The Genesis Metro magazine theme has just been released.
Is it any good?
Let’s put it this way… it’s the sort of theme that you look at and think… I have to find a site where I can use this theme, I have to.
I like the way the background image fades in slowly, I like the colours and the fonts, I like the proportions of the layout and the use of whitespace and I love the cheeky little gap between the content and the footer.
My only problem is, I feel as though I’m being unfaithful because the former love of my life was the Minimum 2.0 theme and now it’s the Metro theme.
If you like what you see in the screenshot and you want to see more then head over to the Studiopress website and take a look round the Metro demo site.
Presenting Metro, a modern magazine-style layout built on an optimized mobile responsive platform.
The spacious 1152 pixel-wide frame highlights your online publishing for a wide-screen world, and the sleek social features will help to build your audience fast.
Brian Gardner – Studiopress
Metro’s fully widgetised homepage makes setup a doddle … drag and drop plus a little typing!
Don’t worry if you think that Metro’s homepage looks complicated to setup, because it’s fully widgetised and that means dragging and dropping a few widgets plus a bit of typing.
The Metro theme comes with a whopping twelve widget areas!
I’ll run through them below and let you know where each one is and how to set it up.
- Header right – the area to the right of the site title. In the demo they’ve used a search widget.
- Primary sidebar – the area for your primary sidebar content. You can use whatever widgets you like here.
- Secondary sidebar – this will only be used if you’re using posts or pages with two sidebars. You can use whatever widgets you like here.
- Subnav left – the area at the top to the left of the main navigation. In the demo they’ve used a text widget with “Like this theme? You can buy it at Studiopress”
- Home top – the top featured post or featured page, which is set up using a Genesis Featured Post / Page widget.
- Home middle left and Home middle right – the two posts or pages that appear directly beneath the top featured post. They are both setup using Genesis Featured Post / Page widgets.
- Home bottom – the bottom section in the main content area with the posts / pages arranged vertically. This is setup with Genesis Featured Post / Page widgets.
- After post – this area only appears at the bottom of posts, it doesn’t appear on the homepage. On the demo site they’ve used a text widget and an eNews Extended widget.
- Footer 1, Footer 2 and Footer 3 – these are the widget areas that make up your “fat footer”. You can use widgets of your choice to populate the footer.
Other things you have to do to complete the setup:
Background image – to set your background image go to Appearance > Background and choose your image. The background image used on the demo site is 1440px x 900px.
Colour scheme – for your choice of colour scheme go to Genesis > Theme Settings and choose your colour from the dropdown list.
Menus - the menus are WordPress custom menus, which you can setup by going to Appearance > Menus.
Return to top and credits – the “return to top” and the “credits / login” after the footer are hard coded into the theme and can be easily changed using the Genesis Simple Edits plugin or the Genesis Widgetized Footer plugin.
That’s it folks – a fabulous looking homepage all set up using drag and drop plus a little typing, and all without touching a single line of code – don’t you just love Genesis!
Who’s already using the Metro magazine theme?
If you’re looking for inspiration or you’d just like to know how other people are using the Metro child theme, and what colour they’ve gone for, then check out the celebrity sites below:
Paul Letourneau is feeling a little blue so he’s gone for a “news style” homepage like the demo site.
Sarah Kay Hoffman is our lady in red and she’s opted for a “blog style” homepage.
Greg Fleischaker has served up something rather special… see if it whets your appetite.
If you’re using the Metro theme and you’d like to be included in our showcase, please contact WM Web Design and leave a link to your website.
Metro child theme comes with lots of useful and time saving features
Even a theme that looks as good as Metro should have useful and time saving features, and Metro doesn’t disappoint.
Here are some of the features that Metro offers:
- Mobile responsive – adapts to your visitors screen size and gives them the optimum viewing experience. A must-have feature to future-proof your website.
- Five colour schemes – blue, green, orange, pink and red – something to suit all tastes.
- Six layout options – various combinations of sidebar and content allow you to give each of your pages and posts individual styling.
- Four page templates – archives, blog, columns and landing page templates.
- Featured images – supports WordPress featured images.
- Custom background and custom header – easily use your own custom background and custom header.
- Fixed width – gives you pin-point control over the exact look of your site.
- Theme options – allows you to control many of your theme options from within the WordPress admin area.
Metro theme sports the following out-of-the-box features: 6 layout options, 5 colour styles, 3 story locations, fixed width, mobile responsive, after-post footer widget, landing page template, custom background.
Brian Gardner – Studiopress
Use the Genesis Extender plugin to fully customise your homepage
Like most Genesis child themes, Metro magazine theme looks fabulous straight out of the box, but if you want a completely customised homepage, we recommend the Genesis Extender plugin by Eric Hamm.
You get the Genesis Extender plugin for a one-off payment, you can use it on as many sites as you like, you get full support and it comes with a rock solid 30 day money-back guarantee.
We use the Genesis Extender plugin here on WM Web Design and on all our client sites.
Check out the Metro magazine theme….. and start planning that new website
If you’re looking for a modern mobile responsive WordPress theme that allows you to display lots of content on your homepage, a theme that is easy to setup and has great CSS support for the various widgets, then the Metro theme is perfect for you.
If you like the look of Metro and you’d like to find out details of pricing etc. head over to Studiopress and put the Metro news theme through its paces, see its features in action and… start planning that new website.
With the Metro theme for WordPress, we present our widest theme to date … with complete mobile-responsiveness.
The Metro theme takes the guesswork out of designing for multiple screens while simultaneously offering a luxurious 1152 pixel-wide frame that’s more than just a pretty face.
Brian Gardner – Studiopress
Thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoyed the review. We’d love to have your thoughts on the Metro theme.
Are you using it, are you thinking of using it, what do you like about it?
We look forward to hearing from you in the comments below.
Just to let you know that many of the links on this site are my affiliate links.
What that means is that if you click one of them and buy something… I get a commission.
It doesn’t cost you anything extra so I hope that you will use my links.
Hi Keith,
I recently changed my site to use the Metro theme as I really liked the look of it but I’ve had a number of small issues that I did not seem to encounter with other Genesis themes. Not sure if your other readers experienced any of these.
1. The theme states that you can use a header image and that if it’s 1080 x 87 pixels will be used as is. In my case the image does indeed upload but is totally covered by a solid red block (red being the colour I selected for this theme). I had hoped to use this theme with the Genesis responsive header plugin. If you stick with a header text logo then you will find it’s not responsive if you have a longer name (try it on a mobile phone!).
2. I want to use this theme with a static home page and use another link for blog page. Problem is I want to use an image on the static home page that will be responsive. I used an image the same dimensions as the demo, namely 708 x 400 pixels. For it to be responsive I assume I need to set it as a featured image. I see that the demo uses various featured posts, I tried to use instead the featured page widget. When using this the image displays but the text from this static page does not.
3. I could not get the section shown as ‘The 411 on me’ to work. I used text widget as shown in example and edited the text but I found it’s so fussy and the buttons don’t always line up. In the end I deleted the last part of the code regarding buttons so it now only shows image and some text and have the social buttons as text links as a secondary menu and as images in the footer using Simple Social Plugin menu.
Am I missing something? Other themes seem to just work better, especially regarding the image header which has always worked perfectly on other Genesis themes.
Cheers
Gary
Hi Gary
My sincere apologies for late reply – just been so busy.
Can’t really spare the time to answer all your queries, those are best posted in the Studiopress forum, but this may be helpful.
Header image / text not responsive
Here are a couple of links to forum posts that should help:
The first one relates to a problem with the header twxt not being responsive.
http://www.studiopress.com/forums/topic/design-tip-metro-theme-header/
The second one is about using a different size header to the default.
http://www.studiopress.com/forums/topic/adjust-padding-size-of-header-metro-theme/
Featured pages instead of posts
If the theme is set up for posts and you use pages, you have to play a little with the CSS.
This is a site where I’ve used pages instead of posts:
http://istfreight.com/
Please feel free to copy the CSS using Firebug or Developer tools.
Please let me know how it goes.
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress security – Sucuri Malware Monitoring Alerting and Cleanup
Love this one, especially the move to 1152 px wide. Is this one theme specific or is StudioPress moving towards wider themes that work on widescreen monitors AND responsive? Gotta say, I love it.
Prajith recently posted..Download Sony Xperia Z Wallpapers Collection & Ringtones
Hi Prajith
Yes this one is a stunner – just about to use it on a client site.
The beauty of this theme is that your background image tells viewers instantly what the site is about.
I think that Studiopress are going with 1152 on all their new themes – thinking of widescreen monitors.
Appreciate you coming over Prajith and look forward to seeing you around the Studiopress blog and forum.
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress security – Sucuri Malware Monitoring Alerting and Cleanup
Thanks for a REAL review. You know what I mean. I see lots of pages just posting the same PR verbiage that a theme owner sends out to them.
Keith, I am curious to know your thoughts on my being able to convert Tiffinbox (my blog) from Thesis to this new Metro child theme. Here is the link – http://www.tiffinbox.org. It’s a site for photographers and I want it looking more visual, if you know what I mean. Right now, I feel rather limited by what I can do with Thesis (imagine that).
I look forward to your response.
Hi Seshi
Appreciate you coming over and many thanks for your kind words.
I took a look at your site and as you say a site connected with photography should look more “visual”, if not… stunning.
Here are a couple of links to photography sites run by a friend of mine Ted Vieira:
http://tavphoto.com/
http://blackandwhitelife.com/
Having spent time and money on Thesis I wouldn’t jump ship without giving things a little thought.
Puneet Sahalot, a friend of mine, works with both Genesis and Thesis and he loves them both.
Puneet’s site is http://icustomizethesis.com/
I’ll try and get Ted and Puneet to come over and offer a little advice on Thesis V Genesis for photography sites.
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress security – Sucuri Malware Monitoring Alerting and Cleanup
Hi there! You mention here that a custom header integration is relatively simple. I’ve been searching Studiopress forums for Metro-specific CSS and functions to get a custom header uploaded, but are you saying there’s a simpler way to do that? I don’t yet have the theme activated on my site because I’m still working out a few design elements on the backend, so obviously I don’t see all the options available to me with Metro on the dashboard just yet. I should note that the custom header image I’ve created is 1080×300, and I did manage to edit the CSS to get it to those dimensions. I uploaded the image to my FTP images folder, but the following code did nothing to change it out (then again, it’s possible I put it in the wrong place… I felt cross-eyed in this process):
.header-image #title a {
background: url( ‘images/wth_headerwindowhires.png’ ) no-repeat;
}
Cassie recently posted..Change your story (a call to action)
Hi Cassie
Sorry to hear that you’ve had problems with the header image and finding help in the forum.
Here are a couple of links that should help:
The first one relates to a problem with the header twxt not being responsive.
http://www.studiopress.com/forums/topic/design-tip-metro-theme-header/
The second one is about using a different size header to the default.
http://www.studiopress.com/forums/topic/adjust-padding-size-of-header-metro-theme/
Let me know how it goes and please let me have a link to your site when it is live.
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress security – Sucuri Malware Monitoring Alerting and Cleanup
I love the Metro theme, which is why I have it on my site, my husband’s site, and anyone who will leave the decision up to me. It’s so easy to configure.
Hi Susan
Love the Metro theme over on your site and it’s easy to see why it is the Studiopress theme of the month.
Thanks for coming over.
Keith Davis recently posted..Genesis people – WordPress Web Designers Deep in the Heart of Texas
Wow, thanks so much for including my site in your list of Metro Theme users! I just ran across it a few weeks ago, and felt like I had to try it out. It was a pretty easy switch, I was already on Genesis, and I like the end result much better than my previous theme. Your review and advice were very helpful in making the switch so painless, thank you!
Greg Fleischaker recently posted..Filet Mignons
Hi Greg
A great looking site you’ve produced and a well deserved listing.
Glad you found the review helpful and welcome to the Genesis theme framework.
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress themes and frameworks – Genesis, Catalyst and Elegant Themes
Keth, thanks for the review. One question…can the title be changed to a logo? Seems like everybody has it as plain text.
I’m considering this for a new site, but I think for branding purposes, the use of a logo is pretty critical.
Thanks!
Jay recently posted..Research Trumps Nanny State On Sugary Drinks
Hi Jay
This is a great theme and I’ve already used it on a client site.
“can the title be changed to a logo?”
Yes it can, but there is a CSS glitch with using the logo.
If you are happy tweaking your CSS the fix is here….
http://www.studiopress.com/forums/topic/metro-theme-blues/
If you are not happy playing with CSS let me know via my contact form and I will take a look for you.
Good luck with the theme and thanks for coming over.
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress themes and frameworks – Genesis, Catalyst and Elegant Themes
Thanks Keith!
Jay recently posted..On Individualism
“1. The theme states that you can use a header image and that if it’s 1080 x 87 pixels will be used as is. In my case the image does indeed upload but is totally covered by a solid red block (red being the colour I selected for this theme).”
I still only see a big red square instead of a custom header. How can I fix this?
Not so impressed with the theme so far..
Hi Lelle
You need to check out the Studiopress forim, link is…
http://www.studiopress.com/forums/topic/metro-theme-blues/
“Not so impressed with the theme so far..”
30 day money back guarantee – your call!
Keith Davis recently posted..WordPress themes and frameworks – Genesis, Catalyst and Elegant Themes
Great design for the theme. I have installed it on my blog and I’m having 1 little issue. Now when I enter a new post and publish it live, there is no comment box. I have made sure my WP options allow comments. If I switch back temporarily to a different theme the comment box is there. Any ideas? Thanks, Tommy
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Hi Tommy
Love what you’ve done with Metro on your site.
The background image looks fabulous.
“…there is no comment box. I have made sure my WP options allow comments.”
There is a setting in the “Genesis theme settings” to allow comments on posts / pages.
Set it to whatever you want and save the settings.
Let me know how it goes.
Keith Davis recently posted..Genesis people – Bill McKinley, Ms TaraDactyl and Mr Randy Cantrell
Keith, I was able to resolve my small issue. The option was checked in the Genesis settings to allow comments. I ended up trashing the last 4 posts and re- posting them. Now all of the comment box’s are there.
Tommy recently posted..Are you In a Toxic Relationship
Glad it’s all resolved Tommy.
Keith Davis recently posted..Epik 1.0 – Genesis child theme for WordPress by Wes Straham of Appfinite
Dear Mr. Davis glad to have found your website with a REAL review of a Genesis Theme.
Other folks post just so much fluff and next to no real information.
Decided to go with it after Driskill, an abandoned theme, was looking real aged.
Somehow my CSE searchbox kind of looks weird. Have you across something like this?
If not I think I will have to open a ticket.
Best Regards
M.A. Romero recently posted..National Agriculture And Trade Show
Hi MA
Driskill was a great looking theme when it came out but as you say, looks dated now.
Love what you’ve done with your site – bright, colourful and inviting.
Is that the “Google Custom Search” plugin that you are having problems with?
Should that blue button on the right say “submit”?
I took a quick look at the CSS with the developer tools but nothing was obvious.
If you can’t sort it out post your problem in the Studiopress support forum.
many thanks for visiting and leaving a comment.
Keith Davis recently posted..Epik 1.0 – Genesis child theme for WordPress by Wes Straham of Appfinite
Hi! I can´t find the background image they use in the demo!
do you know where can I find it?
Hi Andrea
Absolutely love what you’ve done with your site and your background image looks fantastic.
If you do want a copy of the demo site background image, contact me via my contact form and I’ll send you a copy.
Many thanks for your comment
Keith Davis recently posted..Epik 1.0 – Genesis child theme for WordPress by Wes Straham of Appfinite
looks a great theme. i am using genesisi framework and i must say its awesome. i liked thesis but genesisi is simply the best framework.i am using latitude but now i want metro
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Hi Prabhat
I think that Thesis lost lots of users when Ver 2.0 came out.
A big change and not enough documentation!
Glad you are enjoying Genesis – lots of documentation for Genesis.
Yes Metro is a great looking theme and don’t forget, since you already have the Genesis core, you only have to buy the child theme.
I think that if you’ve bought themes before, you get a discount on any future themes you buy.
Let me know if you move over to the Metro theme.
Keith Davis recently posted..Epik 1.0 – Genesis child theme for WordPress by Wes Straham of Appfinite
Hey Keith,
I am also working through all of the great features on Metro. Still a few problems like if I decide to change the theme color the header logo goes bonkers and a wider color tab appears.
But the thing I really want to know about is how do I set the pagination (that appears at the bottom of the main panel) like on one of the sites you recommend: http://www.sarahkayhoffman.com.
I’ve tried everything I can think of and have searched high and low but cannot find the solution.
I’d really love to know how to do this; it is driving me crazy!
Thanks, Scott
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Hi Scott
Sounds as though you are enjoying the Metro theme.
I’ve used it on a few client sites and they love it.
The pagination thing is pretty easy.
From your WordPress dashboard go to Genesis > theme settings and scroll down.
Look for a heading of Content archives and in that section look for Select Post Navigation Technique:.
There are three choices in the drop down list – choose numeric.
A little further down look for the heading Blog page template and in that section set the number of posts to show.
That’s it.
Let me know when you’ve done it.
Best of luck
Keith
BTW – Sarah’s homepage is a blog page yours is a widgetised homepage.
The pagination only appears on a blog page, but you can add a blog page to your site – proveded you have posts.
Keith Davis recently posted.. Runway – Genesis child theme for WordPress by Heather Jones of Viva la Violette
Keith,
Wow, that is an eye opener. I couldn’t find that explanation anywhere! Thanks for the guidance.
Still, I am wondering how does http://www.imaguy.ca/ get the home page to appear as per featured genesis widget setting and then ALSO have a Blog page (with the numbering below)??? I understand how each is done but I can’t figure out how BOTH are done TOGETHER….
Scott
This is how it works Scott
With Metro your homepage by default is your blog page.
As soon as you put a widget in any of the homepage widget areas your homepage becomes a widgetised homepage and your blog page disappears.
If you then want to add a blog page you have to:
Create a page and call it Blog (you can call it what you like, blog, articles… whatever)
Don’t add any content but on the RHS of your dashboard under “page attributes” you want parent – no parent and template – blog.
That page is now your blog page and will display all your posts.
Add the blog page to one of your menus using the WordPress custom menus.
That’s about it.
Let me know how it goes.
Keith Davis recently posted..Genesis resources: Sprites, HTML5 and the Genesis grid loop