Why does everyone love the Genesis Framework theme?
The Genesis Framework is one of the most popular and powerful framework themes in the WordPress market. Over 300,000 websites are using it.
If you move around in the WordPress circle you will get a lot of recommendations for it. And you must be thinking is it actually worth the money?
In this post, we will discuss everything you need to know about the Genesis FrameWork and13 reasons to love it.
After which you will know why people love The Genesis FrameWork and if it’s the best WordPress theme for you or not.
What is the Genesis Framework Theme?
Genesis Framework is a premium WordPress framework theme. It is open-source software which means it gives users full freedom and control over their website’s outlook.
People Behind the Genesis Framework
It was developed by Brain Gardner and the Studio Press team back in 2010.
In 2018, it got taken over by WP Engine world’s leading managed WordPress hosting platform.
With that, they went from big to bigger.
Genesis Framework is lightweight, fast, secure and search engine friendly and mobile optimized.
As you have noticed that Genesis is a Framework, it is like a super theme (parent theme) which basically means a foundation theme, on top of which you add a child theme.
The Framework controls the basic functions, features and style of your website.
A Child theme is placed on top of the parent theme which will control the layout and design element and in the skin of your website.
This is how Studio Press explains the Genesis Framework & child theme.
- WordPress – the engine of the car
- Genesis Framework – the body of the car
- Child theme – paint job for that car
Everyone always has good things to say about their own products. Right? And StudioPress is no different:
The Genesis Framework empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress.
Studio Press
What others have to say about your products is what really counts, and here is Matt Mullenweg the Founder of WordPress said about the Genesis FrameWork:
Child themes and a framework are the only way you should build your WordPress site and Genesis has great support for child themes and other WordPress functionality.
Matt Mullenweg – Founder of WordPress
That is saying something!
Let’s see.
Amazing websites are built on the Genesis framework, here is a list of Top 7 Websites that we found which are powered by Genesis Framework
- Studio Press
- Brain Gardner
- Neil Patel
- Jay Bear
- Niagara.co
- University of Cambridge
- Wellmont Theaters
1- Get Treated Like a King.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind paying a little extra to a company that has excellent customer support instead of staying with a company with crappy customer service that charges me less.WP Engine treats its customers like kings.
They respond within a minute or two most of the time.
Their team includes expert developers, who completely understand the Genesis software inside and out. Their developers actively contribute to the WordPress Content Management System.
When you buy the Genesis theme, you instantly get unlimited access to their world-class support and customer happiness team.
Here is a complete visual breakdown of their Support services:
They give you full help with ALL of their products, from installation and configuration to usage.
Moreover, even offer basic help in designing your website using their child themes but they won’t customize your child themes for you. which makes sense!
They give you not only advice but also tutorials and tips on the best practices for your website’s security, SEO, performance, and Speed.
2-Get Easy Access to Complete Documentation & Developers Resources
Just like their customer support as soon as you purchase the Genesis framework you will get access to their documentation and developers resources:
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3-Amazing Child Theme Options For Genesis Framework
The core parent theme- Genesis is clean and responsive.
The look and uniqueness of your website come through the child theme that you add.
StudioPress has a wide range of child themes you can choose from. You can customize their child themes the way you want.
You are not bound to use themes by StudioPress only, you have the freedom to use your own child theme or a third party child theme on Genesis Framework if you want.
StudioPress has over 63 child themes in their library you can choose from in the following categories:
- Business & Enterprise
- eCommerce
- Photography
- Magazines
- lifestyle
- Real Estate
Popular Child Themes
Atmosphere Pro is a slick mobile responsive business theme by StudioPress. It has an engaging parallax scrolling homepage that makes you want to keep scrolling to the very end of the home page.
Essence Pro is a very popular child theme by StudioPress. it has a beautiful modern layout that is best used to build health and lifestyle websites.
Magazine Pro is another amazing child theme you can use for publishing your work online and give your website a magazine-like feel.
The customizations that you make on the Child theme are kept separate from the parent theme, these customizations remain changeable and don’t get affected when you update your parent theme.
A child theme saves you a lot of development time as you don’t have to start from scratch.
What stands out about StudioPress child themes ironically is that they all look very modern and yet you won’t find any fancy visuals or effect.
They stick to clean fluid designs!
You get access to all of their child themes when you buy the Framework. Their membership is for life, so you don’t have to renew it and will also get access to the product that will be launched in the future.
4- Connect With People Through Their Forums
People who use the Genesis Framework discuss ideas, problems, solutions, and tips in different forums.
You can easily get help with code snippets, plugins, tips, tricks and answers to your CSS related questions. As well as hire professional help if need be.
Their forums are very active where thousands of topics are discussed and Genesis related content is posted in the following categories.
- General Discussion Forum
Here you can talk about all things WordPress, there are over 19,000 topics and 19,000 posts in this category.
- Design Tips And Tricks Forum
Here you will get help with all your CSS related questions as well as tips and tricks about code snippets. There are over 27,000 different posts and topics that have been discussed in this category.
- Showcase And Feedback Forum
You can use this forum to showcase your website and to know what everyone thinks, there are over 3000 posts in this category.
- Internationalization And Translations Forum
With over 600 posts this forum is used to discuss and ask questions about translating a theme to other languages.
- Forum Bugs And Suggestions
You can use this forum to suggest improvements or give them feedback about bugs or problems.
5- Fully Search Engine Optimized Framework & Themes
Let’s face it, your ultimate website goal is to attract traffic, and in order to do that, your website needs to appear in search engine results.
Now that will only happen if search engines like Google approve of your website, meaning your website needs to be search engine optimized. Now the Genesis Framework is:
- Clean and Secure code
- Smart architecture
- High speed
- Lightweight code
- Mobile responsive design
- Browser Compatibility
- Supports Schem.org code ( for a rich snippet)
- Search engines love all of this.
It’s not just this, to make sure that their themes have full proof SEO, they hired the creator of Yoast-SEO plugin. The king of SEO Joost De Valk checks and improve their SEO.
Even though Genesis has built-in SEO settings, using the Yoast SEO plugin will help you future improve your On-Page SEO.
Moreover, Genesis now also supports Schema code allowing you to store microdata on your page which will help crawlers better understand the purpose of each page.
Greg Boser, another SEO expert also lent his expertise in designing the Genesis Framework for better ranking results.
6- Built Fast Loading Websites With the Genesis Framework
The speed of your website plays an important role in determining its success. As it impacts everything from your SEO ranking, user experience to your bounce rate.
As website speed is also an official ranking factor by Google, its importance can not be further highlighted. Genesis code is purposely designed to be lightweight and clean in order to maintain your website’s speed.
Plus you won’t find any additional or fancy effects which may increase the load time.
1stwebdesigner ran speed several tests on the live demo of the genesis framework and here are the results.
Genesis gives you a good and fast base to build your own website, however, the actual speed of your website depends on what you add to your website particular your media, plugins and the functions that you add.
7- One Less Thing To Worry About With Their Mobile Responsive Design
This is why it is critically that your website is mobile optimized.
The Genesis Framework is specially designed to be mobile optimized. It automatically fits all screen sizes and is compatible with different browsers.
They give you access to a mobile responsive test tool, which allows you to check the display on different screen sizes.
Today websites are built on the mobile-first approach as suggested by Google itself. The Genesis Framework already comes with a professional mobile-friendly design, giving you one less thing to worry about.
8- Easy Translation of Your Website to Your Native Language
Genesis Framework supports 30 different languages.
Their support for translation to other languages is remarkable. You don’t have to mess with the code or PHP. All you have to do is check the available translations on translate.studiopress.com and from their Genesis translations plugins pick one of the available languages.
Genesis is also compatible with other plugins that help is translations such as the WordPress Multilingual Plugin.
9- Genesis is Secure
Security has always been a problem for WordPress even though its core software is VERY secure. Although it’s one of those things that are beyond anyone’s control, there are steps you can take to make sure your website becomes more secure.
The Genesis Framework theme has airtight security.
Still, security remains a cause of stress for website owners.
Here is what Mark Jaquith- a WordPress Developer said about Genesis Frameworks after he was asked to do their security audit.
It’s clear the StudioPress team made security a priority when developing the Genesis Framework. From a security standpoint, it’s at the top of its class and follows WordPress security best practices.
Mark Jaquith
10- Get Regular Automatic And Fast Updates
Lack of updates is a leading cause of website security lapse. May it be plugins, themes or WordPress software itself all of them need to be kept updated.
Genesis Framework is has a dedicated team that works continuously to improve it, so they roll out regular updates.
To further make sure that your website’s security is not compromised because to lack of update, Genesis Framework gets:
- Regular updates
- Updated automatically
- Instant Updates
11- Diverse Built-In Layout Options
Here are the layout options that Genesis Framework comes with:
You have 6 different layout options to choose from.
Do you want to know what’s the coolest feature in the Frameworks layout options? You can create different layouts for different pages. Your home page could have sidebar/content and your about us page could be full-width content.
These options are sufficient to meet your needs, however, you always have the option to customize your own layout if you feel the need for it.
12-Powerful Widget Ready Theme
Studio Press understands that the power of a theme comes from the widgets.
The framework fully supports widgets like most recent posts, subscription forms, ads, social media, Google maps, and even 3rd party widgets.
Whether you wish to post external ads or promote yourself on your website. The Framework comes with amazing advertising functionality.
You can easily post your ads (internal or external) in the Widgets, which are already available and start collecting advertising revenue.
13- Genesis is a Trusted & Reliable Theme
If we talk about robustness and reliability, the Genesis Framework tops the chart and only for us. It is used and recommended by both the creator of WordPress and Yoast SEO plugins.
Their world-class team invests a lot of time in designing and developing themes amazing themes that perform well in terms of, SEO, responsiveness tests, speed tests.
The Genesis Framework and its powered themes are all well-coded, robust, and reliable themes. They come with full documentation and support.
Conclusion
We have been in the WordPress business for over 10 years now and we have tried out a few different themes. The truth is that ever since we started using the Genesis Framework, we can’t think of a better WordPress theme.
The Genesis Framework is the way to go for you if you are:
- Professional Web Developers
- Freelancers
- A hard-core coder
- Fluent with PHP
Whereas if you are a just WordPress beginner or a web graphic designer or someone who doesn’t have much knowledge about code then the Genesis Framework is not the best option for you.
And for two reasons, first, it will be too expensive for you considering all the free theme options you have with WordPress. And secondly, it will be too complicated for you.
The Genesis Framework is a very popular WordPress theme and the people who use it, love it!
Tell us about your experience with the Genesis Framework in the comment section below. We would love to hear about it.
FAQs
1. Enter your WordPress dashboard -> Navigate to Appearance -> Themes
2. Click on the Add New button -> Click on the Upload Theme
3. Click on the Choose File -> Select the Genesis zip
4. Click on the Install Now -> Then click Activate
The recommended way of customizing the Genesis framework is by using a child theme. Choose a child theme by StudioPress or use your own child theme, and add your customization on it.
1. Optimized for SEO and Schema.org
2. Take the worry out of updating to new versions of WordPress.
3. Security first framework.
4. Want to extend a site’s functionality even more? Genesis makes it easy. (Endless Customization Possibilities)
5. It’s backed by a dedicated team of developers, so it’s always updated
Source: https://wpsupportdesk.com/blog/genesis-framework-theme/
