PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Builder is extremely flexible. It allows for easy creation of different layouts on your WordPress website, add the Builder Style Manager plugin and you can easily edit the CSS code to do your bidding, and when you purchase Builder you also get access to ALL of the Builder Child themes.

Another thing that makes Builder appealing is that iThemes is constantly updating it and all the child themes and when there is a WordPress update they are always ahead of the curve and have their themes ready to work with the new version. Also their support is magnificent, just post a message on the board and you’ll soon have an answer to your issue. The moderators provide excellent support and they really know their stuff. Great bunch of people.

For me Builder is the best WordPress theme framework to use and is second only to custom coding an entire site. I highly recommend that people use Builder to create their sites.

You install Canvas just as you would any theme.  You can upload the zip file through the Appearance->Themes->Add Theme page or you can decompress the file and upload it via ftp.  Once activated Canvas adds a Menu box to the WordPress admin menu on the left side of the admin page.  In that Menu box are four (4) menu items: Theme Options, Framework Settings, SEO, and Custom Navigation.

That may not seem like much, but when you click on the Theme Options or Framework Settings menu item, you are given all sorts of settings to play with.  Going into detail on all the options that are available would make for a very long article indeed and I don’t plan to write that long of an article. 

Canvas doesn’t utilize the “child theme” functionality available with WordPress but is more like Thesis in that the settings you make can be overwritten when you upgrade the theme.  Of course there are ways to avoid this, just as with Thesis, but this approach to building websites is more difficult to keep up to date.

Overall though, WooThemes Canvas theme is worth the money, very customizable, and fairly straigthforward to use.  Just don’t let all the customization options overwhelm you.

I give it an overall score of 4 stars

For example, you purchase the Genesis Theme and you’ll get  a basic “child” theme to go along with it.  You install both on your installation of WordPress, but the one you activate is the ‘child” theme.  All of your customizations go into the “child” theme and not into the main Genesis theme.  So when you upgrade, you only upgrade the main Genesis theme and not your “child” theme.  This helps to keep all of your customizations in tact when you upgrade the core of Genesis.  The “child” theme calls functions and gets it’s basic workings from the “parent” theme.

The parent/child theme functionality was first implemented in WordPress with version 2.7.  I really like a theme framework to use the parent/child functionality.

Genesis and a child theme are easy to install, just go to your Dashboard then scroll down to “Appearance” and click on “Themes.”  Once that page comes up, click on the top tab labeled “Install Themes” and then you want to select “Upload.”  Click on the “Browse” button and find Genesis on your hard drive and double-click on the Genesis filename.  Then click “Install Now” and away you go.  Repeat this for the child theme and then you’re ready to begin the setup and customization of your new website. 

The version of Genesis I used for this review is Genesis 1.2.1

Genesis adds a menu box on the left side of the WordPress Dashboard aptly titled, “Genesis.”  Under that you have 3 menu options, “Theme Settings”, “SEO Settings”, “Purchase Themes”.

Now that you have installed Genesis, the obvious selection would be to go to “Theme Settings.”  Once you get to that page you are presented with several options.  The boxes that are available are:

• Information – Information about your current installation of Genesis
• General Settings – Select either dynamic text or a header image for the header area as well as turn a header widget area on or off
• Primary Navigation – Slight menu customization done here
• Primary Navigation Extras – You can add a either a Twitter Link, Today’s Date, RSS Feed link, or a Search Form in the Primary Navigation
• Secondary Navigation – An additional menu you can activate and customize, slightly
• Comments/Trackbacks – Turn comments and trackbacks on and off for posts and pages
• Single Post – Turn an author box on or off
• Breadcrumbs – Enable breadcrumbs on Home page, posts, pages, or archives
• Content Archives – Setup how archives are displayed
• Blog Page – Minor customization of the blog page
• Header/Footer Scripts – Here’s where you insert additional scripts such as Google Analytics

That might seem like a lot, but it’s not.  This is where I think Genesis could be much more robust than it is.

The “SEO Settings” menu selection offers some good customization but it doesn’t end there.  Genesis adds SEO fields to each of your posts and pages, so you can do custom SEO for each post you create.  With this there is no need for an SEO plugin.

When you create a post or a page, you do have the option of selecting a layout with no sidebars, 1 sidebar on the left or right, 2 sidebars, both on the right or left, or 1 sidebar on each side of the content.  This is still a bit basic, but at least you have that level of customization available to you and it’s easily selectable.  However, I did have one problem with this.  When I created a “Blog” page I initially selected to have a sidebar on each side of the content and then published the page.  I looked at it and sure enough it has a sidebar on each side of the page.  The problem came when I went to “Settings -> Reading” and selected a static home page and had the posts set to the Blog page.

I refreshed the Blog page and wow, the layout changed.  Now I only had a sidebar on the left, and that was it.  I’d lost my second sidebar and I still can’t figure out why this happened.

All in all, StudioPress has a decent WordPress Theme Framework with Genesis, but it needs work to come up to the level of some of the other theme frameworks and for it to be considered a good framework. To do serious customization of your site though, you still need to do quite a bit of CSS work.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t that impressed with Genesis.  Yes, it is only version 1.2.1, so I do hope that in subsequent versions they do add more control over your WordPress website and bring more functionality and customization to Genesis.

My rating for Genesis?

2 Stars.

It’s been exciting as well, and challenging at times, but overall I’ve had a log of fun doing this.

Beginning next week I’ll be publishing a review each week culminating in a comparison of the themes I’ve reviewed.  I know I’ve said before that I would be publishing these articles and have not done so yet, but that is due to the decision I made to wait until I was completely done with the testing of all frameworks.

You might be surprised, you might not, but I will tell you this, you will get my honest opinion on these frameworks.  Look for them beginning next week!

Whether you are using the famous “5-minute install” or installing WordPress with Fantastico or SimpleScripts, you can set your admin username and password to anything you like. But there’s a couple of things you can’t control with the Fantastico or SimpleScripts method, and that’s the database name and table prefix. To truly create a secure installation, both of these need to be custom settings as well.

Ok, so the first step for creating a secure WordPress installation is to set a unique database name and database username and password. The default database name with the Fantastico or SimpleScripts install will always begin with “wp” and hackers know this all too well. You want to make this something unique that will still let you know what the database is for.  You’ll need to access your hosting account to create the database and database user.

Second, you want to use a unique username. The default is “admin” and guess what, all the hackers know this fact. So by NOT setting the username to something unique you’re helping anyone that would want to hack into your site.

Third, you need to set a unique and secure password and it needs to have lowercase and uppercase letters, symbols, and numbers, and should be at least 12 characters. So you’re password should be something like this: lq}D6n7Zie^2. You want it to be as random as possible so when you are creating the password clear your mind and let the letters, symbols, and numbers bubble up in your thoughts. Oh and be sure to write it down somewhere.

And the fourth and final security measure that should be handled during installation is the database table prefix. If you have used the famous “5-minute install” you can set this easily. However, if you use Fantastico or SimpleScripts to do the install, you’ll have to get a plugin to change the table prefix. By default the table prefix is set to “wp_” and again, hackers know this, so by allowing the table prefix to be set to the default “wp_” it’s just like leaving the back door to your house unlocked. Make the table prefix meaningful to you but also keep it short.

Follow these suggestions the next time you install WordPress and you’ll be on your way to having a very secure WordPress installation.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

I now have 5 frameworks to review.  Thesis, Builder, Genesis, Canvas, and Hybrid.  I’m looking forward to putting them all to the test.

I’ll have a review ready soon.

However, there are also Premium Themes available, and these you have to pay for.  Then there are the Frameworks.  They are called themes, but they are far beyond a theme, they are theme creators, and that’s why they are referred to as Frameworks.  You purchase these frameworks, install them, and then the fun begins. 

I purchased the Developer Option for the Thesis theme (framework) when I began being a webmaster for a friend of mine, because that’s what they were using.  I figured I needed to get it so I could use it on my site and learn how to use it.  Now though, I have obtained the iThemes Builder Theme and the StudioPress Genesis Theme.  All three of these themes are considered Frameworks.  Now that I have all three of these though, I’m going to run them through their paces and just see, which one of these is the best.

I will be writing a series of articles about these Frameworks, first reviewing each one then completing the series with a comparison of the three.

So which one of these will come out on top?  Well, I don’t know just yet.  Even though I’ve been using Thesis for a couple of months, I have no prior judgments about it or the others.  I have no favorites here, and I will be honest and unbiased in my reviews and comparison.

The first review will be about Thesis.  Might as well, I’ve already been using it for a while, so I might as well start there.  Check back next week for that review.

Follow the series by subscribing to the blog and even go to The WordPress Webmaster Facebook page and click the “Like” button.  You could also follow me on Twitter @WPWebmaster

1. Login Lockdown
2. Invisible Defender

Login Lockdown does just what it says, it locks down your login page if someone tries to login to your blog without the proper username and password.  You can adjust it to how many times you’ll let them make the mistake before locking them out.  And you can also determine the amount of time they will be locked out as well!  This is great for defending against bot attacks on your WordPress website login page and helps keep those hackers out of your admin area.

Invisible Defender is a great bot defender plugin.  It adds 2 extra fields to all of your forms, including comment forms, registration forms, login forms, etc.  These extra fields are invisible but bots will fill one of the two fields which triggers Invisible Defender into action and creates an error and the form information isn’t posted to your blog/site.

I highly recommend that you install these two plugins right away as you’ll see that Invisible Defender will even catch more spam than Akismet.