Simple Edits Tutorial – a StudioPress, Genesis plugin

This Simple Edits tutorial is about a StudioPress plugin, you must be using the Genesis Framework to use this plugin. You use Simple Edits to show information above and below your blog post, things like…

• The post author’s name.
• The date the post was uploaded.
• A link to more posts in the same category.
• A link to more posts tagged with the same tags.

Simple Edits gives you control over post info, post meta and footer credits. The plugin only works on StudioPress or Genesis Framework sites. Without Simple Edits, you’d have to use PHP to make these changes. The screen-shot below shows which parts of the blog post we’re dealing with.

This Simple Edits tutorial helps you display information in three places.

Above the blog post

• Post Info

Below the blog post

• Post Meta

The footer of blog posts and web pages.

• “Return to top of page” link (bottom left hand).
• Footer Credits text area (bottom right hand).

Post info and post meta only appear on blog posts, but the footer area is the same on posts and pages.

So, we’ve installed the plugin and have a basic idea of what Simple Edits is.

Now we can start to use Simple Edits plugin.

In your wordPress dashboard, go to…

• Genesis > Simple Edits.

You’ll see five text boxes where you can paste short codes, text and HTML.

Some short codes you might want to use…

Short codes are the square brackets and the words inside them.

Simple Edits is easy to use

Just paste a shortcode in one of the Simple Edits dialogue boxes, and the relevant information will appear on your blog post.

Some information you might want to add above or below your post include…

• The date and time the post was published.
• The post author’s name.
• A link to the author’s website.
• A link to more posts by this same author.
• A link to other posts tagged with the same tag as this post.
• A link to posts in the same category as this post.

Using Simple Edits to edit your site’s footer text

In the footer area of your web pages and blog posts, you’ll see some text and links.

In the bottom left hand corner you’ll see a Return to top of page link. This is very useful for jumping back to the top of he page, especially on long pages or posts.

In the bottom right hand of your page or post, you’ll see links to WordPress.org and StudioPress.com as well as a login link.

The Simple Edits plugin also makes it easy to edit or remove these links using the dialogue boxes labelled…

• Footer “Back to Top” Link
• Footer Credits Text

Or you can modify the entire footer text area in one go by pasting text, HTML and shortcodes into the Simple Edits dialogue box labelled…

• Footer Output

The Footer Output text box overrides anything you type or paste in to the other two footer dialogue boxes.