Setup Generate Pro theme and start building your mailing list subscribers
If you have a basic WordPress site but want to look more professional, Generate Pro is a great theme to use.
And Generate Pro focuses squarely on building your email subscriber list through blogging.
To setup Generate Pro theme takes less than 30 minutes. That includes About Us, Our Services and Contact Us pages as well as a contact form and email list sign up box.
To pay a web design agency to setup Generate Pro theme for you would cost serious money. But you can buy the theme for just $99.00. You can usually get good quality starter hosting (I recommend WordPress.org) for less than $5 per month for your first year.
So for about $150 you can have a well designed, securely coded website and blog online for a whole year. And once you’ve bought and setup Generate Pro theme, you just pay for your web hosting in years to come.
Ready? Let’s Setup Generate Pro theme
Watch the video, then read the instructions and click through the screen-shot slides. You’ll soon have your own StudioPress designed (Generate Pro) site up and running on the Genesis Framework. Genesis is one of the most flexible and robust foundations available for any small business website.
Before you start you’ll need a basic WordPress site that has 4 blog posts and 3 web pages.
If you need help buying a domain name, setting up hosting and installing WordPress watch the videos at InstallGenesis.com.
Each blog post needs a featured image 700×300 pixels. You don’t have to have featured images assigned to your blog posts, but if you want to make your site look as professional as the StudioPress demo I highly recommend taking the time to find and use some good featured images.
Let’s setup Generate Pro theme, installing and configuring this StudioPress theme is easier than you might think
First in your WordPress dashboard, go to…
- Settings > General
- Type your site’s title and tagline
Now go to Settings > Reading…
- Choose Front Page Displays – Your Latest Posts
- Blog Page Shows at Most 3 Posts (pick any number you like)
- Click SAVE!
Next go to Dashboard > Appearance > Themes
- Add New
- Upload Theme
- Browse and find the theme you downloaded from StudioPress
- Choose the Genesis Framework
- Click Install Now
- Do NOT activate the Genesis Framework
- Click Return to Themes Page
- Add New > Upload > Choose Theme (generate-pro.zip) > Open > Install Now
- Now Activate Generate Pro theme (not the Genesis Framework)
These screen shots show how to install Generate Pro theme
You have now almost setup Generate Pro theme. But there’s some additional tweaking to do.
We’re going to set the blog page to show snippets of each post, not the complete content of every post on the blog home page.
Go to…
- Dashboard > Genesis > Theme Settings
- There are several settings you need to change on this page.
- Color style > choose a colour
- Default Layout (sidebar on left, right or no sidebars)
- Breadcrumbs (choose where to use them)
- Enable or Disable Comments and Trackbacks (let other people put their comments on your website)
- Content Archives > Display Post Content (350 characters, include featured image 700×300)
- Blog page template > Number of posts to show 3 (whatever you choose)
Click the SAVE button!
You now have a basic blog home page set up but we still have more work to do.
What are featured images?
When writing or editing a post, in the right hand sidebar choose set featured image.
This image will be used by WordPress to automatically include an image in your theme, usually at the top of the post.
Adding the search box and sidebar widget
- Go to Appearance > Widgets
- Drag the search widget in to the Header Right widget area
- Drag Recent Posts widget in to the Primary Sidebar
Make a Navigation Bar
- Appearance > Menus
- Type a name for your menu
- Click > Create New Menu
- Click Pages > View All > Select All > Add to Menu
- Drag the pages (links) to the order you desire
- Click > Save Menu
Now select the Manage Locations TAB
- Select your menu from the drop down list in the Primary Navigation section
- SAVE your changes!
You now have a fully functioning website
Your site has…
- A Home page and 3 other pages
- 4 blog posts, 3 posts are listed on the front page. At the bottom of the front page there is a next page button that shows more blog posts, if you have any. As you add new blog posts to your site, they will be added automatically to the top of this list
- A list of your most recent blog posts is in the sidebar
- A search this site box is in the top right corner of your site
- A navigation bar is on every page and post
Adding the Email Sign-Up box
In your WordPress Dashboard go to…
- Plugins > Add New
- Search for Genesis eNews Extended (it’s by Brandon Kraft)
- Install and activate the plugin
- We also want to use a different plugin for our contact us page. We’ll install that at the same time.
- Search for Contact Form 7. Install and activate this plugin too
Genesis eNews Extended plugin.
Installing this plugin adds a new Widget to our available widgets
Go to WordPress Dashboard…
- Appearance > Widgets
- Drag the Genesis eNews Extended widget to the Home Featured widget area
- AND drag the Genesis eNews Extended widget to the After Entry widget area
You now have the Genesis eNews Extended widget in two different widget areas
You need to configure these two widgets using the same text in both
- In the Title: box type the headline you want to appear at the top of your email sign up box
- In the Text to show before form: box, put the text that you want to appear in the paragraph to the left, or above, the box where people add their email address
- In the Form action: box, paste the small piece of code you cut from the big block of code you got from MailChimp
- In the E-mail Field: type EMAIL in all capitals
If you don’t know how to get the correct piece of code from MailChimp, watch this video
Make sure you configure BOTH widgets.
- One in Home Featured widget area (puts an email sign-up form at the top of your home page)
- And one in After Entry widget area (puts an email sign-up form below every blog post you write)
The contact us form
The site is almost finished, but we still need a contact us form on the contact us page
We installed Contact Form 7 plugin at the same time as we installed Genesis eNews Extended. So setting up a basic contact form is easy.
In the WordPress Dashboard select…
- Contact > Contact forms
- Copy the short code that was made when you installed the plugin
- Paste the short code into your Contact Us page
If you don’t find the ready made form, just click the Add New button. In Contact Form 7 click Add New. Choose a language and click a second Add New button, then click save. You’ll see the automatically created short code. Paste this code into your Contact Us web page.
When someone fills in this basic form it will be mailed to the email address you used when setting up WordPress.
Don’t forget, Contact Form 7 and Genesis eNews Extended are two completely different things.
Contact Form 7 slides
That’s it folks. You’ve setup Generate Pro theme and now have a fully functioning website with…
- 3 web pages (Our Services, About Us and Contact Us)
- 4 blog posts
- Contact form
- MailChimp newsletter sign up form
Pat yourself on the back, have a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Then learn some more about Genesis it’s really powerful!
WordPress.org hosting page usually has some good deals.