Upgrade to Genesis 3.2 to edit entry meta in the Customizer, toggle footer widget visibility on each page, get Open Graph support in Genesis SEO, and add support for lazy loading in child themes.
How to upgrade to Genesis 3.2
Existing Genesis users running WordPress 5.0+, PHP 5.6+, and using an HTML5 child theme will see an update prompt in the WordPress admin area. Click “update now” to update your Genesis site:
If the update prompt is missing, check that you are running WordPress 5.0+, PHP 5.6+, are using a Genesis HTML5 child theme, and have enabled update notifications at Genesis → Theme Settings → Updates.
New to Genesis? Learn about the Genesis Framework for WordPress and discover how to get Genesis.
Genesis 3.2 features enabled on all sites by default
All sites using Genesis 3.2 benefit from these new features:
Edit entry meta in the Customizer
Genesis shows information known as “entry meta” above and below your posts, such as the post author, publish date and post categories:
To change or reorder this entry meta people use plugins such as Genesis Simple Edits or add custom code in their child theme.
With Genesis 3.2 you can edit this entry meta in the Customizer. You no longer need a plugin or custom code.
Find the new entry meta fields at Appearance → Customize → Theme Settings → Singular Content.
You could remove the author from your entry meta in all posts, for example:
Or add a before attribute to the post_categories Genesis shortcode to change the text before category listings:
Disable footer widgets on individual posts or pages
Footer widgets sometimes distract visitors from your main call to action on landing and sales pages. Footer widgets may also repeat information that appears in your main content area, such as on your contact page.
Genesis 3.2 gives you the power to disable footer widgets on a per-page basis. Look for the new Hide Footer Widgets option in the Genesis editor sidebar:
The Hide Footer Widgets checkbox appears on pages and posts. Extend it to other post types by adding post type support in your child theme or plugin:
add_post_type_support( 'post-type-slug', 'genesis-footer-widgets-toggle' );
Genesis 3.2 features that require manual activation or support from your child theme
Open Graph support for Genesis SEO users
Open Graph support helps social sites to read post information and fetch a featured image to display when your content is shared.
Genesis Open Graph is opt-in and off by default.
You can enable it via the Theme SEO Settings in the Customizer. This feature is part of the Genesis SEO settings. It will not be visible if you use a popular SEO plugin instead of Genesis SEO. It will also be hidden if you are using Genesis SEO but have a popular Open Graph plugin active already.
If you use Genesis SEO and do not use a popular Open Graph plugin, you can enable Genesis Open Graph support and set a default image for pages that do not have a featured image at Appearance → Customize → Theme SEO Settings → Open Graph:
If you use Genesis SEO with an Open Graph plugin, you could deactivate the Open Graph plugin and then active Genesis Open Graph support.
If you use an SEO plugin instead of Genesis SEO, Genesis Open Graph will be inactive and have no effect on your site.
Native lazy image loading in supported themes
Modern browsers are starting to support lazy loading of resources such as images. Your website can tell the browser to load images only if they are about to appear in the viewport. This improves performance and saves bandwidth because images that stay offscreen are not downloaded.
To make it easier to use lazy loading, Genesis 3.2 allows child theme developers to enable lazy loading of images with one line of code in their functions.php file:
add_theme_support( 'genesis-lazy-load-images' );
At the time of writing, Chrome 76+ supports image lazy loading. Firefox also plans to add lazy loading support.
The changelog
Genesis 3.2 also brings visual improvements to the theme setup page, a genesis_amp_menu_css filter to adjust inline AMP styles, and the option to pass attributes to the genesis_markup() function via an atts key in the args parameter.
Read the full changelog for Genesis 3.2. Developers can also browse the Genesis developer documentation.
Would you like to help shape Genesis in future releases? Learn how to contribute to Genesis.
New to Genesis?
Learn about the Genesis Framework for WordPress and discover how to get Genesis today.
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