Why I love the Genesis framework, plus my top 5 favorite themes

Lately, I have emailed a lot of people about why I love Genesis and given them recommendations for themes. I thought I would share the information with everyone in this blog post. (Plus, it will be easier to direct future inquiries to this post. What can I say, I’m a little lazy…)Why Use GenesisI am an affiliate for Genesis (only because I love them), thank you for supporting this blog by purchasing through my links.

Genesis is a WordPress framework, by StudioPress, that not only makes your site look great, but also adds more functionality. You can buy the framework alone, or you can bundle it with a child theme. The child them controls the design of your blog. Here’s a little more clarification from StudioPress:

A framework (ours is called Genesis) is a powerful type of WordPress theme — the frame and body of the car — that acts as a design, security, and SEO foundation for your website. It also “future-proofs” your site customizations, so there’s no hassle when it comes time to upgrade your software with one click.

A child theme is the pure design element that rests on top of the framework — the cherry red paint job on that car. Or blue. Or black. Pink. Green. You get the idea…

Why Genesis?

  • The Framework provides a quick, professional design for blogs and websites.
  • Mobile friendly! This one is huge these days! Most of the designs are responsive, adjusting to the device of the viewer.
  • Dynamic home pages and a variety of widget areas.
  • Most of the themes are up to date with HTML5 coding.
  • With Genesis, coding is rarely needed and when I need to adjust the HTML, there’s a tutorial for it.
  • Built in control over SEO elements without a plugin. See how Genesis makes SEO easier.
  • $99 gets you the framework and a child theme. I know $99 is more than free, but it’s been a worthwhile investment.

To learn more about all the awesome Genesis features visit this link: StudioPress 101

This week only, Genesis is selling their Pro-Plus package for only 299.95. You get all current child themes and any themes the create in the future. This deal is never going to happen again so go take advantage of it!. Ends 8/26/15

My Top 5 favorite Genesis child themes

On to the more fun part, my (current)favorite themes. All links below are affiliate links. If you find this article helpful and decide to buy a StudioPress Theme, I’d love it if you buy through them. Helps me keep this blog running.

Daily Dish Pro Theme

This is a perfect theme for food bloggers, fashion bloggers, and lifestyle bloggers. There aren’t any color options,  but it would be easy to customize the colors by yourself.

The Daily Dish Theme
Things I love about Daily Dish Pro:

  • The home page (noticing a trend here?). I love the featured post experts. The demo displays different types of recipes, but you could do categories.
  • The footer widget areas. There are two rows: the first demos featured thumbnail posts – great for directing your readers to other posts! The bottom has 3 widget columns for all sorts of handy information!
  • The fonts. Go take a look at the titles they are beautiful.
  • The icons
  • The widget ad space at the top and bottom of the design.

Real blogs using Daily Dish: A Spoonful of Sugar and Mom Fuse

Parallax Pro Theme

I’m going to let you in on a secret. I’m working on a site redesign for Blog Ambitions and it is going to be with Parallax.

Parallax pro theme
Things I love about Parallax:

  • Everything?
  • The widget footer area
  • The parallax home page
  • The top, fixed navigation bar

Centric Pro Theme

Centric Genesis Theme

Things I love about Centric:

  • The home page. If you want to showcase your best work, clearly explain what your site is about, or display a portfolio, this is the site
  • The color options, they are bold and beautiful
  • The dynamic top navigation bar
  • The icons

Real blogs using Centric: Massive Sway – by The SITS Girls

Swank Theme

Another great theme for lifestyle, food, or fashion bloggers. Again, no color options, but it would be easy to customize the colors by yourself.

Swank Genesis theme
Things I love about Swank:

  • The home page (are you surprised?) It is beautifully crafted to highlight your content.
  • The elegant, feminine typography. The first word in the post is large and pink. The block quotes really make text stand out.
  • The contrasting sidebar
  • Styled sharing icons that keep count of shares.
  • Numbered comments

Real blogs using Swank: Owens and Davis and Natural Comfort Kitchen

Beautiful Pro Theme

This is a simple, yet trendy theme that is great for fashion, lifestyle, or food bloggers. The wide layout and white space makes it perfect for blogs with a lot of pictures.

Beautiful Pro Genesis Theme
Things I love about Beautiful Pro:

  • The width.
  • The clean, white space.
  • Contrasting footer, highlighting important information
  • The continue reading bar for post excerpts.

Real blogs using Beautiful Pro: The Deliberate Mom and Sarah Mae

Do I need to buy a child theme with the framework?

No, not necessarily. If you’re comfortable coding and want to tweak the look of the Genesis Framework, you can use the Sample Theme that comes with the framework. This blog is currently on the sample theme. As mentioned earlier, I am switching soon for a more styled look! You can also use these free themes from Brian Gardner.

I’m curious, leave me a comment and let me know what theme you use for your blog – even if it isn’t a Genesis Child theme.

Also, do you have any questions for me about Genesis or Child Themes?

 

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Todd says

    I am new to Genesis Framework, child themes, and for that matter blogging as well, however, I have decided to give this a go and would like to spend less time on WordPress type lingo or stuff and more time writing/developing original content. Though I do like the Beautiful Theme a lot, I also like the simplicity look of the Minimal Pro Theme; would this be as effective for blogging? The samples of the beautiful theme you shared were awesome.

    Reply

  4. Coeus says

    Thanks for the article pretty good. But according to me, I really like Genesis by simple it is lightweight, comfortable, fast and especially well suited for my website is SEO. If custom Genesis knows, maybe this is the best framework for wordpress.

    Reply

  5. Carlo says

    Another important point to make is this. Even if you don’t see a Genesis theme that exactly matches what you need or what you had in mind, you can select the one that most closely matches your desired result, and then use any of the nearly 1,000 hooks, filters, shortcodes and functions provided by Genesis to tweak the theme to your liking. As Kristie said, coding is rarely needed. In other words, you don’t have to write any code yourself, you just paste it from a piece of documentation and it’s usually just a line or two.

    Reply

  6. Jaime says

    Hi
    Thanks for the great article – I recently bought a beautiful theme from envato (redwood by soft pine) but now am second guessing myself in that I didn’t buy the genesis framework with child press. I am starting a lifestyle blog. Is it worth it to switch now? Or can I continue with this theme and maybe make the switch down the road. Thanks so much! I love your blog!

    Reply

  8. Leah says

    I am a new blogger (4 months) and I am using a free WP theme, I have been ready for a change for a while but it took me a month to design the blog so it didn’t look bland. Thinking about a change worries me since I am not a coder and don’t want to lose my content. Plus I am working hard to not dump family budget into a blog that can be a virtual money pit as I learn the ropes. I know I need to make the leap to Genesis and a child theme. I am just fearful of the leap.

    Reply

    • Kristie Hill says

      Changing themes is actually pretty easy. The only thing you will need to adjust to your content is the widget areas and possibly navigation menus. This is because they layouts are different for every theme.

      Don’t make the leap until you are ready though, and when you are, try picking out a theme that you like out of the box so that you don’t have to make many adjustments. Let me know if you have any questions.

      Good luck blogging!

      Reply

  9. Monica Andrews says

    I love using the Genesis framework! I’m currently using Swank and absolutely LOVE it!!! I love the cleanness and simplicity of it. I have several PDCD child themes and they’ve all been great and so easy to customize!

    I’ve recently gotten interested in designing myself after I’ve helped several friends customize their sites.

    Reply

  11. Elisheva says

    I love love love genesis. My favorite themes are from ohhellodesigns.com . -Though they only have a few and Pretty Darn Cute Designs (the one that does Swank above) are some of my favorites. I just found out you can also buy from Etsy… though I havent tried them yet. I would love to learn how to design genesis… and didnt know if you knew of anything that would teach that.

    Reply

  12. Krystal says

    I’m about to switch from Blogger to WordPress and definitely going to use the Genesis Framework. I have very little knowledge of coding and WordPress kind of scares me so I am hoping Genesis will make it easier. Thank you for your post 🙂

    Reply

    • Kristie Hill says

      Hi Krystal, that is awesome that you are going to be switching to WordPress soon. The cool thing about Genesis is that it is great for those that don’t want to code and it is also fabulous for people that love to code. Which theme are you thinking about choosing? Let me know if you have any questions about moving to WordPress. If you haven’t seen it yet, you might also want to check out my quick guide to moving from blogger to WordPress

      Reply

  13. Kelly says

    Hi Kristie!
    I always got my themes from sites like themeforest. Just regular ol’ wordpress sites (right now I am running on of their free themes, sugar and spice) and never had an issue. There are some really beautiful and functional themes I’ve found that use the Genesis frame work, but I am so unfamiliar with it and it seems like a steep investment for something I am unsure of. I guess what I am getting at is what are the benefits of having a Genesis theme, whats the big difference and what makes it better? Thanks!

    Reply

  15. Sarah Nenni Daher says

    Such great themes, Kristie! When I moved from Blogger to WP, my move coordinator put me on Genesis with the Dynamik Website Builder child theme by Cobalt Apps.

    I. Love. It. It is so easily customized that I can do so much with it – so much that I haven’t even learned yet! 🙂 The developer has a ton of videos that I’m using to educate myself, but sometimes I wish I would have started with a child theme to learn WP and then moved to Dynamik.

    I’ve pinned your article in case I decide to make a change. PS – I can’t wait to see what you do with Blog Ambitions!

    Reply

  16. Jennifer | The Deliberate Mom says

    I love my theme… it really has a nice, clean look. It took me a while to select it but I’m glad I did. Plus I adore that it is optimized for tablets and mobile phones too.

    It’s nice to hear that you like it so much too! Although I could easily fall in love with some of these other themes.

    Thanks for the mention… I appreciate it… and I’m completely flattered!

    Wishing you a lovely day.
    xoxo

    Reply

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