I recently switched the design of [RicardoBueno.com] from the Minimum Child Theme to the Generate Child Theme. So far, I’m really diggin’ it so I thought I’d share a video that explains how to activate the “Generate Box” as well as show you some of the results I’ve seen in the short 24 hours that I’ve had it live.
(Can’t see this video? Click here.)
What I like about the new Generate Child Theme:
- Conversion from the “Generate Box” appears to be fairly effective. So far, I have 25 new subscribers in the last 48 hours (I haven’t published anything new on the site to drive traffic either). Here’s a screenshot of new subscriber alerts that I’ve uploaded from my inbox. Before, I had to work harder at driving traffic directly to the landing page for the newsletter. It’s much easier to have that conversion take place on the home page.
- Responsive design. What works for a mouse and pointer on a desktop doesn’t necessarily work for your finger on a tablet. What the StudioPress Team has done here is they’ve optimized this theme for various devices (mobile, desktop, tablet) through responsive web design. Check it out on your iPhone – I think it looks great!
- Footer widgets. I’m not a fan of cluttered sidebars, so it’s neat to have the option to place items in your site footer if need be.
- The Generate Child Theme is complete with a landing page template that removes the header and navigation to focus your reader on the content of the page. I’ll be using the landing page template to deliver the lessons in my 7-part series and on-going email newsletter (you can subscribe via the Generate box on the home page).
- Lastly, I’m really diggin’ the magazine style layout of the blog.
Of course you still have 4 color styles, 3 layout options, a custom background option, custom header option, and featured images.
If you have any questions about how to activate the Generate Box, or any other questions regarding StudioPress Theme, let me know in the comments, I’m always happy to help.
And if lead gen is critical element to you, check out the Generate Child Theme. I think you’ll like it.
Im using the ProBlogger theme on my SeeYourToes site and just downloaded Generate yesterday. Was playing with it for a while last night. Going to work on it over the last week of the year and try to launch by first of year. This helps, thanks!
At first, I was a little confused about how the Generate Box worked. I tried designing my own capture form when using the previous (Minimum) theme. I was impressed and pleased to see how easy it was to integrate the generate box and lead capture using a simple text widget. Really, the only thing that needed to be done was photoshop the photo to the right. Other than that, it’s a simple text widget with an Aweber form.
Shoot me a note when you have it installed, would love to see it!
This is timely. I just switched to AgentPress which I’ll be working on all this week. I’m already confused…
Hi Steph, here’s a great (free) ebook from the StudioPress theme. Sort of a step-by-step guide for using the Genesis Framework: http://www.studiopress.com/news/genesis-for-beginners.htm.
With AgentPress, it can be a bit tricky at first. But if you go to your widgets section, really, all you have to do is click-and-drag a widget into the appropriate field that you’d like to activate. So if you want to use the “Welcome” widget, just click-and-drag a text widget in there with whatever text you want to display. Essentially, you activate those fields by activating a widget.
Really, I should throw up a video on that. But let me know if you have any questions along the way!
Congrats on the new design. Looks sharp!
Thanks Amber! Gotta work on the header next, but otherwise, I think it’s getting there 😉
Nice! How’d you fix the featured image showing up twice?
That was strange. Disabled the “display featured image” option in the Genesis Theme settings.
Still had to go into the most recent posts and delete the actual featured image too though.
cool
Thanks man! Kinda stoked about it 🙂
Hi Ricardo
Minimum is brilliant, I’m using it on my new site.
You have made a great job of setting up Generate on this site and the video is a great resource.
Looks like you and I are both in love with Genesis.
So how exactly do you integrate Aweber forms into the generate box? Nick has a plugin, I’ve installed it. He also gives instructions on how to include 23 lines of code in the CSS file, but I’m a novice and can’t follow what he’s saying in the new forum.