Customiser settings in Genesis Sample theme

Where is the customiser?

Go to…
Dashboard > Appearance > Customise.

Most of the the tabs in the Genesis Sample Theme Customiser are typical WordPress customiser settings.

Site Identity
Colors
Menus
Widgets
Homepage Settings
Theme Settings
Theme SEO Settings
Additional CSS

Site Identity

In the site identity tab you can…

Upload an image logo.
Set a width for the image logo.
Set the site title text.
Set the site tagline.
Upload a site icon.

Colors

In the colors tab you can…

Set link colors.
Set an accent color.

Menus

In the menus tab you can…

create a new menu and assign your menu to a menu location.

The Genesis sample theme has two menu locations, header menu and footer menu.

Widgets

Widget areas available in the Genesis Sample theme.

The WordPress customiser widgets tab is context sensitive. So you only see the widgets that are active on the page you are viewing. I prefer to use the main widgets page via…

Dashboard > Appearance > Widgets.

There are three types of widget areas in the Genesis Sample theme.

Primary sidebar.
Footer 1, 2, 3.
After Entry.

The after entry widget area displays below single blog posts. It does not display when you view pages or archive pages.

Homepage Settings

This is where you choose any web page on your website to be your home page. Your home page cannot be a single blog post. But you can set your blog archive page as your home page. Pages and posts are two different things in WordPress.

So, if you’ve made a web page and want it to be your home page, choose…

Your homepage displays: A static page

If you want your homepage to display a list your most recent blog posts, choose…

Your homepage displays: Your latest posts

Theme Settings

Theme settings is a special tab. We’ll deal with this tab in a later section.

Theme SEO Settings

Do not change the theme SEO settings unless you know what you’re doing.

These sub tabs are Genesis SEO settings. If you use Yoast SEO it will over right these settings. Only Make any changes to the theme SEO settings if you know what you’re doing. The default settings are OK for most people.

Additional CSS

If you write any cascading style sheet code (CSS), you can paste it in this box.

If you don’t know what CSS is, just ignore this tab.

The Theme Settings tab

Earlier, I said I would come back to this tab. So, here it is…

The theme settings tab is a parent tab. When you click it you see eight more sub tabs.

Below, I’ll explain what those sub tabs are.

When you select the theme settings parent tab, you see these eight sub tabs…

These are the eight theme settings sub tabs.

Updates.
Site Layout.
Breadcrumbs.
Comments and Trackbacks.
Singular Content.
Content Archives.
Footer.
Header/Footer Scripts.

Updates

If you provide your email address in this box you’ll be notified when a new version of Genesis is available.

Site Layout

You can have a sidebar or no sidebar layout.

The site layout options are…

Content/Sidebar.
Sidebar/Content.
Full Width Content (no sidebar).

These site layout settings are site wide. You can change these settings by editing any individual page or post.

So, if you have a site wide setting of content with a right hand sidebar, but for a few specific pages you want a full width content layout (no sidebar layout). You can do that. Use the settings that are available in the post editor.

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs form a paper trail with links. They enable you to see where the post you are viewing fits in the hierarchy of your site.

I enable breadcrumbs on single posts.

Comments and Trackbacks

Enable if you want your readers to be able to leave comments on your posts or pages.

If you enable comments on your website, beware of comment spam. If necessary you can tell WordPress to hide all comments until you manually approve them.

I do not enable trackbacks.

Singular Content

I do not show featured images on single posts or pages when I’m using the Genesis Sample theme.

When I use themes such as Essence Pro I do show featured images on both pages and posts.

You can use shortcodes to display categories and tags above or below the main content of your web pages and blog posts.

To find more information about the shortcodes you can use, click the link in the singular content dialogue box.

See the available post shortcodes on GitHub website.

Content Archives

The content archive settings control how your blog listing page and category listing pages look.

Experiment with the settings, show and hide the featured images. Change the amount of content that displays with each post excerpt, etc.

And don’t forget to view the blog and category pages to see how your blog or category archive pages look with your new settings.

Footer (credits)

Although this tab is labeled footer, it actually controls the footer credits. The footer credits display at the very bottom of your web page, below the row of three footer widget areas.

If you type plain text in this box it will display. But you can also use shortcodes such as the copyright shortcode to insert a copyright symbol.

See the footer shortcodes link for more information.

Header/Footer Scripts

If you use Google Analytics, paste the code Google provide in here.

If for instance, you’re using Google analytics. You might be told to paste some code in to your site.

This is a bit advanced, so only do this if you know what you’re doing.

And ONLY do this if you trust the person providing the code.

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