diff --git a/scrapy/command/commands/genspider.py b/scrapy/command/commands/genspider.py
index f25bfa63a..b5a1fde64 100644
--- a/scrapy/command/commands/genspider.py
+++ b/scrapy/command/commands/genspider.py
@@ -1,8 +1,6 @@
-from __future__ import with_statement
-
-import os
-import string
 import shutil
+import string
+from os.path import join, dirname, abspath, exists
 
 from scrapy.spider import spiders
 from scrapy.command import ScrapyCommand
@@ -11,8 +9,6 @@ from scrapy.utils.misc import render_templatefile, string_camelcase
 
 
 class Command(ScrapyCommand):
-    """ Childs can define custom tvars """
-    custom_tvars = {}
 
     def syntax(self):
         return "[options] <spider_name> <spider_domain_name>"
@@ -22,49 +18,52 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
 
     def add_options(self, parser):
         ScrapyCommand.add_options(self, parser)
-        parser.add_option("--template", dest="template", help="Uses a custom template.", default="crawl")
-        parser.add_option("--force", dest="force", help="If the spider already exists, overwrite it with the template", action="store_true")
+        parser.add_option("--template", dest="template", default="crawl",
+            help="Uses a custom template.")
+        parser.add_option("--force", dest="force", action="store_true",
+            help="If the spider already exists, overwrite it with the template")
 
     def run(self, args, opts):
         if len(args) < 2:
             return False
 
-        template_file = os.path.join(settings['TEMPLATES_DIR'], 'spider_%s.tmpl' % opts.template)
-        if not os.path.exists(template_file):
-            print "Template named %s.tmpl does not exist" % opts.template
+        template_file = join(settings['TEMPLATES_DIR'], 'spider_%s.tmpl' % opts.template)
+        if not exists(template_file):
+            print "Template '%s.tmpl' not found" % opts.template
             return
 
         name = self.normalize_name(args[0])
-        site = args[1]
+        domain = args[1]
         spiders_dict = spiders.asdict()
-        if site in spiders_dict.keys():
+        if domain in spiders_dict.keys():
             if opts.force:
-                print "Spider '%s' already exists. Overwriting it..." % name
+                print "Spider '%s' already exists. Overwriting it..." % domain
             else:
-                print "Spider '%s' already exists" % name
+                print "Spider '%s' already exists" % domain
                 return
-        self._genspider(name, site, template_file)
+        self._genspider(name, domain, template_file)
 
     def normalize_name(self, name):
-        name = name.replace('-', '_') # - are replaced by _, for valid python modules
-        if name[0] not in string.letters: # name must start with a letter, for valid python modules
+        # - are replaced by _, for valid python modules
+        name = name.replace('-', '_')
+        # name must start with a letter, for valid python modules
+        if name[0] not in string.letters:
             name = "a" + name
             print "Spider names must start with a letter; converted to %s." % name
         return name
         
-    def _genspider(self, name, site, template_file):
-        """ Generate spider """
+    def _genspider(self, name, domain, template_file):
+        """Generate the spider module, based on the given template"""
         tvars = {
             'project_name': settings.get('PROJECT_NAME'),
             'ProjectName': string_camelcase(settings.get('PROJECT_NAME')),
             'name': name,
-            'site': site,
+            'site': domain,
             'classname': '%sSpider' % ''.join([s.capitalize() for s in name.split('_')])
         }
-        tvars.update(self.custom_tvars)
 
         spiders_module = __import__(settings['NEWSPIDER_MODULE'], {}, {}, [''])
-        spiders_dir = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(spiders_module.__file__))
+        spiders_dir = abspath(dirname(spiders_module.__file__))
         spider_file = '%s/%s.py' % (spiders_dir, name)
 
         shutil.copyfile(template_file, spider_file)
diff --git a/scrapy/conf/commands/genspider.py b/scrapy/conf/commands/genspider.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..bcee80b55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scrapy/conf/commands/genspider.py
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+LOG_ENABLED = False