Announcing Genesis Walkthroughs Right Inside Your Dashboard

Did you know Genesis walkthroughs are now available right within your WordPress dashboard?
They are and we’re super exciting to share this news with the Genesis community!

Whether you’re a Genesis developer or user, this is big news and we’re really happy to be part of this roll out.

Let me tell you a little about it and how you can take advantage of all this educational goodness.

Last year my friends Ben Fox and Bart Dabek reached out to me about a cool learning tool they were developing for WordPress called SIDEKICK.

In our discussion they asked if we could help create guided walkthroughs of Genesis for their SIDEKICK product. Heck yes was my immediate answer. First, I had full faith in the SIDEKICK product and it’s founders. Second, I knew it would help Genesis users and the developers that support them. That’s a win/win in my book so I was totally on board with this project.

What’s a Walkthrough?

SIDEKICK provides guided, step-by-step walkthroughs (like tutorials) of tasks right inside the WordPress dashboard. It’s great for onboarding new Genesis users, teaching experienced users how to use a new theme or plugin and of most importantly, reducing the need for support calls and emails.

The goal is to give WordPress users access to step-by-step instructions right where they needed it, thus improving the user experience.

But why not just use a video like everyone else? This is a good question and one I originally had myself.

A SIDEKICK walkthrough is superior to video because it gives users comprehensive instructions for completing the task, right inside their WordPress dashboard.

You can’t do that with an everyday video.

With SIDEKICK you can say goodbye to the common process of watch, try, read, try again, Google help, try again. You’re laughing right now I’m sure, because you’ve been there before. We’ve all been there before.

SIDEKICK’s motto is Click. Do. Learn. This means the goal is to teach users while they are actually performing the task.

Available Genesis Walkthroughs

With the blessings of the Copyblogger team we moved forward with creating scripts and walkthroughs for core Genesis features. We’re starting with 30 walkthroughs that cover Genesis specific topics and tasks. Examples of available walkthroughs include:

That’s a lot of tutorials for newer users and they’re all available right now and they’re ready for immediate usage.

If You’re a Genesis User, Install SIDEKICK and Start Learning

Grabbing your copy of these free Genesis walkthroughs is super easy. You can install the SIDEKICK plugin from within your WordPress admin panel or you can download it from the WordPress.org plugin repository.

Once you activate the plugin, SIDEKICK will see you have an active Genesis theme and it will automatically activate the Genesis specific walkthroughs. Just click the new Help Me button in the bottom left corner of your Dashboard to open the Walkthrough Drawer.

If you want to take your education experience one step further, you can upgrade your SIDEKICK plugin to display 160 WordPress walkthroughs for just $5 per month. If you’re new to WordPress, these walkthroughs would make an excellent learning tool.

If You’re a Genesis Developer, Get Involved

If you’re a Genesis developer and you’d like to get involved, we’d love to have community support. Here are some ways you can make the Genesis user experience better for all of our users:

• Give SIDEKICK a try and provide feedback on the tutorials done to date.
• Leave a review in the WordPress plugin repository.
• Suggest additional walkthroughs that should be placed into development. You can do that in the comments area below or you can send some feedback to the SIDEKICK team.
• Give a shout out to the Copyblogger team for allowing us to create such a cool learning tool for Genesis users.
• Reach out to the SIDEKICK team and learn how you can use SIDEKICK in the development of your own Genesis themes or plugins.

Future Genesis Walkthrough Releases

While we don’t have a solidified plan for producing additional walkthroughs yet, this is on our radar.

The Web Savvy Marketing and SIDEKICK team is collaborating on how we can best augment these tutorials. Both companies are dedicated to continuing to improve the adoption of Genesis, educate our users, reduce support costs, and create a positive user experience with each and every Genesis install.

If you’d like to be notified of new walkthrough releases, head on over to the SIDEKICK website and let them know your interested in learning more.