Why Choose Genesis?

Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress,  believes that child themes are the way to go with WordPress and points out that Genesis has great support for child themes as well as other WordPress functionality, including SEO. Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse (of Problogger.net fame) are both highly influential bloggers and are also devoted fans of Genesis. Supporters like those make a strong case for at least looking more closely at the framework.

What Genesis is Not

It’s not a turn-key, out of the box ready solution. It takes a little getting used to and you need to know some basic HTML if you want to create something personalised. If someone is tempted by the look of the sites featured in the showcase, they will need to be able to do some coding. On the one hand, Genesis is not as easy to modify as Thesis. On the other hand, once you undestand the concepts, Genesis will give the opportunity for a much wider variation in the way your sites look.

While the forums do offer support and tutorials, they need much more content. Still, I imagine that the Genesis team has had their hands full creating child themes (there are already 31 of them) and more in depth support will follow. Some of the moderators’ answers on the support forum are not always helpful. All too often, a newbie posts a question and is told that they “have to modify the style.css file.” Well yes, that is true, but an indication of where in the file to make the changes would help!

What Genesis Is

Those two small beefs aside, Genesis is flexible, SEO friendly and offers a well-priced (the framework and 31 child themes for under $250) solution for web-developers who need to react quickly to clients’ needs. I particulary like the policy of a one-off payment for the pro package; there’s no developers option that requires a monthly fee. More detailsof the key features can be found here.

Two examples of Genesis Sites.

In the few days I’ve had to get to grips with Genesis, I’ve migrated this site and built another. The huge difference in the appearance of the sites shows the great flexibility inherent in the framework. Incidentally, this site will get a more spectacular revamp once I’ve gained even more experience”!

Would I recommend it to others? As long as you can do a little basic HTML, or know someone who can, I’d recommend it without any hesitation!