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This review of Genesis themes provides a comprehensive overview of the highly popular range of child themes and the Genesis framework produced by Studiopress.
Table of Contents
The Genesis Framework is a premium theme for WordPress but is built with the ability to easily change and customize how it looks and functions.
The Genesis framework acts as a parent theme to the Genesis child themes you see on StudioPress. The aim of the Genesis framework is to provide a set of code that each child theme can use but be light and flexible.
Think of it as a sturdy frame for the picture that holds all the pieces in place and provides the backbone to your website.
What you get when you use the Genesis Framework is high quality, light weight code, that is SEO friendly, designed to load quickly and also flexible enough to customize.
StudioPress is widely used among top online marketers like: Brian Clark (Copyblogger), Neil Patel (QuickSprout), Darren Rowse (Problogger), Chris Brogan and Jay Baer and many more influential and popular bloggers.
There are plenty of good reasons to use the Genesis framework and the Genesis themes
Let’s talk about integrated Genesis plugins and third party plugins you can use to easily extend site functionality and help you in the development process.
Genesis has 16 WordPress plugins that further help you to customize your website. Here are some of the most popular ones::
Also some plugins provide the add-ons often needed e.g. image slider. custom menus and sidebars for social icons.
You don’t have to be a developer to modify Genesis. Even for normal users, the framework offers a range of features that can be adjusted in the settings section:
The framework also comes with its own set of custom widgets:
There are two plugins that are particulary powerful, easy to use but make using Genesis a lot easy (if you have little knowledge of code).
This is a great plugin for designers and or people new to Genesis themes.
Genesis Design Palette Pro is a premium plugin that costs $49 for a single site license.
This plugin allows you to easily change colors of headers, the navigation menu, content areas, sidebars, and footers live. In fact you can edit nearly anything – colors, fonts, images, backgrounds, margins and padding.
Design Palette Pro is ideal for beginners Try Design Palette Pro
The Genesis Extender Plugin is another powerful plugin that costs only $39 for a single site license.
This plugin allows you to make a lot of functional changes to your site without using any code editor or messing with an FTP program.
With Genesis Extender Plugin you can:
Who should use Genesis themes:
One of the best aspects of the using Genesis is their child themes which are often reason enough to persuade people.
Another important aspect to StudioPress is that they produce nicely balanced designs that work really well on mobile devices.
You will also see in the StudioPress shop that some of the themes are designed by third-party developers who actively use the Genesis framework to build their themes.
Although lacking in the WOW factor the themes are well designed, balanced and present content in an engaging manner.
StudioPress offers a good set of functionality to start with and then you can add more in as needed using plugins.
This approach is better than a fully loaded site where you only need and use 60% of the code.
As I mentioned above there are a host of excellent plugins that help you tailor a Genesis child theme.
When using a theme framework such as Genesis, you install a theme by using the Child Theme functionality built into WordPress. This way you make the changes to your specific theme install without overriding core framework files.
Another important point is that all the Genesis themes are optimized for search engines.
Below is an example of the settings page
They also offer a Pro-Plus All-Theme package for $399.95 which gives you all themes by StudioPress (with the exception of Marketplace items created by third parties) and it includes all future theme releases by StudioPress corporate. Some discounts and promotions are also available to existing members as well for future purchases.
StudioPress offer a great support through their support forum where you can ask any technical questions. The people in the community are friendly and helpful members as well as the regular supportive staff. On the negative side, no email support is available and your issues will have to be posted in the forum where others can address it.
When it comes to the use of the StudioPress theme that you have purchased there is good documentation and a detailed theme tutorial provided which makes the setup easy.
Despite its popularity, StudioPress isn’t right for everyone and some users might want to look at other frameworks or choose a theme that already fits to their business goals e.g. an ecommerce theme. To help you make the right decision take time to list out what you want your website to do, what your objectives are for your site e.g. sell products, earn moeny as an affiliate…
The Genesis Themes are well designed. They allow you to easily create a customize and styled WordPress website to suit your needs.
They do not have lots of effects because they are designed to load fast and be efficient in the use of code.
They do maintain an exceptionally high standard in the industry and continue to produce new themes that fit to different niche markets. StudioPress is a very powerful and professional framework to use if you are serious about your online business.