You’re not a dummy, right, you know how to write and you know what’s good and what’s not, but the last time you had to edit your CSS your site went white. It’s worse now that you’re using this awesome theme called Genesis where every design is a ‘child’ theme that you don’t even want to edit because if WordPress taught you anything it’s that you don’t touch the plugin and theme files!
Well great. Now what?
I’m not a consultant. I suck at it, I hate it, and I don’t enjoy it. My friends the Norcrosses over at Reaktiv Studios are a dev agency that makes themes and plugins and even updates (they’re not paying me or compensating at all for this statement, I don’t even use ’em, I just like ’em). They’re good at it, and to make their life, and your life, easier, they came up with a new plugin called Genesis Design Palette Pro.
Previously, if you want to edit your theme, I would have said to use Jetpack’s CSS editor. Heck, that’s really what I do here, since it keeps revisions of your css changes. But most of what people change are the standard things that make your site look like an individual. The CSS is just a wall of weird, codey, text thing that made no sense when I first looked at CSS back in 1999. And that’s really how everyone did stuff back when Prince was en vogue.
But now there’s that nice Theme Customizer built in to WordPress that lets you edit the most basic (and most commonly used) aspects of your site right there and see the changes live! Wouldn’t it be nice if every theme let you play with its design like this?
Come here. Closer. The Genesis Design Pro plugin does that for you in a way that looks ‘right’ and familiar. Don’t believe me?
Looks familiar, don’t it? Okay, it’s not exactly the same, yet, but give it time. You can edit for mobile or desktop, adjust colors and padding with simple interfaces that are way easier for a lot of people to master than the weird CSS world. You can even add that freeform CSS if you want.
I think my only wish for it would be to have an export to css function, so I could design everything, save it, and then plunk it on a site as is.
Comments
13 responses to “Genesis Design for Gummies”
First off, thank you for the kind words 🙂
Now, to your one wish item – import / export: that does exist in the plugin. there’s a button on the main settings tag to export the entire setup as a JSON file, and import it there (or on another site using the plugin). It’s just not enabled on the demo versions for security purposes.
@Norcross: Well that’s fair! Yay for exports, they make moving a site design to Multsite super easy.
@Ipstenu (Mika Epstein): indeed. and the plugin itself is multisite compatible, it creates a different CSS file for each site based on the site ID
@Norcross:
What I really need is the ability to create both common and private CSS snippets on a multisite install.
A “common core” of CSS for all of my sites and then private CSS for the individual sites themselves.
Perhaps you’ll consider that as a future feature.
@Dave Navarro: Snippets the user can edit or can’t edit?
Because IIRC you can activate this (or Jetpack) per Site and have CSS edited per site. I know you can with jetpack (I’m using it that way right now).
Is it necessary to describe CSS as strange and difficult in order to promote tools like these? The downside with design-without-coding tools is their tendency to discourage learning and independence when they could actually do the opposite.
I tried the demo. It looks like Woo Canvas with somewhat less control and a much, much better interface built on a better framework that combine together for a higher but reasonable price tag.
Having the ability to export all your changes as a CSS file so you could dispense with the plugin would be great, but it would also mean you only ever buy one copy, need only one site license, and generate all your designs from your own dev site/s. That probably would not work unless this feature cost a lot, but it might not be too hard to accomplish on your own anyway.
@Dan Knauss: CSS is code. Not everyone should have to learn how to code in order to tweak the basics on a website. If we actually want WordPress to be easier for everyone to use, and continue to democratize publishing, we have to consider these alternatives for people who don’t want to learn to code.
No one HAS to learn CSS code. I still barely know JS, and that doesn’t make me any less of a developer. But it;s by choice that I want to be one. My Dad just wants to tweak the background color from red to orange without having to ask me for help.
@Dan Knauss: I get the thinking about not code not being scary (hell, I’m a developer), but even I’ll admin certain things with CSS can be complicated, especially when you get to dependencies and how one element may supersede another. More importantly, there are always going to be people who do not, and will not, learn code. And that’s OK. I’m not learning how to fix the transmission in my truck or replacing parts in my home’s AC unit either.
As to the CSS export, the plugin does allow for the export of settings as a JSON file, which can be imported onto another site using the plugin. It’s not visible on the demo site due to security reasons. Yes, if someone really wanted to, they could go and fetch the CSS file and apply it manually elsewhere. I knew that going in, and honestly I’m not worried about the few folks that will do that, since most folks like that will find a way around it regardless.
This is not “democratizing publishing.” It’s making WP design more accessible at a cost. That’s fine, but it’s not simply “democratizing.”
@Norcross: “Folks like that” might be an opportunity for you; the use case I described isn’t nefarious, it’s efficient.
Of course some people will never learn to code, and no one has to. Some will pay a premium for software and services that lets them build sites without learning to code. Would you extend your analogy and hire such a person to fix your AC system or vehicle? Or would you be a little uncomfortable about a future with few traditional mechanics and a lot of people who tap into your hardware over a network, run diagnostics, and turn the work order over to a shop of workers? That’s probably happening too, and I can see it working more and less well. Some things are definitely lost though. That’s what concerns me.
@Dan Knauss: We’re talking CSS here.
If my AC guy knew how to quickly tap in and fix cosmetic issues with my unit using a tool, I’d be happy.
@Ipstenu (Mika Epstein): AC units have cosmetic issues you’d pay to fix? 🙂
I guess my concern is that commercializing WP for a design-without-technical-skills market will lead to businesses built to profit from scale, not quality. The design equivalent of “corporate farming” as described by this insightful local farmer/WP user: http://www.thegoodearth.us/big-ag-temp-work/#blog
As a followup to my earlier comments, I’d like to add that I’ve had a good exchange with Andrew about these issues. Originally I thought I thought his comment about CSS portability indicated he excluded simple CSS export (and might take steps to obfuscate it somehow) to prevent abuse. The CSS is actually not obfuscated in any way, and Andrew has a plugin awaiting approval in the repository that will allow export of the raw CSS file. I think that’s great and appreciate his support and diligence with his other plugins too. One thing he does that I haven’t seen too much elsewhere is provide simple documentation about how to modify plugin behavior in your page templates and functions.php. I like to see that the evolution toward “doing stuff without coding” in WordPress doesn’t overly hide the inner workings behind a curtain. 🙂
@Dan: Andrew has an approved plugin 😉 I approved it yesterday.