It’s a pity when you claim you are a developer, a WordPress developer, a php coding guru, and you make nothing more than copy theme descriptions and placing them as blogposts, stuffed with affiliate links to their respective demos.
I talk now especially about the Genesis promoters, who are sometimes promoting themselves (I really don’t figure what with) as coaches or quite as tutorial creators.
Affiliate bait
Unfortunately only a few are so dedicated and efficient. The great majority of this fake gurus is just promoting affiliate links. Most of them have disclaimers, like I have a disclaimer placed in several areas of this site. I also promote Genesis Framework, but I don’t do it like them.
WordPress Developer – Empty Words
I consider that copying texts from StudioPress demos and presenting them as reviews in your own “developer” blog is just a scam to cosmetize your affiliate link. By the way, I don’t pretend in this post that I’ll teach you, the reader, how to use a certain Genesis child theme, but how to search for useful advice if you need it. You are pushed by copyblogger media, the owners of StudioPress, to employ one of their certified developers, but these guys are pushing you to a lot of things. Once upon a time, you were pushed to employ a team of two galls who were selling a $300 package which teaches you to customize Prose Theme, the most expensive Studiopress theme at the time, two-three years ago. It was expensive, because Prose was the most customizable themes of them all, a real deal for beginners. You could change everything just by “point and click”. Then they destroyed the theme, they “upgraded” it to a 2.0 version which was the worse move I’ve seen in years. I wonder how nobody hasn’t sued them, because this new version also developed some bugs on its own. To “upgrade” you had to follow some specialized steps which took a beginner several hours. Upgrading it automatically, as any other theme, would crush your site. Without a back-up (one can sometimes forget to make it, being in a hurry, and not even concieving that anything can happen from these formidable geeks), you could have real problems. Now, the theme is “retired”. I mentioned that so you understand where your $300 would have gone, and I’m not sure for what time?
The greater Genesis and WordPress developer of them all, with already published materials on his personal blog to support this is Nick the Geek. I remember me five years ago when I started with Genesis, asking some elementary things on the forum. A forum that ceased to be what it used to be. Nick’s answers were witty, kind and correct. He made me to learn php and CSS on my own, but only after a while. When I started to buy from StudioPress, they used to promise you the Moon, the Sea, and the Sun in terms of support if you got problems.
Very soon, Nick was involved in other things, and copyblogger changed the forum and its terms. When I asked once :”Where can I change a certain value on a chapter header”, I received this answer: “You should employ someone to do that for you, we do not offer this kind of support”. It was a very simple question whose solution I soon figured out on my own. She was a lady, undoubtedly very witty, but very bitchy. The answer would have consisted in three words, “On your style page”. I was very upset, and I started to be more careful.
Copyblogger Media or StudioPress?
The themes are not flawless, but they are good, really good, I never ceased to love them. Now the copyblogger guys invented a lot of stuff to make it more difficult as a beginner, and for them to make more money, if possible with much less work. They want to make the pro package they push you to buy, a recurring thing, like a subscription. Before was something like “buy the package with all our themes with this price, and you’ll have access to every new theme for life”. Now, or at least after the end of this month (March 2016), to have access to the new themes, you have to buy the package and to pay an annual subscription. The not very advantageous thing in all was that in the package are included only the StudioPress themes, not “all”, the great third party creations are only sold there individually.
Anyway, I want to continue to show you what made me writing this article. I have been impressed by Philip Gledhill who in less words and lots of facts is showing everyone how to do a thing or two with any particular issue concerning certain Genesis child themes. He has also a YouTube channel. As for YouTube, here’s an explanatory link I do not recommend you to like or positively consider because it’s just an example of all the bad things I said in this post. What is funny is that he has five favorable comments, which is an awful lot for the 12 minutes of empty talking, and that at the moment I wrote this article, he doesn’t even use a Genesis theme on his “coaching” site.
[The image I used to illustrate this post is a screenshot from another WordPress developer who actually teaches you nothing you need.]
If you liked what you read (and for that I humbly thank you for your patience), subscribe to this blog by Email! Follow this blog on Twitter, and on Facebook! For a joyous day, check out my pins on Pinterest or my grams on Instagram 😄. I hope you like this blog so much that you think it’s time to take a step further by becoming yourself a blogger; in order to do that have the kindness to read the Own Your Website offer I have prepared for you! You won’t regret. Thanks for passing by 😄 Speak your mind, don’t be shy!
Copyright © 2016 Rodolfo Grimaldi Blog – A WordPress Developer Who Teaches You Nothing
