Genesis Theme Framework Review

I am a huge fan of Brian Gardner’s StudioPress Premium Themes for WordPress and have been for a while now.  His code is always consistent, clean, and well documented.  StudioPress CSS (cascading style sheets) are always very easy to navigate for adjusting fonts, colors, etc.  So in the latter part of 2009 when StudioPress. announced that they were going to be launching a WordPress Theme Framework like Thesis or Headway I knew that it was going to be top notch. 

Some of you might also remember a review I did a while back on on WP Remix., which is another Theme Framework that I see a lot of potential in, I see the future of WordPress as being dependent on how fast these theme frameworks can mature. 

As I mentioned earlier, the Genesis Framework has been out since last year but tonight was the first time I have taken the time to download it and install it on my sandbox server for a test drive.  My first impression was wow! The options and flexibility that Genesis brings to the table for designers and developers is unbelievable.  Once you get your head around how the Child Themes function inside of Genesis it becomes even more apparent that this is the future for WordPress. 

Just a couple of things I wanted to point out about Genesis that are important…

• The Genesis Framework itself is just a very clean parent theme that is very easy to customize. 
• Each Child Theme for Genesis will have it’s own home file and will make extending the parent theme out to do a lot of different things a lot easier.
• There are a ton of Advanced Genesis Widgets also available
• Genesis has also placed over 30 hooks into the theme so if you are advanced enough to code yourself, you can hook into various locations in your project very easily.
• Genesis itself serves as the foundation for all Child Themes and it must be installed in the Themes directory before any of your Child Themes will function.
• The Genesis Theme Framework is extremely SEO friendly and will allow you to setup exactly what you want the search engines to see when they crawl your website. 
• Currently there are 3 layout options with the Genesis Framework: content/sidebar, sidebar/content and content/sidebar/content.  This configuration can be changed on individual pages as well.
• Genesis also has some Child Themes available now that interface with BuddyPress.
• StudioPress already has released a ton of child themes for Genesis and there are more and more showing up everyday for Studiopress premium members.