StudioPress Themes

StudioPress Themes are the best way to build your website

Hey, for the 2nd review as promised, we’ll take a look at the tools used in building this website. In the first post we looked at Web Hosting, in this one we’ll look at dressing up your site with what is called a theme.

INTRODUCTION

This website is built on WordPress. That’s simply just a bunch of code that creates the general functions you might want and usually has a basic style. On top of that core comes a theme which essentially is just another (smaller) bunch of code that is piled on top.

Themes can add different functionality but are generally used to change the look and feel of a website.

StudioPress creates themes that do this but they add a small middle layer in between that we’ll call a “Platform”. This platform is called Genesis and it’s a bunch of code that makes WordPress better and more stable to build on.

Most people who build their own site will toss a theme at their site and call it a day. StudioPress will do that but will also allow you to make an infinite amount of changes – and if you are a developer – well then it’s like a kid in a candy store!

StudioPress isn’t free. Their themes all have a small upfront, one time cost. Some themes are built by them, while others are by 3rd party developers who are vetted by StudioPress before they are allowed to be sold in their store.

INSTALL

You’ll need a website with a current install of WordPress.org to begin with. Once you have that you’ll need to purchase a theme. They have a incredible assortment in their gallery of themes to start with.

Each theme has different attributes and there’s a demo version that’ll allow you to interact with each before your purchase. What you want to be looking at in a theme is not so much the images and colors but how the theme interacts. Does it have a parallax effect? Is there a large HERO image at the top (like this site). Fonts, colors, images and most everything can be changed, but these things are much harder to change.

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Once you’ve purchased a theme you’ll need to download that to your hard drive. You’ll notice in your download folder that you’ll have 2 themes! No, they didn’t make a mistake, you’ll see that one is called Genesis. This is the platform that the theme you bought runs on. It’s called the “Parent Theme”.

The theme you bought is what we call the “Child Theme”. You’ll need both. This is all stacked one on the other to create your website. If you want to think of it as anything it might be like this:

Go to your website dashboard (yoursite.com/wp-admin/) and then Appearance > Themes > and you should see an add new button at the top. Click on that and you’ll be able to start the upload.

Find the first of two files that you saved on your computer hard drive. I would suggest starting with the Genesis one first, and click “upload”.

Once the files have uploaded and unzipped you’ll have a screen asking you if you want to activate the theme? It might look like below or it might look a little different. We’re going to pass on this one and just close the box with the x.

Now just do the same thing you just did with Genesis and upload the theme you purchased. This time, you’ll want to activate the theme.

This isn’t a DIY on how to build a website but you also have really great instructions that came from StudioPress. If you need help – you can always hire me but that’s another topic.

WHAT DID WE LIKE?

I’ve been a web developer for many years now. I also volunteer time to help build WordPress into what it is. With WordPress, you can create almost anything that you can imagine. StudioPress makes that process so much better by giving you a great base from which to work. While WordPress is great, StudioPress makes it even greater!

What I really like with StudioPress is that if follows along with the open source idea that WordPress started. Anyone can come along and say, “This is good, but I can make something better”. And they do. That’s why the 3rd party theme scene is so vibrant. Everyone has a slightly different take on what a website needs.

WHAT DID WE NOT LIKE?

One of the things I’ve volunteer for in WordPress is the “teaching” department. We were building a curriculum for teachers on WordPress. Yes you could say that we were teaching the teachers on what to teach.

While WordPress is simple, and in following that so is StudioPress, so much of the really cool stuff that you might want to change is done so via css.

Example: The header section of this site is a particular color of blue. The theme came with a dark grey. So I made a small addition to the css like:

.site-header,
.single-post .site-header.shrink,
.site-header.shrink {
	background-color: #1e73be;
}

I also changed the hamburger icon to text (menu). Easy for me to do, but if you don’t know CSS, you’ll have a harder time doing some of the stuff you might want to change. Now I also know that the ‘customizer’ is going to do a better job at allowing you to do things as time goes on but I do wish it was easier for the beginner.

COMPARABLES

Now there’s plenty of alternatives out there. WordPress is open source so literally anyone can create themes. WordPress usually comes with a few installed to start with.

WordPress.org Themes: https://wordpress.org/themes/ These are free themes that others have created. You can expect little to no support with these, but hey, they’re free, right?

Theme Forest: If you did a google search for WordPress themes I’m sure this would come up. It’s a depository of themes that you can buy. There’s an inherent problem though. Virtually anyone can create a theme and put it up for sale on ThemeForest. That becomes a problem in part because there are ways to create themes that are correct and there are ways to create a theme that are really wrong. Looking from the outside it’s hard to tell the difference until you start having issues, and then it’s too late.

Additionally, I’ve seen where a young kid creates a good looking theme, starts making some money, heads off to go to college (or life) and never comes back. That’s a problem when there’s updates that have to be made or your customers sites broke with the latest WordPress update.

Other Site Builders: Technically there are other options out there to build a site outside of WordPress but I’m not a fan of places like Wix. SquareSpace is fine but expensive for most. If you are going it alone you could also look at drupal or other like that but they’ll be more work than a WordPress site.

LINKS

• WordPress: https://wordpress.org/themes/
• StudioPress: StudioPress
• ThemeForest: nope, I’m not going to even link there 😉

CONCLUSION

If you are going to build a website you have a few options. I think of it kind of like building a house. I could hire a contractor or I could build it myself. If I did it myself I’d want to use the best possible materials and build it in a way that was structurally strong. If I hired a contractor I would hope they did the same.

StudioPress is that quality material and structurally strong so it doesn’t matter if you DIY it or hire someone to build it – you’re getting a superior product that will stand tall and strong for a long while!

Photo by Deniz Altindas on Unsplash