We are very proud to announce that the Genesis Tabs plugin we’ve built is now available.
A few of our child themes, such as Magazine and News, were using the tabs feature, which is loaded via the child theme (and makes universal updating quite difficult.) The updated Magazine theme no longer has this built in, and is ready to go with Genesis Tabs. The News theme will be updated soon.
Genesis Tabs and Portability
We’ve been asked many times how to take the tabs from one of those themes and place it into another theme – which was somewhat tedious because of the steps involved. So we decided to create a plugin that can be used easily across any theme, and would have auto-updates enabled since we’re hosting it at WordPress.org.
The Genesis Tabs plugin is easily added to any theme because it is now added via a widget. This means you can place it at the top of the Lifestyle theme where the welcome text is, for example.
We’re releasing the plugin in beta right now, so that folks can do some initial testing, and provide feedback on usability and feature requests.
Example of the Genesis Tabs in the New Magazine Theme
About Brian Gardner
Thank you again! This is one’s warmly welcomed! A great alternative to slider usage and really useful for a lot of cases/projects. I will test and report any issues/requests soon (here or in the forum…). Already working on styling support for my free Autobahn child theme!
I really support the intention to make some extended functionality available via plugins because not every user needs that stuff within a theme. So anyone can implement this if needed but leaving child themes and core still lightweight! Really good principles!
-Greetinx, Dave from Germany
We wholeheartedly agree with people not using certain functionality inside child themes. Moreover, this extraction allows us to update plugins (add featured, fixe bugs, etc) and push them out to all users with one click.
FABULOUS! Love tabs and this is just another reason why Genesis rocks.
One of the many, eh?
Blimey there’s something happening daily at the moment!!
Like this addition as using the old v1 and the tabber was useful for the job we wanted it to do.
I agree with David above, a GREAT alternative to slider usage. Great move on making it publicly available too.
You never cease to “WOW” us!
Thanks Adam – we figured it made sense to start pulling out functionality that has been specific to certain child themes into plugins that can be used anywhere.
One quick thought – can you have multiple instances of the widget around the site? Same page? Different sidebars? etc?
Yes, that works – have tested this on my playground install – with a tabber on homepage and one in the sidebar (with content-sidebar layout!) and working like a charm! (Just make sure no tab titles will break on to the next line.) Really nice tool to play with
What David said.
Awesome plugin! Are you going to update the Magazine demo with the Genesis Tabs plugin?
The jury is still out on that one – I kinda like the way I restyled the slider a bit for that.
Thanks for continuing to add value to this great product line!
You bet, it’s our pleasure!
SWEET!!!!!
Great news. Any way for this in future to show custom content per tab that is specific to that page/post, as opposed to pulling in post/page summaries?
Not with the way it’s setup, but I suppose somehow that could be added at some point. Not sure if that’s a different plugin idea or something we can have in this.
I’d love to see that as well, whether it’s an added feature to this plugin or a separate plugin.
Jonathan, it’s possible to show a tab widget only in certain pages with the widget logic plugin. So you can have mulitple tab widgets to show only on certain pages quite easily – just enter a different widget logic condition for each tab.
Amnon
Another great addition to the StudioPress toolbox. Thanks!
Thanks Brad – and I’m sure you’ll see on Twitter, that we’ll plan on putting in your wishlist item soon in an update. +1
Does this plugin work on any Genesis theme?
Yep, it sure does… might need to style it a bit through your child theme for better design integration, though.
Good work – it is perfect in the home middle #1 section of the Maximum theme.
It would be useful to be able to also feature pages in the tabs – like a tabbed Genesis Featured Page widget. – that’s my feature request ;o)
Roger that – pages, custom post types, etc will hopefully make their way in very soon.
That would be most excellent Brian – I can’t wait to see how it develops
)
Tell me what I’m missing — why do I want to have tabs (black text on grey background, above) that are 1/2″ below the identical navigation bar labels (white text on black background, above)? And then have the same labels triplicated in the featured page (assuming that’s what it is, and not featured post) home boxes below?
This is merely replicating the functionality of the tabber feature we have on a few themes. You can take a look at the News theme demo to see what this looks like. It’s simply allowing a prominent place on a homepage where you can showcase featured sections, without using up screen real estate.
Bryan, I would like you to allow multiple posts on each tab.
This is sweet! Ironic you mentioned Lifestyle as this solves a problem I have with a project on that theme.
Very, very cool.
Another winner, Brian! You all just keep putting out such top quality stuff — it’s remarkable. I’m so glad to be part of the Genesis user family!
We’re glad to have you in the family, Tammy!
Another fantastic element to wow my clients.
Its been nothing but a pleasure to have jumped on the StudioPress train. It’s not only your great themes but the great community support, updates and new functionality that just keeps rolling out.
Well done Brian and your Team.
This news just made my day, thanks for the update! Keep up the great work
StudioPress just gets better every week
Can it pull the content from specific pages, instead of posts?
It will be useful for B2B sites and the like which need to display static content.
Will certainly be trying it shortly, thanks.
No, as of right now it’s simply pulling in posts.
This is a good idea. The tab structure is an excellent solution to emphasize many subjects and save space at the same time. Again, “Just another Genesis solution”!
Slow down Brian – hard to keep up.
Troubles is I want to use all of these great new featurew.
Guess I’ll have to settle for just knowing that they are available.
I am in the process of setting up a blog and love your Lifestyle theme. I could not find it on the wordpress.org list of themes, only on wordpress.com. Can you let me know if the Lifestyle theme is compatible with wordpress.org? Thanks for your help.
It’s not available on WordPress.org as a free download theme – but you can buy it here.
Thanks Brian. I am planning to purchase the Lifestyle theme, and understand it needs to be purchased for both wordpress.com and wordpress.org. I just want to be sure that there will be no interface or uploading problems with the theme in the wordpress.org program.
Only purchase Lifestyle on WP.com if you plan to use it on a free hosted blog. You only need to purchase it from StudioPress if you plan to self host the site.
Thanks again. We are self hosting so I will purchase it from Studio Press.
this may seem like a dumb question, but is this something that could also be used in the sidebar (admit, I haven’t poked around at it yet)
I’m wanting a “tabbed” section on the sidebar, similar to this, for keeping it tidier…
Yes, pretty sure this will work just fine in that location.
I’ve tried to use the plugin as a sidebar widget on the Prose theme but I’ve noticed there my selected widget title doesn’t appear on the website, no matter which sidebar I put it on.
Ok I’ve succedded in creating a title: My workaround is to create a text widget with only title and put it above the Genesis Tabs widget. But please make it work the right way…
Thanks for a great plugin! Continue this way this is great!