I’ve just taken on a new client who is looking for a business website that will grab attention and rank well in the search engines and… his corporate colour is orange.
The first thing I do with a new client is head over to the StudioPress website, look through their child themes and find one that fits the site usage and has the right colour scheme.
When I loaded the Outreach Pro theme and changed the colour scheme to orange, my client’s eyes lit up and I knew I’d found the right theme.
But just a minute, isn’t the Outreach theme a dedicated Church theme? Sure it is, but all the features that make it a perfect Church theme also make it a perfect business theme.
A perfect business theme with fabulous features
Outreach Pro is a page based Genesis child theme that is fully mobile responsive, HTML5-powered and built on Genesis 2.0.
It has a fully widgetised homepage and includes the following features:
- Five colour styles – choose the colour that best suits your brand. Choose from blue, green, orange, purple and red. The demo site uses green.
- Six layout options – choose from six combinations of sidebars and content for all your pages and posts including a full width option.
- Custom header – easily and quickly upload your own header image using the WordPress uploader.
- Featured images – supports WordPress featured images.
- Theme options – allows you to control many of your theme options, such as Site Title and Description, from within your WordPress admin area.
- Threaded comments enabled – see the flow of comments easily with “inset” threaded comments enabled.
Genesis 2.0 was released in August 2013 and since then StudioPress have been updating old themes and producing new themes to be HTML5 ready.
For a full list of HTML5 ready child themes check out All the latest Genesis child themes.
Setting up Outreach Pro… it’s all done with widgets
No coding skills are required to set up Outreach Pro, setup uses a combination of:
WordPress native functionality – for site title and description, custom header, custom background, menus etc.
Widget areas – all you have to do is drag widgets into these widget areas, add content and save.
When you buy Outreach Pro you get access to the download area where you’ll find full and comprehensive setup instructions including screenshots and any html used in the theme demo. If you want to use the html all you have to do is copy and paste it.
The setup documentation covers everything you need from “Pre-Installation Setup” through to “Special Widget areas” and is broken down into the following sections:
Setup content sections for the Outreach Pro theme
- Pre-Installation Setup – runs through compatibility and plugins. You need WordPress version 3.6+ and Genesis Framework version 2.0+ and three plugins are used in the Outreach Pro theme demo. Plugins used are:
- Theme Installation – provides a link to a tutorial on “How to Install Genesis or a Genesis Child Theme”.
- How to Import Demo Content – provides a link to a tutorial on “How to Import the Demo Site Content”.
- How to Configure the Genesis Theme Settings – configure your Genesis theme settings from your WordPress dashboard via Genesis > Theme Settings.
- How to Configure the Site Title Header Text – the site title and description for your site (Tagline) are set via Settings > General and adding a Site Title and Tagline.
- How to Use a Custom Header Image – you can set a Logo Image rather than a text based Site Title via Appearance > Header. The default logo size is 40 × 100 pixels.
- How to Use a Background Image or Color – display an image or add a background colour behind the content area of the site via Appearance > Background.
- How to Configure the Navigation Menus – set the default navigation areas via Appearance > Menus > Manage Locations.
- Header Right Widget Area – a Simple Social Icons widget is used in the demo of the Outreach Pro theme in the header right widget area.
- How to Configure the Home Page – the Outreach Pro theme demo home page is configured via two widget areas.
- Home – Top: a full width widget area configured using the Genesis Responsive Slider widget.
- Home – Bottom: a full width widget area configured to display 4 widgets horizontally across the home page using the Genesis-Featured Page widget.
- How to Configure the Primary Sidebar Area – the Primary Sidebar area displays to the right side of the content area and uses the following widgets:
- Genesis – Featured Posts Widget
- Recent Posts Widget
- How to Configure the Footer Widget Areas – Outreach Pro has 4 Footer Widget areas. You may use any widgets you like in these areas, but the demo site uses the following:
- Footer 1 Widget area: Text Widget.
- Footer 2 Widget area: Text Widget.
- Footer 3 Widget area: Search Widget and a Tag Cloud Widget.
- Footer 4 Widget area: Genesis – eNews Extended Widget.
- How to Create a Blog Page – When using a widgetized home page it can be helpful to create a general blog style page to display elsewhere on your site. This section gives full instructions on how to create a blog page.
- Special Widget areas Included in the Outreach Pro Theme – Outreach Pro includes three special widget area designed to display additional content on your site:
- After Entry Widget Area: displays after the content on single posts.
- Sub Footer – Left: displays above Footer Widget in the left three-quarters of the content area.
- Sub Footer – Right: displays above Footer Widget in the right one-quarter of the content area.
Credit:
The above information is a summary of the setup instructions for the Outreach Pro Genesis child theme in the StudioPress download area.
As you can see the setup information is thorough and comprehensive allowing you to easily set up your theme and… absolutely no coding skills required.
In the next section I’ll show you how easy it is to set up the homepage.
When you purchase a StudioPress child theme, you’ll be given access to the StudioPress download area.
This area contains all the themes you’ve purchased plus comprehensive setup instructions for each theme including screenshots and any HTML code used in the demo site.
The setup instructions also give details of plugins and plugin settings used on the demo site.
Setting up the Outreach Pro widgetised homepage
The Outreach Pro theme demo home page is configured via two widget areas and two special widget areas:
- Home – Top: A full width widget area configured using the Genesis Responsive Slider widget
- Home – Bottom: A full width widget area configured to display 4 widgets horizontally across the home page using the Genesis-Featured Page widget.
- Two special widget areas: Sub Footer–Left and Sub Footer–Right are two widget areas, which display above the Footer on every page and post.
Note: If no Widget areas are active in any of the Home Page specific Widget Areas a Blog Style Home page will be displayed. If you wish to use a Static Page for your home page do not add widgets to the Home Page widget areas since this will override the Home Page setting.
How to configure the Home-Top widget area
To activate the Slider feature of the Outreach Pro Theme Home page add the Genesis – Responsive Slider widget to the Home – Slider widget area as shown below:
The slider settings used on the demo site can be found in the StudioPress download area.
How to configure the Home-Bottom widget area
The Home – Bottom widget area displays 4 widgets horizontally across the Home Page just below the Slider using four Genesis-Featured Page widgets. A more tag is placed in the page content to limit the amount of text displayed on the home page.
The settings for the Genesis-Featured Page widgets is shown below:
How to configure Sub Footer – Left and Sub Footer – Right widget areas
Sub Footer–Left: displays above the Footer in the left three-quarters of the content area and the demo site uses a single Genesis-Featured Page widget without a featured image.
Sub Footer–Right: displays above the Footer in the right one-quarter of the content area and the demo site uses a Text widget.
Customise your Outreach Pro theme with Genesis developer Brad Dalton
Brad Dalton is one of my favourite Genesis devs and he’s written a number of tutorials, which will help you customise your Outreach Pro website:
- Display Outreach Pro Sub Footer Widgets On Front or Home Page Only
- Outreach Pro – Add Extra Home Page Widget
- Make eNews Subscribe Widget Input Box Inline With Submit Button
Every plugin, code snippet and tutorial that Brad writes is tested on a live test site or locally installed demo site so pay Brad a visit and help yourself to his great code.
For a complete overview of setting up Genesis child themes including how to import the demo site content, plugins, widget areas and how to add a blog to your site, check out my post Setting up StudioPress Genesis child themes.
Outreach Pro the perfect theme to display your goods and services and get your message across
As I said earlier “Outreach Pro is a page based Genesis child theme that is fully mobile responsive, HTML5-powered and built on Genesis 2.0” and that’s why it’s the perfect theme for any business or organisation that wants to display their goods and services and get their message across.
If that sounds like the sort of theme you’re looking for then head over to StudioPress and pick up your copy of Outreach Pro.
Child themes and a framework are the only way you should build your WordPress site and Genesis has great support for child themes and other WordPress functionality.
Matt Mullenweg – WordPress founder
Hope you enjoyed the review and found it helpful and if you have any thoughts on WordPress themes in general or Outreach Pro in particular, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
And if you’d like to spread the word about this fabulous theme please use my social sharing buttons.