Super Customizer is all about easily bringing your design to life right before your eyes, without having to type a single line of code. This is done by using the already native WordPress Customizer found in the admin menu Appearance > Customize. Right there you get a preview of your design changes while you select and modify options.
The problem is that most themes don’t utilize this built in functionality of WordPress. Many still try to create elaborate and extremely branded theme settings panels with endless options. This isn’t a good practice for a couple reasons:
- WordPress continues to innovate and absorb popular functionality. The release of WordPress 3.4 made “theme options” built in. That means the customizer functionality is developed and maintained by the WordPress community and not a proprietary third party, which results in better security and scalability. Third party option panels tend to bring extra code into the theme that wouldn’t be needed if it used the built libraries and classes offered by Customizer.
- Theme panels tend to become dated quickly and the look and feel doesn’t match the new WordPress UI. Since version 3.8 the WordPress admin UI has improved leaps and bounds allowing users to select their own look. Third party options panels usually don’t adopt the WordPress UI.
Our first version of Super Customizer is for the very powerful Genesis Theme.
Out of the box Genesis is a fantastic framework and is meant to be customized. With a few simple plugins you can extend your site logic with ease and have full control of the content being displayed everywhere. However to customize the design of Genesis you need some coding skills. It’s clean and flat design is a great place to start, but most will want to make it their own. Genesis comes with a Child Theme where you can place all style changes, and functions, and keep all of your customizations separate from the parent theme. That way when you update Genesis you won’t lose those customizations. It’s really the best way to develop a theme.
However, if you aren’t a designer, it could take you days or weeks to finally get your theme looking the way you want it to. But thats where Genesis Super Customizer comes in. In a walk through demo of version 1 we show you how you can customize the design of your theme in 15 minutes. Super Customizer saves you time by being able to see the changes take place while you make them.
Even if you are a designer, Genesis Super Customizer can save you a ton of time by allowing you to save different templates of your themes, giving you starting points for customizing your clients’ themes. You can add a fixed header by just checking a box. You can make the wrap width wider by dragging a slider. Customize the footer credits text and change all the background colors.
Using Genesis Super Customizer adds virtually no lag to your load time. It seamlessly integrates with the Genesis Theme, building off of it’s existing framework and utilizing the existing power of the WordPress Customize. No crazy third party libraries here, just extended core WordPress and Genesis.
We’re really looking forward to the future of Super Customizer and hope for you to join us.
After modifying and hacking together bits and pieces of various Genesis themes (anything to avoid coding!), I’m super excited to find your plugin. Installing today and looking forward to playing with the plugin and the very generic stock Genesis child theme. From what I’ve seen thus far, I’m super excited. I’ll let you know what I come up with .
Thanks a bunch!