What is Genesis?
 

After a few years not involved in web design, I have decided to come back a bit and design some more sites for a few clients.

I used to work in the past with Microsoft Front Page, NetObjects, Dreamweaver, and more. That was in the old days were PHP was not known and most pages were HTML static pages. CMS was a term just starting to come out.

I did a lot of research and came to the conclusion that WordPress is the way to go for a lot of reasons. Mostly because I work a lot on my daily commute and want a “Web Based” program that I can access from whichever computer is on hand, etc. After checking out WordPress, I realized that I will need something that enhancing WordPress like Genesis… And this brings me to this post… I am not sure what Genesis does… I would appreciate if someone can help me out. This is what I would like my new site to be able to:

• Blog (WordPress should do a great job on this)
• Forum/Message Board (I decided to use Vbulletin for this and would like to know if I can use it together with WordPress on one site, usernames DOES NOT have to be the same, just the design should blend in)
• Work good on Mobile phone devices
• Be able to implement advertisements like Google Ads, etc

Also… I am working on a Real Estate site (more like a local guide…) and would like to know if there is any option with Genesis to have users and charge them a fee either per listing or to give them rights like an Agent, etc.

Any help will be GREATLY appreciated.

Genesis is a Theme Framework. It create a basic underlying structure and common code for managing the theme interface, while allowing the framework to upgrade, further extending the child theme and ensuring future compatibility with little to know updates via the child theme.

For more information, you might want to look first at the beginners guide, which includes some definitions and shows what built in options are inherent with the theme.
http://www.studiopress.com/news/gene...-beginners.htm

For details on how the underlying code and philosophy of Genesis works, check out my Genesis Explained series, linked in my signature.

Thank you for your reply. I am still trying to find an answer to the following simple questions:

• Will I be able to use Genisis to write articles and post listings (CMS) and Vbulletin for my message board/forum
• Will Genisis work good on mobile devices
• Will it be easy to add/implement advertisements light Google Adsense

Genesis is the Framework that themes are built on. WordPress is the CMS.

If you want a forum, then you will need a second bit of software. Vbulletin is one option. Depending on what you are trying to do, you might look into bbPress, which is built by the same folks that build WordPress, so it all works together.

Genesis is the underlying framework for the child themes, so it is more accurate to say the child theme affects how the site looks, including on mobile devices. Look at the theme demos on mobile devices. Currently most of the themes render the same on mobile as they do on the desktop, but the latest generation, and likely all child themes moving forward, are "responsive" so they create a mobile version of the site by adapting the CSS. This is a very efficient way of adapting the site for mobile viewers, and works on most mobile platforms, but older phones will still show the full desktop version.

Various child themes have spaces allocated for ads, and there are many ways to add it into child themes that do not support ads out of the box, including the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin which lets you add code to the various hooks that make Genesis work.

Thaks a lot! It is starting to make sense now... I hope to move most of my sites to WordPress & The Genisis Framework.

OK… I want to move a site that was designed in combination with Dreamweaver (for the pages and layout) and a paid CMS program for the listings. I want to move it to WordPress and Genesis.

Which Genesis theme will work for me?

The site is a travel related site and basically has the following sections:

• Restaurants
• Hotels & Lodging
• Congregations, Churches, etc.

Each section has custom fields unique to this section. For example, the restaurant listings have a “Cuisine” field (Chinese, American, Indian, etc) and the Hotels and Lodging have a “Type” field (hotel, motel, Bed & Breakfast, etc). I want the theme to support custom field.

I was thinking about using Agent Press. I would like to get help on to which Genesis theme will work best for this site.

Sorry, we don't recommend specific themes. I wills ay that you will probably be best served by a custom solution, not just AgentPress. You could do it with AgentPress, but I think you will be much happier with 3 different post types and custom fields specific to those types.

Have you done any object-oriented programming? Theme frameworks are similar. There is a parent theme which is extended by the child theme. The parent theme has common methods and properties that can be used by any child theme. The child theme has methods and properties specific to only that child theme. To override the parent theme, you make changes to the child theme.

Ex:

Animal (parent class)
- Bear (child class) extends Animal (parent)
- Wolf (child class) extends Animal (parent)
- Cat (child class) extends Animal (parent)
- - Tiger (grandchild class) extends Cat

Hope this helps.