If you’d like, you can find out more about the way that Thesis handles hooks and custom css . Could I ask if by purchasing and using the Thesis theme, I’ll be able to customize it to something similar to what I have now on my blog? I really love the Minimalistic design and would be really sad if after purchasing the theme, I can’t get back something similar. I was making mental notes as I was reading to pick up on the bits that I thought could do with checked, but then Nathan addressed them all in the first comment :-) Because of my disappointments with my old love – Thesis, and the Thesis crew not apologizing for its dysfunction, I am hunting for a new love. Genesis looks like my girl. Thanks for the write up. Chris Langille says: I would prefer to buy a more expensive framework which exactly fit my need rather than buying a cheaper one but how can I make a choice without trying it? What are the most relevant developments as you see it. So often i read a review on a particular program and then there’s an affiliate marketing link to the program in question. I’ve just bought the pro plus package of Genesis and am just about to go live with my first Genesis site. (And I’m still not done with fleshing them out, plus I’ve got a list of even more docs I want to add, as well as making sure existing articles have been updated for 1.8-specific instructions.) Adam Baird says: The issue is with search engines. They don’t like it when your HTML structure changes. While both frameworks have solid, semantic markup, they do have different structures, so changing from one framework to another is likely to cause some changes in your rankings… From what I gather from here is that both framework have their strengths and weakness and they are just going to be more awesome with each new and upcoming version. I look forward to utilizing both framework in future frameworks. So while I can checking papers for plagiarism free, and do, talk about long term impact til I am blue in the face, out of pocket cost is still KING in their minds and I do not feel that makes them any less serious about their blog or business. Considering the two years of established development history, and the game-changing developments in Thesis 1.8 (with the addition of Google Fonts, the loop API, etc.), I don’t think there’s any doubt that Thesis will continue to be one of the driving forces pushing WordPress theme development forward. Given the innovative nature of the recent Thesis updates, the future looks very bright for Thesis as well. Thanks! Really enjoyed this. I tried Genesis and a child theme, but with almost no options to customize the settings I was too frustrated; I couldn’t make even the very basic simple changes that I’m used to with wordpress. Licensing – I’m not going to beat the GPL horse, but if I purchase Genesis I can use it on as many sites that I want and on client sites. With Thesis, I need the developer option to use on multiple sites, and then I can’t use it for client sites, and additional client license needs to be purchased. To me, it is much more restrictive with Thesis while Genesis is convenient. Thesis speaks for itself on this one. They have quite possibly the most active support forum of any single WordPress theme. and they employ several staff members focused primarily on support. Chris Pearson is obviously smart but might not his antagonistic relationship with Matt Mullenweg ultimately not backfire both on him and his customers? “I’m not really seeing the connection between our members asking repeat questions, or resurrecting threads with unrelated problems; and the number of forum moderators we have, or the frequency of visits by Chris.” I have been debating Thesis versus Genesis for a large multi-site network of real estate neighborhood blogs. After reading this it sounds like Genesis is the way to go. However I have a question on footers and customizations. Adam Baird says: But this has been my favorite post so far on Genesis and did not even know much about Thesis until now since I am just diving into WordPress, committed, having decided it is about time I get away from HTML and Dreamweaver and spend more time on marketing and content. The added comments for 2 years strong is just as valuable as the OP! Regular folk aren’t designers. Genesis instant upgrades are pretty sweet, and involve significantly less risk. So for now, the child theme of Genesis seems to be able to give me the most flexibility I need with little coding. If you’re a developer, and this section actually applies to you, you probably know what hooks and filters are and how they work, so I’ll leave that part out. I think its sufficient to say that both frameworks offer enough hooks and filters to do just about whatever you want in terms of controlling your site’s content. Anyways – more than anything I wanted to drop by and say great job on the post – it’s been well thought out, well written and I appreciate (as a hardcore Thesis user) your approach and professionalism with this responsibility. Shailesh Tripathi says: Excellent comparison, I have been using Thesis 1.8 myself but have yet to give Genesis a try. Thanks for showing them side by side. Third, you absolutely must have good documentation. From a development perspective its incredibly frustrating to not be able to find a list of filters listed anywhere on the StudioPress website or anywhere in the support forum. Maybe I’m missing it, but that’s just inexcusable. The specific how-to’s are great, but give me the basics first please! I do need to cut them a break here and say that being only 6 months old is a pretty big detriment in this regard. Despite the exodus of Brian Clark, and the recent feud between Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg the book report network, I have it on good authority that its full steam ahead in the quest to create the best WordPress framework on the market. As a newbie for about a year now on Thesis, I have spent a lot of time on the forums and have always had my questions answered very quickly. ‘girlie’, godhammer and phil have been awesome help to me. I have learned so much from them. The forum never felt lacking in knowledgeable help. They have gotten me out of some pretty sticky situations for a gal that had no web design experience when I started. I will admit WP / Thesis has been a big learning curve. The design options section has been really great for me. I wouldn’t want a framework that did not have the options that Thesis has there learn how to write college papers, since my css and php is very limited. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? (that Thesis ignores that structure) With that said, I don’t think Genesis is a terrible option by any means. Its still very flexible, has great SEO options, and provides you with an efficient framework to build on. If you have the coding skills to do the design stuff yourself, its certainly a viable competitor. Improved typography and some semblance of a design options panel would turn what is already a pretty close comparison into a relative coin-flip. I’d like to add one more point to the list: I would very much appreciate any comments you may have, and thank you in advance for your time! The same can be said for Chris Pearson. As far as the development aspect of Thesis/DIY Themes, he’s a one man show, but his development consistency over the past two years speaks for itself. Love him or hate him, you know you’re going to get quality updates on a regular basis, and its quite possible that Chris has provided more innovation in the premium theme market than any other developer in the past two years. Cheers, and again, great comparison. Adam Baird says: Steve, When Thesis 1.8 dropped, Thesis added the new Loop API. This enables you to create absolutely any kind of template for absolutely any page on your website. Talk about game changing. Genesis does offer similar functionality with the genesis_loop hook, but it doesn’t offer quite the same flexibility or ease of use. My biggest complaint about Thesis is it’s lack of support for native features (post thumbnails, taxonomies…) and the recommended parent/child theme format. When a project needs a native feature or is really complex (child themes are more customizable IMO), then I think Genesis is a better solution. […] know that WordPress coupled with a powerful theme framework is the best way to run a […] Both frameworks do the heavy development lifting using hooks, filters, and CSS style sheets. The way they go about it is slightly different (okay, almost completely different), if you can learn to use hooks in Thesis, you can definitely learn to use them in Genesis. Thus, in terms of learning curve, the differentiating factor definitely lays with options panels. I have waited a year for Thesis to get child themes but it just hasn’t happened yet. Please Thesis, can you get this part moving for us who are not experienced developers. I can’t seem to get that link to load, so I can’t view the theme, but I would almost always tell you that its better to work with a framework than with a theme. If you want a magazine-type of blog that pretty much resembles a website as opposed to a blog, Genesis and its child themes are great. They look fantastic. No complaints whatsoever. I’m all about rotating banner images and thumbnails, on product-related blogs especially. I would be curious to see any evidence of this. I’ve heard of Google using speed as a comparative measure in rankings, but I’ve never heard any serious SEO say that changing your HTML structure can negatively affect your rankings, or even that they “don’t like it”. You could have easily dropped the ball with this – but didn’t. Hey guys, what is a Child Theme. Can someone please explain what it is, advantages and or disadvantages. Another question I have is if you are moving a website to A WordPress theme, and the existing front page of the website has a ton of text, is it ok to incorporate that existing website page into a WordPress Theme using a snippet of text, followed by read more. How will search engines see this. My existing website pages are well indexed, and rank highly. What would you be sure to do to maintain the high ranking when moving to any WordPress Theme ? However, I will say that it makes a ton of sense to use a framework regardless. As you point out Nathan, you know you’ve got clean, concise, semantic code to begin with. When you switch to another theme, you may or may not get that. Also, its SOOO much easier to switch designs when you’re building from the same base. Of course, you guys have to do what you believe is best for your customers, and none of this is to say that the Thesis design options are perfect or give people everything they want (though it will be interesting to see what 2.0 brings.) That being said Thesis also has it’s advantages. Many that have been stated above. I have yet to play with the new loop… and love the flexibility of the Multimedia box, although I have been able to mimic it in Genesis, although it took a lot more effort to do so. I think if design options are your thing, I agree Thesis has the edge (which is probably more pertinent for the non-developers) But as a developer, I think both have equal advantages for customization of functions and css. In reality, despite the fact that Thesis doesn’t use child themes, the way that the two frameworks are customized is actually very similar. Both require the use of hooks and filters to handle the bulk of the development load. That’s something that most “WordPress fans” are completely clueless about. Developers will probably be able to handle hooks and filters, but I would venture to say that any developer who can work with Genesis hooks and filters, but can’t figure out Thesis hooks and filters is probably not worth working with. The total page download for the Genesis homepage under this setup is 111.9KB. 4.4KB of this is the HTML document, 21.1KB can be attributed to the style sheet, 0.3KB can be attributed to 2 CSS background images, and 76.2KB is composed of 3 javascripts that take care of the fancy drop down menus. This means the entire page requires 7 HTTP requests. For the record, HTTP requests are usually the main culprit when it comes to high page load times. I’ll also agree that the lack of multi-site support in Thesis is inexcusable given that 1.8 came out after 3.0. — Provide a simple way for you to maintain all of your template customizations in a single file. This has two key benefits: [1] you have everything in one place explore learning case studies, and [2] by taking advantage of the lightning-fast Thesis architecture (as explained in the this comparison article), you can serve any type of custom page faster than you can with any other theme. Second, I’m not going to tell you that one framework is unequivocally better than the other. I’m striving to provide an honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of each framework, and to give you the tools you need to make an informed decision. I could have done a week of research and probably still missed a few points for Genesis. Like I implied in my response to Nathan, there’s not much substitute for being intimately familiar with a framework through working with it day in and day out. As I said at the beginning of the article, I do that with Thesis…I don’t with Genesis. Keshav mishra says: Any chance of 2013 update on this article? Great article. I have referred to this article many times over the past 6 months, as I grapple with changing to Genesis. In terms of actual development time, I recently did a project which had been designed for Thesis (as the designer had done for 10+ other projects). I decided to go ahead and build it with Genesis, and with help from Brian over a Skype call on one sticky point that I’d not yet dealt with in Genesis (the type of support I would never expect Chris to offer btw) research paper topics 2015, I got the project complete in only about an hour longer than it usually would have taken me in Thesis. I fully expect to have that down to the same time or quicker once I’ve done more of them. My only point of contention here is the BuddyPress stuff. Genesis isn’t exactly plug and play with BuddyPress. GenesisBuddy makes it workable, but you’re going to need some coding know-how to get that working with any sort of custom set up. Just performing the install on a child theme goes beyond what an average WP user is comfortable with. Its certainly easier than wrangling Thesis and BP, but its not exactly “BuddyPress ready.” Also, GenesisBuddy is not even close to the efficiency of Genesis itself. What additional hooks/filters are you looking for? I’ve been building Genesis sites for over a year now and haven’t found any hooks or filters needed that I’m missing. But if there is something you’d like, provide the use case and it will most likely make it into Genesis. One thing not addressed is your point about community tutorials on the web, which you said that there are an abundance for Thesis, but virtually none for Genesis. Others picked up on this by mentioning the dev.studiopress.com site. This would involve tutorials that were equivalent to the Thesis Answers site that I know Girlie was putting together. Thesis is rock solid framework but I like Genesis most. From Thesis 2.0 it is really hard to work with that. I do want to talk about the difference in the way Thesis and Genesis are customized though as its a HUGE difference and I do think its relevant. Just wanted to add my 2 cents here. I’ve been using the genesis theme for a couple of months now, and will continue to use it in combination with a few child themes I’ve purchased, but overall I wish i would’ve went with thesis and will purchase it soon. As someone who has no coding skills whatsoever, the COMPLETE LACK OF DESIGN CUSTOMIZATION is just a deal breaker for me. I’m sure, for many, the child themes are the perfect solution, but thesis makes it so much easier to customize your design. You quoted the developer of genesis as saying that design customization isn’t a priority… uhh yeah, I can tell. Not sure why he would make that decision intentionally… I guess it’s easier to SELL MORE CHILD THEMES if you can’t customize jack in the “premium” framework. To anybody reading this, unless you have some coding skills, go with thesis. I had the opportunity to play with it a bit recently and instantly was kicking myself for not getting it in the first place…. Oh, you mean I can actually customize the design of my site with my premium WP theme? Hey, what a novel concept. An instance of this was when I saw someone recommending Thesis over Genesis because of SEO – and we were called out for not having specific controls on tag/category pages. So an uninformed user was told Thesis is better b/c of that, when in fact Genesis had them long before Thesis. I contacted a designer, but he referred me to some other person. I would like to know what theme you use on this website as it’s load very fast and looks stunning for the reader eyes. I’d put the Genesis showcase up against any other theme showcase out there. Matt Hodder and his brother have done a great job with skins for Thesis at ThesisThemes(dot)com, and several of their skins are free. Adam said “Thesis also gives you the ability to control the layout of your homepage using any combination of featured posts and “teasers” to create a magazine style layout. Finally, you have near complete control over what shows up in your bylines, comments, teasers, and post content” way ahead of you… Thanks a lot for this Thesis vs Genesis post. I read it and most of the comments too. You really did a great job with this, pretty much there was no way to get it perfect, two awesome teams/communities/products with a TON of functionalities :) […] jury is still out regarding which theme is the best. For example, a recent review of Thesis and Genesis showed that they both offer many of the same features, and that the best […] There’s no argument that, at this point, Genesis provides less resistance if you’re a complete beginner with limited funds who just needs a plug and play solution. Excellent after sales support Studiopress. thank you. CSS – Child Themes allow you to completely write the css from scratch if need be, whereas the Thesis css files basically need to be overridden. Not always a big deal, but sometimes requires a bit of frustrating legwork to override some stubborn CSS in 1 of the stock css files. Would be nice if we can turn off the vanilla style sheets in Thesis as an option. They both seem very comprehensive as you said but I don’t really know how intuitive the handling is itself. Will you buy a two size bigger suit just because its material is better compared to another one? Adam Baird says: I’m not disputing the idea that switching to a poorly coded theme will negatively affect your rankings. It most likely will. There is evidence to support this, as well. Viola! You’ve just created your first child theme. Now, make all of your CSS customizations in the new child theme style sheet, and put all of your custom functions, hooks, and filters in the new functions.php file you created. When you’re done, activate the child theme. Just like that your new design is live. Need to add custom page templates? No problem! Just add your_new_page_template.php to your new child theme folder, and it should be available to use as one of the page templates in the page template drop-down. Want to modify an existing page template or loop? Genesis has 13 hooks that fall within the loop. But instead of disputing the potential of combining the two, I’d rather dispute the supposed demand for the combination. I don’t think there is very much. We have an option for people who want to point and click their way to a unique design, and it’s separate from the main framework. We believe this is the undeniably the most practical solution, for a myriad of reasons. But Prose is not our best selling theme. To me can you write we in an essay, that would just add one more layer of flexibility to Genesis. Child themes are great, but most people want their site to look unique. Giving the non-coding crowd a chance to change a few colors/fonts/etc. without having to dig into CSS or pay someone would be great. Thank you so much! I have been struggling with which one to get until I found your post. I am going to run over and get Thesis right now. Great article on a comparison between Thesis and Genesis. I was just reading over the article again, and its amazing that a 4,000 word article can miss so many key features of each theme. Thesis is absolutely amazing, and, now that I’ve used genesis on a couple more sites, I’m starting to realize I really didn’t do either theme justice here. Here’s to both teams for kicking out a couple of awesome products. Adam Baird says: Great post and perfect timing for me. I was one of the original Thesis customers. I have built many sites for myself and others using Thesis. I have loved Chris’ continuing development as well as his support team. But sometimes good things come to an end. In a technical sense, the frameworks load almost 100% differently. Genesis more or less uses the traditional WordPress method of using different templates for the header, sidebar, footer, index, etc. Thesis almost completely ignores this structure. Regardless of how important you may think it is to use native WordPress functionality, there’s no questioning the fact that both methods are producing extraordinarily fast websites. At the end of the day. That’s what matters. Its interesting to see other perspectives. For me personally, 99% of my decision on which framework to use is based on what’s under the hood. That’s because the amount of time it takes me to do things largely determines my income level. Great Comparison.. Adam Baird says: Genesis uses a child theme for customization. Basically, the process for getting started looks like this: Obviously you’re free to do whatever you like, but there’s a reason you don’t find too many blogspot framework comparisons… If there’s one thing both sides would agree on here, its that WordPress is pretty easily the best blogging platform on the market, and its quickly becoming one of the premier CMS solutions on the market as well. That’s not to say its perfect, but using an inferior product because some people are having an argument seems a bit silly to me. Thesis is hands down my choice when it comes to building a site from ‘scratch.’ The level of control that it gives you in the UI alone is more comprehensive than what you’ll find in Genesis — and when you want to customize something, the theme does a great job of just getting out of your way. Eric Binnion says: Once upon a time, Sugarrae posted a detailed tutorial for how to add unique content to category pages; now, this task can be accomplished from within the WordPress interface using the new Term Options that debuted in Thesis 1.8. Robin Stanley says: Chris Olbekson says: Still, I love both and will continue using both in the future, very excited at how they continue to push WordPress forward as they compete. In the end, we customers are the winners imho. And the new Term Options? These have opened up a critical door for discerning website owners and SEO-savvy developers by allowing you to provide a unique headline and unique content for any type of category, tag help writing thesis statement, or taxonomy page. A great resource. Thanks Adam! I’m unashamedly a Thesis fan and user. Hands down, my sites rank the fastest and best with the Thesis theme, and my small business clients realize the same results. The SEO structure is incredible, and makes my job a lot easier. I’ve tried other themes (although not Genesis), and their performance can’t compare. You can buy Genesis and a child theme and be up and running in minutes. You’ll also notice I’ve linked to a couple Thesis tutorials written by community members. This is not because I’m biased, but because there are an abundance of community-written tutorials for Thesis. and there are virtually none for Genesis. Once again. great post Adam is right. I don’t believe either theme has a larger learning curve than the other. Neither Genesis nor Thesis pioneered the idea of hooks and filters. That was all WordPress. Thematic was one of the first themes to take advantage of Hooks, and the Flexx Theme from iThemes used them too. We all stand on the shoulders of great developers. I like Thesis Framework sir.. As others have said, this was a really fair and in my opinion, accurate assessment of Thesis vs Genesis. I agree Thesis still has a slight edge, but as you stated, this may not be the case as Genesis matures. Thanks for putting this together. Lolz. I barged uninvited as you mentioned developers. Just thought I’d say I absolutely love Thesis. Thanks for clarifying. For now, I think I am sticking with Thesis. They are both outstanding, though. With all due respect to Derek professional essay help, who’s been a great addition to the team – it’s my very own fingers which are still cramped from creating the For someone who isn’t a developer or is more concerned with community involvement, I can see the motivation being quite a bit different. With all that being said, the new Blocks system on the imminent Headway 3.0 look amazing, and could really put the cat among the pigeons on theme/framework development when released. Authors have been featured in: Would really appreciate any advice you give me, thank you so much! First, you absolutely must have a development team behind the framework cranking out awesome sauce updates on a regular basis. Genesis has a great team behind it. With people like Brian Gardner. Nathan Rice. and company you know you’re in good hands going forward. As to your point about standards, we have tried to make sure that Genesis always utilizes the latest WordPress features as soon as they are available. One reason we did this was exactly what you mentioned … if we’re using standard WordPress features (like menus, featured images, etc.), then you’re more likely to find tutorials and users, OUTSIDE the Genesis community, that can help you. We think this policy benefits our users greatly, and they seem to agree. Now that Thesis is a different whole thing should you upgrade or write another review comparing Thesis 2.0 with Genesis 1.9 (perhaps) when Genesis 1.9 will come up? I have been wringing my hands over going with Genesis or Thesis. I found this extremely helpful. Thank you for taking the time to share this. I appreciate it. My final point is about the Staff and Community Support comments you raised, specifically the Genesis is “getting there” bit. Having spent a fair bit of time on the Thesis boards (1550+ posts there) and more recently on the Genesis boards (270+ posts so far), I’d have to conclude that I personally think the Genesis boards are run better. I do miss my font controls but I’m adapting. Both frameworks come with more than 50 hooks, and a whole bunch of filters (Genesis has significantly more filters). They use style sheets to dictate CSS changes. Again, that’s about where the similarities end. Likewise, I have no real evidence to support this. I’m not an SEO guy. I have picked up a fair amount of knowledge in my time as a developer/designer, but its not my area of expertise. In no particular order: Genesis for developers, Thesis if you don’t have the patience. Thing is, though, the price of Genesis and Prose together isn’t that much more than Thesis, Headway or Catalyst (amongst others). So, essentially, you’re getting to do all these frameworks do (as far as changing design colours, styles, etc) for about the same price, and using it to build a “unique” look. In terms of moderation, I meant that within the Genesis boards, threads are closed a lot more as soon as the OP has had their issue satisfied. It may seem a trivial thing, and occasionally frustrating to arrive just after a Mod has been and closed it when I want to contribute to the solution, but it does keep everything focused and doesn’t allow threads to become polluted. In saying that, I do recognise Shelley did/does a *lot* of useful thread organisation, merging, splitting and so on, but that may be my point – it doesn’t seem to get to that stage within the Genesis boards. Imagine how many rainy day naps you could take, or how many more tutorials you could write if the Thesis boards were more self-governed, or if you had 5 moderators to do the admin work :-) I personally use Thesis and love it. Just looking at Genesis as a viable option for one of my clients. Personally I would like to determine which Framework would be the best choice if the end customer with simple skills has to handle design and modifications? I really love working with this system. It might honestly be the only system I’ve ever seen that is simpler than the Thesis model of a custom folder containing a custom stylesheet, images folder, and custom_functions.php file where you place all of your functions, hooks what should my thesis be about, and filters. I must admit, I really like the idea of just 1 style sheet instead of 3. You can easily make the argument that developers will incur a higher cost, but I just pass that on to my clients at cost (and let them know accordingly). I’ve rarely had an issue with that. When all is said and done I think innovation should be the end goal for both frameworks as this only helps push the entire WordPress community forward. Learn how to write killer content, get more traffic, make money, and more by entering your email below: I’ve just finished my second Genesis website in the space of 3 weeks, having learned the framework from scratch about 4 weeks ago. It’s simply a case of taking the sample child theme and fixing up the CSS et voila- website done. If you have access to the full set of child themes you can see how the pros re-work the standard Genesis CSS into pretty much anything you can think of. On the other hand, Genesis appears to have a wider support base, with CEO Brian, lead developer Nathan, Daisy, Rebecca, Charles, Sozo, Nick and other moderators all keeping things tidy and doing a better job of supporting not only the core Genesis framework itself, but all of the official child themes, all of the StudioPress classic themes as well as the general issues. But from my point of view it’s simple: only 1 of them (Genesis) has attracted world class designers, and that’s the most important thing. Looking through all the premium skins and child templates available for both that’s my conclusion. 4k words to who knows how many words. Space refers to the space between blocks of text. Thesis does this as well as any theme I’ve ever seen. Of course, there are weak spots – comment meta anyone? Genesis, on the other hand just runs together sometimes. Its really completely inexplicable for such an excellent framework to mess up something so simple. The really bad thing is that it trickles down to most of the child themes as well. Again, I know its an easy fix, but you have to understand that so many of your users aren’t going to do the CSS work. The total page download for the Thesis homepage under this setup is 49.0-59.0KB. 4.9KB is from the HTML document, 33.2KB from 3 style sheets, 1.0KB from 2 CSS background images, and 10-20KB from 1 inline image. If you turn off the multimedia box image, the total download drops under 40KB, and you’re only looking at 6 HTTP requests. That’s still pretty darn slim, but it could be better. Thesis developer Chris Pearson has stated publicly that he plans to eventually cut down on the number of style sheets, and that would certainly help. For now, you can use W3 Total Cache to minify the stylesheets and combine them into one. That cuts out two HTTP requests right there. For the record, you can do the same for the Genesis fancy drop down JS and cut out two HTTP requests there as well.
Thesis 2.0 is DIY Theme Framework for faster website and theme development. It is not just for faster development but is also fastest to load in comparison to other theme frameworks. Thesis is designed mainly to be used for blog and magazine themes, however, you can push it forward if you really want to. It is not as customizable and complex as Canvas Theme Framework but no everyone needs fancy features that no one will use.
Thesis Theme Framework Options Panel Glad you liked my detailed review and thanks so much for the nice words. It also has box import feature that lets you migrate all the settings of the theme with ease. Of course, Thesis isn’t for everyone! You would need to have at least some basic knowledge of web development plus the theme doesn’t come cheap. The price of basic version is $87 and it only includes 12 months of upgrades. This is the section where you can add Google scripts and other scripts that helps to improve your website. It’s a handy way to add scripts to your thesis website. With thesis boxes, you can customize the blog as you want, all from the front-end. Each box has different set of options and properties and it takes less than a minute to add a new box. To test and see how thesis 2.0 works, I installed the theme on a brand new blog. I spent more then 3 hours playing with the latest version and it turned out a robust theme with a lot of options to customize. FYI, the DIYThemes (the company behind this framework) has decided to keep developing both the frameworks and it makes a great sense for people those who don’t like the drag & drop 2.0 version can stick with the 1.8.x. Thesis 2.0 is a different framework and if you upgrade to 2.0, you will loose all the design settings. Though, I wouldn’t suggest you upgrading to 2.0, unless you really like the new version. May be you should create a demo blog, install Thesis 2.0 and see how it works. Well, last month I finally convinced myself to try out the Thesis 2.0 – Drag & Drop Framework. The theme is in the market for 2+ months but I didn’t started using it until Alex come with the MD3 for 2.0 . Thesis 2.0 comes with two default skins – Classic skin and the Blank skin. Classic skin is the same as the default thesis 1.8.x skin and blank skin is a blank page so you can start building the skin from scratch. In last 2 months, a lot of new child themes and boxes have been released for Thesis 2.0! BlogSkin is a perfect theme for internet marketers best facebook case studies, bloggers, and multi-authors blogs. The theme comes with several awesome thesis Boxes, custom landing page template and 2 different Mods for 2 and 3 columns layout that you can switch between any time. If people are purchasing thesis for the first time, than they won’t have any issues. The thing is that it’s not easy to upgrade from Thesis 1.8.x to 2.0. Thanks Dev and great review. I’d really like to upgrade but am really nervous to do so. Would love your suggestions. The latest version creates a whole new look inside your dashboard. The UI is pretty nice but not something I expected in 2.0! The buttons are actually Dropdown menus and each of the Thesis 2.0 features can be accessed. I continue to have people ask me all the time but because I haven’t converted myself, I’m not sure what to tell them. Hopefully you can give me some pointers on this. Unlike other themes, thesis 2.0 doesn’t support WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast. So you would need to stick with the Thesis SEO option. Very handy feature for creating a 404 page! When thesis theme was launched there weren’t as many WordPress theme frameworks as now. Thesis theme was launched March 29, 2008. BizLife is another awesome free child theme. This one also has a custom home page and is designed & developed by Puneet Sahalot. One of the reasons I decided to change WordPress themes is that some of my sites had slow loading times. I noticed that people were bragging about having a fast loading website and I was obviously jealous! See my friend Ana’s site, Traffic Generation Cafe. That is one site to be jealous of! Ana recently defected from Thesis to Genesis. Another great thing about Genesis is that if you install a child theme and customize it, the actual frame work is unchanged and safe from your human errors. Then you can backup your child theme and use the same customizations on other sites. (If your license permits) The actual framework stays clean. In Thesis 2 if you wanted to customize your layout you would have to deal with boxes and css which is not always easy. I would rather click on my choice and be done with it! Life is easy for me today, when it comes to building a website. but the hard choice now is which WordPress theme to actually choose? Genesis has an awesome design straight up. Basic but not clunky and obvious like Thesis. I was amazed that I did not really need an added child theme straight away, but of course I added one anyway. Check out the screen shots below of the raw framework. Genesis came with an awesome design so for starters there was a far less customisation needed. When I have changed WordPress themes previously, there is always approximately 2 hours of work to get the website back to what I needed. You know, all of the essentials. Genesis 2 came with many features inbuilt so as soon as I installed it, there was a decent looking functional website showing up. I have tried to work with Thesis 2 but I was hitting road blocks, and far too many for my liking. I found myself wasting time just trying to get to know how to use this new framework. Don’t get me wrong though, it is an awesome framework but it turned out to be too technical for me. I could have taken the time to work it out, but time is money from me, and it also means less updates on my website. I need to create content and promote it, not design my own websites from scratch. By using Thesis I learned how to create code that replaced the usual plugins I needed. For example in my Thesis theme I added code for the related posts, the author box, the social buttons, and so much more. That meant my site had less plugins and more functions. Like the best website frameworks, Gantry features a fully responsive design which you can see in action on the demo site. Simply resize your browser window to see how the page layout responds to screens with narrower widths, such as smartphones and tablets. The responsive 960 grid system has been built using Twitter Bootstrap for maximum compatibility. The WPZoom framework also includes a number of shortcodes. These can be used to insert a good selection of elements into your content. This includes as buttons, tabbed areas, info boxes, column layouts, and more. There’s also a slideshow shortcode on offer. This makes it easy to add animated images galleries to your website. This feature removes the need to install a separate plugin. Headway is a dream come true for designers and those who don’t know how to code. It’s a drag and drop framework that allows you to control almost every element of a theme’s design, such as layout, colors and fonts, by pointing and clicking. Typically, you’ll find that popular frameworks have good support communities that have built up around them. This means that if you run into problems or you want to customize your theme, you can turn to the community for support. PageLines is a drag and drop Design Management System (DMS) that allows you to create responsive websites without editing any code. Thesis 2.0 is primarily about three features: boxes, skins and site tools. Price: $39 per theme or $49 for all themes (get 20% off with the coupon code ‘ATHEMES ‘) When it comes to getting access do Divi, you do have to join the Elegant Themes club. Thankfully, Elegant Themes is widely considered to offer the most bang for your buck among premium WordPress theme clubs. For $69 a year, you get access to 87 high-quality themes, including the impressive Extra. and for $20 more, you also get access to a handful of genuinely useful WordPress plugins. If you want a framework that lets you build highly customizable page layouts for your WordPress site, all through a user friendly visual interface, then Gantry is definitely worth taking for a test drive. Anybody used Headway? If so please tell me about it. I’m not even a designer I’m a photographer and I don’t see any templates that combine the design, aesthetics and SEO that I’m looking for so I guess I’m going to have to do it myself. Any help would be most appreciated. I’ve used Pagelines before for about a month and I can’t recommend them. They charge $30 per month and that doesn’t include all their themes or features so I’d stay away from them if I was you or anyone else. I have been using both Themify and Genesis the past while and I really like Themify as not only do the sites look great, as a developer I can build a full site in less than 2 days using their software and my clients don’t need to call me every hour as it is simple for them to use. Genesis is great but is quite costly. Anyways I thought I’d leave a reply. I hope you find it useful. When it comes to support, joining the Elegant Themes club gives you access to the busy discussion forums. There you can open support tickets and expect fast, helpful responses from the community and help desk team. There’s detailed online documentation available for each theme and plugin, helping you to make the most of your website. Through this visual set of options and controls, you can customize many aspects of your website. This includes the color scheme, website logo, and easy one click demo content installation. This last feature makes it easy to setup your website and configure it in the same way as the promotional demo version of the theme you are using. After taking advantage of this feature, you can then go in and add your own content to the template. The framework itself is lean, secure, SEO friendly, future proof and highly customizable. It is designed to always be used with a child theme – it is up to you whether you use one of the many offered by StudioPress or create your own. Some of the top-selling child themes include Infinity Pro. Magazine Pro and Parallax Pro . It’s a little unorthodox compared to other frameworks, but that’s precisely why I created it. Everything is geared entirely towards developers. It includes a no-assumptions starter theme that merges Zurb Foundation with a robust PHP 5.3-based back-end AND a separate collection of starter plugins that can be cherry-picked based on the projects needs (this encourages adding features/functionality as separate plugins instead of inappropriately bundling everything into the theme). Lastly, site tools enable you to optimize your site for Google by doing things like adding Google authorship and markup schema with the click of a button. Some WordPress themes are created by using a framework, while others are built from the ground up. Ultimatum includes everything you need to build your own custom theme using WordPress. The tool comes with a powerful form builder, a range of sliders for creating post and image slideshows, is fully WooCommerce compatible, and comes bundled with the powerful Visual Composer drag and drop page builder plugin. This last inclusion means that creating custom layouts for individual posts and pages is very straightforward and produces some great results. Regular users can achieve a similar amount of freedom by choosing one of the 10 website demos that have been created for Jump Start. They can then use the integrated layout builder tool and powerful admin control panel to customize their website further. Price: $89 standard; Deluxe $199 Divi is the flagship theme from Elegant Themes and it’s a multipurpose WordPress theme that includes a drag-and-drop page builder tool and an impressive collection of pre-built page templates. From the end user perspective, sometimes the theme and the framework will be separate items. In this case the reflective essay with example, the framework will be used in conjunction with a separate child theme that was built to work with that framework. Other times the framework will be integrated into the theme and they will be available together, in a single package. The WPZoom theme company created this framework and now use it to power all of their commercially available WordPress templates. This means that if you choose one of their many impressive WordPress themes, the underlying structure, code, and functionality of the framework will be coupled with design and appearance of your chosen theme. Once the plugin and the theme are active on your site, you get access to a wide selection of page builder features. One of the highlights of Gantry is the drag and drop page builder tool. Gantry makes use of widgetized page layouts, where individual widgets can be dragged and dropped into place to populate the page layouts with content. Gantry includes a large selection of its own widgets, or you can use third party widgets to add content to your page layouts. @everyone: Which of these frameworks work best for my above needs? (I am considering Genesis + Dynamik website builder). It would be great if you can throw in some suggestions. Thank you, Sakthi. With the best WordPress theme frameworks, you’ll also find additional tools that have been built specifically for use with that framework. Examples include the powerful Genesis Extender plugin and Design Palette Pro extension that add new features and capabilities to your website. Price: $99 Standard; $179 Developer; $129 Club (then $20/mo) With some other frameworks this visual approach to editing requires an additional premium plugin to get the same functionality, but not with Themify. The framework also includes a selection of widgets and shortcodes for inserting elements into your posts, pages, and sidebar areas. When using the Themify framework, you are able to export the settings from one site and then import them into another to help save time during the setup process of a new site. Builder is one of the better supported frameworks, with support staff, a comprehensive codex as well as video tutorials and walkthroughs. With TeslaThemes, the framework is part of the themes themselves, so there is only one set of files to upload, as opposed to the parent child relationship that is used by products like the Genesis Framework. As these themes are all built on top of the same framework it means that whichever theme you use from Tesla, it will have the same control panel and options for customisation. Like Elegant Themes, the WordPress themes from the TeslaThemes club are all built on a custom-made framework. By joining the club, you get access to all the existing themes and future releases. More advanced features of Ultimatum include the Custom Post Type creator which allows you to create your own post types and custom taxonomies for organising your content more effectively. The tool also comes with optional integration with Google Fonts and a large selection of icons for giving your designs greater visual appeal. I’d still consider myself a beginner level developer. I have built many sites with themes and highly customized those themes. I would like to learn to create my own custom sites and am researching frameworks. After reading your list I am considering Genesis, Ultimatum, and Gantry. Out of those 3, what do you feel would be the best fit in terms of my experience level? I want something highly customizable, but I do not want to rely on someone else’s child theme, as I would like to completely create my own. Thanks! This is a great collection. Blocks are a way of extending the functionality of Headway. There are the core blocks that come with Headway Base, then there are the extra blocks that can be added via Headway Extend. One of the most popular core blocks allows you to add WooCommerce compatibility to your site, for example. We recently published a hands-on review of the latest version of Headway here . At the moment,I dont want to get into coding at all. I am ok with going through a learning curve of 2-3 days, playing with buttons/toggles/drag and drops etc. I just need to build a website and get it running all by myself without hiring any wp developer. But, down the line (after a year or so) I am seriously considering paying developers to get exact look and performance that I need. WPZoom is an in-house WordPress framework that has been created by the team of theme developers that are also known as WPZoom. The showcase section of the Beans website displays some great examples of the different type of sites you can create with this framework. There are also a number of free items available on the Beans website, including Sketch resources and WordPress plugins. The best of the first iteration of Thesis has been retained: Thesis 2.0 is still SEO-conscious and still comes with an active community and a well-staffed support forum. Hi Charlie, Based on the above, I’m leaning towards Genesis and Dynamik & themes from Studiopress. Would this combo likely be a good combination for my requirements? I’m also wondering how Theme.co X compares to the above products reviewed. I understand that this article covers a good review of each of the above, but I am kind of loaded with too many information and thus confused as in to decide what suits my needs best.
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