that link to your social media profiles.
You can customize the icon colors and they have images for all the popular sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.)
Genesis Title Toggle
There might be instances where you don’t need a page title.
For example, it looked odd on my homepage design and I wanted to remove it.
This plugin will let you remove the title for certain pages and posts. The option is right inside the page/post editor.
Genesis Simple Edits
This is another goody! You can edit three major areas of your theme easily…
- Your byline (the line that says who the post is written by under the title)
- Post meta (the line that says how many comments the post has, etc.)
- Footer
Once again, you don’t have to get into the code. You simply add the text to the boxes provided by the plugin.
Genesis 404 Page
If someone happens to stumble upon a bad link, there’s a generic “Oops, page cannot be found” message that your theme will generate.
This plugin lets you customize that page if you want to give it some pizazz.
Genesis Custom Headers
How cool is THIS???
Let’s say you want a slightly different header on another page for some reason.
Well, it’s possible!
Genesis Custom Headers lets you add unique headers to each page/post/custom post type.
The header options include:
- featured image
- custom image
- slideshows
- HTML
- scripts
- and more
