This list of 5 Genesis plugins that we use on “almost” every website is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive of the myriad of plugins available for the Genesis Framework. In addition, all of these plugins are free and readily available in the wordpress plugin repository.

That being said, here’s our list of the 5 plugins we us on “almost” every website:

1. Genesis Simple Edits
2. Genesis Simple Sidebars
3. Genesis Title Toggle
4. Genesis Simple Hooks
5. Genesis Connect for Woocommerce
6. Bonus Plugin: Simple Social Icons

Genesis Simple Edits

Genesis Simple Edits, created by Nathan Rice, allows you to easily modify the archive meta data and footer meta content.   The WordPress footer meta content usually contains links to login to the admin area and to wordpres.org.  These are usually links you want to get rid of.  Genesis Simple Edits makes that modification easy and painless.

Here’s the description from the WordPress repository:

This plugin creates a new Genesis settings page that allows you to modify the post-info (byline), post-meta, and footer area on any Genesis theme. Using text, shortcodes, and HTML in the textboxes provided in the admin screen, these three commonly modified areas are easily editable, without having to learn PHP or write functions, filters, or mess with hooks.

Genesis Simple Sidebars

This is easily one of my most used plugins when building a website on the Genesis Framework.  It’s another plugin created by Nathan Rice.  Genesis Simple Sidebars allows you to have a different custom sidebar on every page, if you want.

You create the sidebar in the plugins admin area, which then shows up in the WordPress widgets area.  In the widgets are you can then add any widgets you want.  To activate the sidebar, you simply go to the page you want the sidebar to display on and choose it form the dropdown in the panel on the right.

Here’s the description from the WordPress repository:

This plugin allows you to create multiple, dynamic widget areas, and assign those widget areas to sidebar locations within the Genesis Framework on a per post, per page, or per tag/category archive basis.

Creating widget areas programmatically, then using conditional logic to properly assign them to sidebar locations can be a complex task for a beginner. This plugin allows you to do all this from a simple administration menu, and assign widget areas to sidebar locations with simple drop-down menus within the post/page edit screens, or when editing a tag or category.

Genesis Simple Hooks

Another absolutely “go to” plugin is the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin, again created by Nathan Rice.  This plugin allows you to tap into every hook in the Genesis Framework and put any content you want in that section.  Html, php,  shortcode, whatever content you want, is set into any of the multitude of Genesis hooks. It’s a brilliant plugin that allows for total customization.

Here’s the description from the WordPress repository:

This plugin creates a new Genesis settings page that allows you to insert code (HTML, Shortcodes, and PHP), and attach it to any of the 50+ action hooks throughout the Genesis Theme Framework, from StudioPress.

Instead of the sometimes tedious and unfamiliar process of creating functions in your theme files, this plugin gives you an attractive, easy to use interface for modifying your Genesis theme via the hook system. The plugin accepts HTML, Shortcodes, and PHP and gives you access to all 50+ hooks built into the Genesis theme, and a few built-in WordPress hooks as well.

Genesis Title Toggle

Sometime you just don’t want your page title to display on the page.  Maybe you want to create your own title, or you just don’t want one at all.  The Genesis Title Toggle plugin, created by Bill Erickson, is, as the name suggests, really simple.  It puts a checkbox on each page that allows you to hide the title or not.  There is also a global on/off switch in the Genesis Theme Settings area.

This plugin only works on the page post type, not the default post type out of the box, but you can apply it to other post types with a simple filter if you’re familiar with the code.

Here’s the description from the WordPress repository:

This plugin lets you easily remove the page title from specific pages. Don’t want “Home” at the top of your homepage? Activate, then edit the homepage and check “Hide”.

You can also set sitewide defaults. If you don’t want page titles on any pages, go to Genesis > Theme Settings > Title Toggle and check the appropriate box. Once a post type has the default set to remove, when editing a page you can selectively turn on that page’s title.

Finally, if you’re comfortable with code you can use the be_title_toggle_post_types filter to change the post types this applies to (it only applies to pages by default).

Genesis Connect for Woocommerce

This plugin is where the “almost” comes in to play from the title of this article.

When you build an e-commerce website with Genesis and Woocommerce, you pretty much have to have this plugin installed for it to even work.  I know this plugin is sort of a given, but we thought we should include it in our list in case you’re thinking about building a site with this structure and wondering how it all ties together.

This plugin was developed by Studiopress, the makers of Genesis, so it’s safe to say it works pretty well.

Here’s the description from the WordPress repository:

This plugin replaces WooCommerce’s built-in shop templates with its own Genesis-ready versions, specifically the single-product.php, archive-product.php and taxonomy.php templates needed to display the single product page, the main shop page, and Product Category and Product Tag archive pages.

To allow easy customization of these templates, and ensure that you do not lose your customizations when the plugin is updated, you can place your own copies of these templates in your child theme’s ‘woocommerce’ folder and customize these copies as much as you like. You can also create your own taxonomy-{taxonomy}.php and taxonomy-{taxonomy}-{term}.php templates in the same location and this plugin will find them and use them to display your shop’s Product Category and Product Tag archives. See the Template Hierarchy to learn more about naming requirements for taxonomy templates.

Additionally, the plugin makes Genesis Simple Sidebars and Genesis Simple Menus compatible with WooCommerce.

This version is compatible with WooCommerce 2.1+

Simple Social Icons

Here’s a bonus plugin that we use on “almost” every website, Simple Social Icons.  Another plugin developed by Nathan Rice, it does what the title suggests.  Want social icons in a widget?  Just add this plugin into a widget and supply the link to your social media outlet and you’re done.  You can change colors and icon sizes in the widget, so no coding to be done there.

Here’s the description from the WordPress repository:

Simple Social Icons is an easy to use, customizable way to display icons that link visitors to your various social profiles. With it, you can easily choose which profiles to link to, customize the color and size of your icons, as well as align them to the left, center, or right, all from the widget form (no settings page necessary!).