You may have noticed that I recently re-themed SuccessCREEations here using the Genesis Theme Framework from StudioPress. There are several reasons why I did this.
But before I get into them I want to say one thing. Even though I decided to change this site, I still believe Headway is a great WordPress theme and I still recommend it to my clients whenever I think it will meet their needs the best. I’ve already extolled the virtues of Headway in other posts and they’ve only improved that theme since.
But let’s get back to Genesis.
My Own Reasons for Changing
I have long been a fan of themes designed by Brian Gardner, the head of StudioPress. In fact his were the first themes I purchased for working with client sites years ago. His themes are coded exceptionally well for performance and are easy to work with from a developer perspective.
We’ve started offering WordPress web hosting here at SuccessCREEations and Genesis is one (of the many) options available for customers to purchase directly from inside our hosting dashboard. Since Headway isn’t (at least not yet anyway) it makes sense for me to use using Genesis.
And honestly, I like to change things up from time to time. In fact I am already talking about my team on how I’m going to adjust the current Genesis child theme that we’ve got here on SuccessCREEations to better represent our brand.
But the single biggest reason I made the change is because I see that the Genesis theme framework is…
Great for Small Business
The closer I looked at what the folks at StudioPress are doing with Genesis and where they are going the more I began to realize that it is a great platform for small business.
Here are some reasons why I see it that way.
1. Theme Framework
First Genesis is an entire theme framework rather than just a single theme. With this theme framework there is a core theme, Genesis, which has most of the functionality and does the heavy lifting of the theme, and there is a child theme which acts like a skin over the top of the Genesis theme framework.
A big advantage of this type of theme framework versus a traditional WordPress theme is that the core Genesis theme can be upgraded without danger of disrupting the look and layout of the small business website. Another advantage is that a small business can redesign their site with a completely different look and layout simply by creating a new child theme and yet still maintain all the core functionality.
That way everything will continue to work for their site in exactly the same way they are used to it working.
That’s huge: Flexibility without having to retrain staff!
2. Great Support
The StudioPress support forums are some of the best of any theme I’ve worked with. They are very active, and well moderated with people who know the StudioPress themes inside and out. There is a thriving community growing up around the themes.
This means that the do-it-yourself solo entrepreneur or very small business person working on a very tight budget can get answers to questions about the theme relatively quickly and easily.
3. Highly Configurable
Genesis has a huge variety of configuration that can happen all from inside the WordPress dashboard without any need for messing with programming. For example Genesis makes it easy to change the sidebar layout on your posts and pages with just a mouse click. Not only that, but the StudioPress folks have created some great plugins to add even more customization for those who want to fine tune all sorts of things.
- Want to have custom sidebars on a post by post basis? There’s a plugin for that.
- How about different navigation menus on different pages of your website? There’s a plugin for that.
- Or maybe you want to be able to easily create clean URL redirects, but without the extra coding I had do go through for my affiliate links? There’s a plugin for that too!
All that built in, or easy to add on, functionality means that the business can focus on running their business and creating great content to attract customers rather than having to mess with programming their site.
4. Fantastic SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is hugely important for small business websites. Genesis is coded very cleanly so that it serves up WordPress pages very quickly. Speed is becoming a more important factor for SEO.
Not only that, but the code in Genesis has all of the latest SEO best practices built in. They make it easy to manage all of the various settings to maximize search engine optimization right from your edit screen and without any programming required.
This gives businesses using Genesis a competitive advantage!
5. High Security
WordPress security is a growing concern as the number of websites powered by the platform continues to grow at a record pace. As more and more websites are created in, or switch over to WordPress the platform will likely become more targeted by hackers.
And that’s a powerful reason why it’s critical that your small business website has a theme that follows all of the WordPress security best practices. Genesis does.
The theme developers invited WordPress Lead Developer, Mark Jaquith to perform a security audit on Genesis. Here’s what Mark had to say about Genesis:
“StudioPress reached out to me to do a security review before Genesis was even released, and I did another review for Genesis 1.3. They were very responsive to my suggestions, and the result is a theme framework that follows all the WordPress security best practices. It’s clear StudioPress made security a priority when developing Genesis and from a security standpoint, Genesis 1.3 is at the top of its class.”
That priority on security with Genesis provides huge peace of mind for small businesses!
6. Plays Well With Other Scripts
Many times small businesses are looking to integrate other scripts with their websites to do things beyond what WordPress does. Some of the themes out there cause difficulty integrating with these non-WordPress programs. Go into the support forums of some themes and you will find a big long list of “known conflicts,” often with popular WordPress plugins.
Genesis rarely (if ever) has this problem. From my experience, if it works with WordPress it will work with Genesis.
This is a big deal for small businesses that need even more from their website than what WordPress offers.
What It All Means
At the end of the day all these factors add up to make Genesis a great WordPress theme framework for small business websites.
Click the banner below to learn more about the Genesis framework.
Thanks for a great article! Sounds like a great theme! How hard is it to convert my existing blog to Genesis?
Heya Kris! Converting to a new theme like one of the Genesis themes is very easy if you are looking to change to a new look and layout. Just pick one of their Child themes, install both that theme and Genesis. Then activate the child theme and you are good to go.
If you want to tap into the power that Genesis offers but still keep the same look and layout you have now it will take some customization. For example, with your Facebook Advertising blog I would recommend starting with a minimalist theme like the Prose Child Theme and customizing that to meet your needs.
If you are not comfortable with doing the customization yourself we can help you here at SuccessCREEations or you can look in the StudioPress support forums. They have a “Theme Customization” tab in their forum navigation bar with at least a dozen folks listed who can help you.
Thank you for you reply Chris,
Prose looks quite nice and clean, so I might give it a go. Another option is that next time I’ll do a new website I’ll use Genesis right from the beginning.
Cheers,
Kris
Chris,
Just an FYI for readers here: Headway is coming out with a massive selection of skins that will be available directly through the Headway admin panel. What this means for small biz is that they’ll be able to select pre-designed versions of Headway, similar to iThemes’ model. Additionally, users will be able to take that skin and be able to configure the leafs and columns within that skin.
As an aside, what are you using for your comments preview plugin? It’s pretty cool!
John
Headway is still a great theme, John. I don’t think any less of it because I changed things up here. As I said I still recommend it to my clients where it is a good fit.
For the comment preview I’m using a combination of Live Comment Privew and Otto’s Gravatar Box plugins.
It’s clear from your post that you don’t think less of Headway. I just thought it might be useful for folks who are thinking about Headway to know what’s coming.
I’m about due for another review of Headway, especially since Clay & Grant have added so many new features from that first Headway review I did back when the theme was initially released.
I’ll be sure to publish that once they release the next version.
Congrats on the change-up, Chris.
Looks awesome. Not every theme is best for every situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if you switched back to Headway in the future. 
But having a choice is wonderful, both for you and for your clients, so rock on!
PS – all us Headway guys are gonna give you some grief over this so you have been warned! LOL.
Heya Michael! I did give Grant a heads up before I made the switch out of courtesy. Like I said, I still think Headway is a great theme and recommend it where I think it fits best.
And I can take a little pile on from y’all. I’ve got broad shoulders.
Am curious, Chris, because 2, 3, 4 & 5 apply to Headway – and other frameworks. Headway, and other frameworks offer skins or child themes.
So #6 is the only reason I could see for you changing to Genesis. I am a little surprised tho, unless Genesis uses no jquery which is one of the commonest causes of conflicts for Headway.
Also, regards Headway, it should be noted that plugins that conflict on the front end (i.e., the website itself as the net surfer sees it) are quite rare. The conflicts for Headway are when accessing it’s visual editor. And even then, simply disabling the conflicting plugin is sufficient.
Genesis is certainly doing some nice work in the WP framework land, and your article would surely sell it to a few newbies. Was a great well written piece for them. But I don’t think it provided any compelling reason for users to switch from their existing framework, whether Headway, Thesis, Builder or any other.
Heya Chris! I think if you look a little further up the post you’ll see that I gave my reasons for changing themes on this site. Then I listed reasons I think Genesis is a great theme for small businesses. Certainly Headway shares some of those as well. But they are a bit different from the reasons I changed things around here.
I’m well aware of the work-arounds for dealing with Headway plugin conflicts. In my experience working with clients who are slightly less savvy with WordPress, especially small business people, they don’t want to have to deal with work-arounds. They prefer solutions that just work hassle free.
Incidentally I think Headway can be a better fit sometimes for folks who want to tinker with their sites changing the way they look themselves and are newer to WordPress. Headway is a great solution for folks who lack WordPress programming skills but can get frustrating for those who are more versed with how WordPress normally works.
Nice to see a Genesis review turn into a Headway promo in the comments…
Site looks great, Chris. I’ve been messing around with some of the Genesis child themes for clients and myself, and love the simplicity. Like you say, Headway’s still a great option, but it’s not the only one
Hi Chris
Thanks for the article. it’s been a great help in my decision making process.
The 2 most important things for me is 1, being able to add wordpress plugins without conflict and 2, ease of customization of the theme source files.
I know you have touched on both of these in your post, however I would like to ask:
1 – Did you come across any plugin conflicts? Any chance you can give a list of the plugins you use with Genesis?
2 – Was there anything you wanted to change that you had to delve into the theme source files for? If so, did you find this to be easy? Any problems you ran into? Were there any theme structure intricacies that were strange?
Thanks again!
Heya Ciaran! I run lots of plugins on this site and change then around pretty regularly as I test different things out. I haven’t come across any plugins that conflict with Genesis at this point.
If you look at the footer of this site you will see that credits say I heavily customized the Delicious child theme from Genesis. So, yeah, I modified some of the child theme files, though most of what I changed was simply CSS. I had a specific look I was going for here and Delicious was pretty close and required minimal adjustments to get where I wanted it to go.
When using child themes, and the way Genesis works, I don’t see where there would ever be a need to modify the main Genesis theme files because you can modify most everything from right inside your child theme.
Really I would encourage you to take a look around the Genesis Developer’s site to see how much they have documented there. Between that and their help forums folks should be able to find out how to do most anything they want with Genesis.
Hey Chris, if you like to try out another WordPress Framework, we just released the WordPress Framework Xtreme One with the complete flexibility to create your layout with just some clicks and drag and drop, no coding required. Highly customizable, SEO friendly, great performance and much more.
It also includes many features like 12 unique widgets, including 6 different sliders easy to implement. Able to add teaser and footer with dynamical created widget areas in 28 layout variations and up to 5 columns. More details and a complete list of the features can be found on
http://xtreme-theme.com
It would be great if you could check it out!
I hope you and your readers going to enjoy Xtreme One!
It looks like you’ve launched an interesting framework, Alex. I’d be glad to take a closer look at it and see what it’s all about. (I’ll shoot you an email.)
Thanks Chris, got your email. I’ll write you back.
Hi Chris
Headway or Genesis?
Still not made my mind up.
Loved the drag and drop feature in Headway but I’ve heard that it’s buggy.
Any advice on which one a non coder should go for when setting up sites for clients?