Genesis Framework is created by the Studio Press company and it gives you a very clean looking design right out of the box. The framework comes with a ton of awesome features:
- Optimized for search engines
- Regular updates
- Fast performance
- Premium class security (audit by Sucuri)
- Responsive
- Easy to customize
Of course, there are third party plugins like Extender plugin and Design Palette Pro, that can further help you customize the design.
Pricing
The StudioPress Pro Plus Membership package will give access to all the current and future child themes (along with the Genesis framework). The current price of the package is $499.95.
If you want only the framework and you are good at building custom child themes, then go with the basic framework as it will only cost you $59.95.
Figure 1. Table of prices for Genesis framework
Installing the Theme
The process is pretty much straight forward, go to Appearance -> Themes -> Add New -> Upload.
Install the theme, and activate it.
Figure 2. Uploading the Genesis theme
Next, you will be required to install the child theme. Repeat the procedure.
Figure 3. Install Genesis sample child theme
Don’t be surprised, if you don’t find a fancy options page, most of the frameworks come with a big fancy box, but this one doesn’t. Simplicity is what we like the most at Genesis Framework. Read next about the Genesis main options.
Genesis Site Options
Upon activation, you will notice a new menu in your WordPress Admin sidebar entitled Genesis – click on it to get started. You will see 3 links – Theme Settings, SEO Settings, and Import/Export.
Theme Settings
This is the section where you can manage everything from changing the default layout to adding custom scripts in the theme. You can choose a color style, add a custom feed URL, and choose a default layout for the theme (each themes come with different layouts).
You can insert the twitter and search form in your navigation, automatically insert the breadcrumbs, choose whether you want to show the comments or not, adjust how you want your content to be viewed, and other minor adjustments.
Figure 4. Genesis general options
You can also insert the header and footer scripts directly from the WordPress dashboard. This can be very useful for inserting Google analytics or Facebook pixel codes.
SEO Settings
In SEO Settings section you can make some basic SEO configurations for your site. Also, you can customize the home page, change the Head settings and Robots Meta settings. From here we recommend you to make the basic changes only in the Homepage Settings if you really need. Other settings are good enough for now and they need to be changed only if you specifically need to.
Figure 5. Genesis SEO settings
What We Like Most About Genesis
- Enhanced on-page SEO. The back-end of your optimized site consists of clean code and great architecture. With support for Schema.org code, which allows you to output microdata in your site’s code, your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) gets even better.
- Constant updates. Updating the Genesis framework is incredibly easy. You can update to new versions of WordPress without losing your customizations. It’s backed by a dedicated team of developers, so it’s always updated—and on the cutting edge.
- Run and update multiple sites. With the Genesis framework as your underlying foundation, if you have multiple domains running, it’s easy to update important underlying code across all sites without affecting the child themes on top.
- Genesis makes it extremal easy extending your site’s functionality. Whether you want to put any of WordPress’s many widgets to use—sidebars, forms, social sharing, etc. Genesis makes this easy to customize without messing with any code. Also, absolutely anything you can see can be moved, changed, deleted, or reconfigured so that your site does exactly what you want. You can choose a different sidebar layout for different pages and posts, create Simple Sidebars for different parts of your site, add custom post types, or even make a homepage full of nothing but widget areas where you can drag and drop content.
- Child themes give you access to beautiful, responsive designs—but you’ll need a developer who knows CSS, PHP, and Genesis Hooks to customize them.
- The benefits of HTML5 clean code. HTML5 is the newest standard, which ensures your site works well with future browser updates. It means better performance for your site, cross-browser compatibility, and a more mobile-friendly design. For clients, that translates to a smoother site with pages that load in just milliseconds.
