News

As we promised, Atomic Blocks has a lot of upgrades and improvements in the works, and the first result of this effort is here.

Introducing the Pricing Table block!

The Pricing Table block allows you to show your product lines in columns, allowing for comparison of features, and with the settings, to highlight one column or a best-seller.

This approach is proven to improve conversions, and takes confusion out of shopping with you.

Not only can you customize the Pricing block with options for the number of columns, padding, border styles, line styles, colors, and more, but also the contents within the table columns are block-based. This allows you to even add images or separators.

With the Pricing Table, as with all Atomic Blocks, you have great flexibility to help you customize page layouts, increase engagement, and get results for your business.

Check out Atomic Blocks for yourself over at AtomicBlocks.com

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

As we promised, Atomic Blocks has a lot of upgrades and improvements in the works, and the first result of this effort is here.

Introducing the Pricing Table block!

The Pricing Table block allows you to show your product lines in columns, allowing for comparison of features, and with the settings, to highlight one column or a best-seller.

This approach is proven to improve conversions, and takes confusion out of shopping with you.

Not only can you customize the Pricing block with options for the number of columns, padding, border styles, line styles, colors, and more, but also the contents within the table columns are block-based. This allows you to even add images or separators.

With the Pricing Table, as with all Atomic Blocks, you have great flexibility to help you customize page layouts, increase engagement, and get results for your business.

Check out Atomic Blocks for yourself over at AtomicBlocks.com

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

As developers, streamlining our workflow is critical to our productivity – and sanity.

Theres a reason that over 600,000 WordPress sites are powered by the Genesis Frameworkits the framework of choice for WordPress developers.

Come hear from WordPress expert and influencer Carrie Dils, as she talks about how she uses the Genesis Framework to help her get client sites up and running quickly, while future-proofing them at the same time. Learn tips, trick and resources from Carrie to get rolling and be even more efficient!

Duration will be approximately 30 minutes and includes the opportunity to ask questions.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

When WP Engine acquired StudioPress this past summer, one of the main objectives was to accelerate the development of Genesis and grow the community of builders who use it.

Just over a month ago, we introduced Genesis ShapersÔÇöa hand-selected and diverse group of people representing companies from across the community who have come together to be a representative voice in the strategic direction of the Genesis roadmap in addition to the feedback we receive directly from customers, across social channels, and through Genesis WP on Slack.

Those who are a part of this inaugural group of Shapers include:

Bill Erickson, Carrie Dils, Gary Jones, Greg Boser, Jennifer Bourn, Jon Brown, Jonathan Jeter, Lauren Gaige, Lee Anthony, Robin Cornett, Sara Dunn, Sridhar Katakam, and Tonya Mork.

Following up our in-person meeting during WordCamp US in Nashville this December, we held our first monthly Slack meeting earlier this month in the Shapers Slack channel.

David Vogelpohl, the Vice President of Web Strategy at WP Engine and StudioPress brand lead, sent out a list of assertions that the StudioPress core team came up with ahead of time, and in our meeting, we discussed the following:

• What do we mean by ÔÇ£customizable and integrated site-building experiences will winÔÇØ?
• Should we evolve our use of the word ÔÇ£DeveloperÔÇØ to be more precise on developers vs. implementers vs. designers?
• Is Genesis a ÔÇ£front-end frameworkÔÇØ?

Customizable and Integrated Site-Building Experiences

With the release of the Gutenberg in WordPress 5.0, content creators and novice site administrators have more power than ever before. This begs the question ÔÇ£do we even need developers and designers any more?ÔÇØ.

David led with his thoughts about this:

ÔÇ£My take on the discussions that led to this assertion was that, unlike experiences built with simplified and closed-source CMS, successful brands will want fully custom designs and integrations with their systems and mar-tech stack. In other words, business owners still wonÔÇÖt build their own sites, but will continue to rely on designers and developers to build experiences which they can use to customize their sites and manage them in the future.ÔÇØ

I tend to agree with this assessmentÔÇöthat those solutions are more for (though not limited to) a DIY, solopreneur type of user. Brands, small businesses, and professional entrepreneurs will likely opt for a custom design since their needs are more than probably more significant and at some point, might run into limitations with the Squarespace/Wix experience.

Jennifer Bourn, the founding partner, and designer of The Bourn Creative had this to say:

ÔÇ£Legitimate, successful businesses will continue to hire out their websites because they know what their time is worth and where it is best spent.ÔÇØ

She goes on to say:

ÔÇ£Genesis canÔÇÖt operate in a vacuum and needs to have integrations with third-party solutions in a seamless way. The more Genesis enables site owners to connect their digital worlds, the better.ÔÇØ

Carrie Dils, WordPress developer, and consultant, at CarrieDils.com, responded:

ÔÇ£I would think that Genesis doesnÔÇÖt get in the middle and just lets WP handle integrationsÔÇØ

The consensus from the Shapers was agreement with what Jennifer said, and that providing updates and ongoing support for 3rd-party integrations such as Beaver Builder, Elementor, and other plugins is a critical part of the future of Genesis. But Genesis should compliment existing integrations and experiences within WordPress rather than replace them.

Developers and Implementers and Designers Oh My!

With more than 250,000 StudioPress customers and hundreds of thousands of people managing over 600K powered Genesis sites, the user base of Genesis is well represented. Many folks are just thatÔÇöusers, who purchase a theme to use for their blog or website.

Beyond them, however, is another sector of users, whoÔÇöwhile yes, ÔÇ£useÔÇØ Genesis for their blogs or websitesÔÇöalso ÔÇ£useÔÇØ Genesis and themes as part of their design or development business.

There were many opinions on what to call folks who ÔÇ£buildÔÇØ with Genesis. Among the many terms that were discussed aside from the common designer and developer, we came up with these: builder, assembler, implementer, and web technician/architect.

Jon Brown, WordPress Developer at 9seeds, said:

ÔÇ£Builder seems the least demeaningÔǪ  but I refer back to thinking itÔÇÖs irrelevant except in marketing personas.ÔÇØ

I love how Jason Cohen, founder, and CTO of WP Engine, differentiated the connotation of assemblers vs. builders:

ÔÇ£Some assembly required,ÔÇØ you think ÔÇ£Ugh, crap!ÔÇØ… but ÔÇ£Made for builders,ÔÇØ you think ÔÇ£Cool, I can make whatever I want!ÔÇØ

Gary Jones, VIP Developer at Automattic, pointed out:

ÔÇ£Squarespace: Build a Website ÔÇô Website BuilderÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Wix.com: Free Website Builder | Create a Free WebsiteÔÇØ

ÔÇ£These services are targeting the folks weÔÇÖre talking about here.ÔÇØ

There was a lot of back-and-forth conversation about the names in which we refer to folks who use/build with Genesis. We felt this was important to discuss not for the sake of marketing personas, but rather to understand the wide variety of people who build with Genesis to help us inform the features and roadmap to best serve the people who rely on Genesis every day.

Is Genesis: Front-End Framework?

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

As we kicked off this part of the discussion, Bill Erickson, who provide custom WordPress design and development services, jumped in:

ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs a theme framework.ÔÇØ

Short and sweet, which I like. I agree with Bill and have always considered Genesis a theme framework. But with the evolution of Gutenberg and page builders, I believe it needs to beÔÇöand is becomingÔÇömore than that.

Carrie made an interesting point, to which Jon immediately concurred:

ÔÇ£Front-end framework makes me think of Foundation or Bootstrap or that sort of thing.ÔÇØ

True storyÔÇöas Foundation claims itself to be ÔÇ£The most advanced responsive front-end framework in the world.ÔÇØ

Jonathan Jeter, Director of Technical Production at The Richards Group, added:

ÔÇ£IÔÇÖve always called it a WordPress framework because it provides underlying features on top of WordPress which keep people from having to edit core files on their own.ÔÇØ

This comment is something I have always felt strongly about. Genesis is a framework, it works with WordPress, and uses themes to display the visual element of a website.

As we look toward the future of Genesis, and the path that our R&D is taking, one thing that Gary mentioned resonated with many of us:

Not a development suite. Just a collection of related items that work with each other. Think Adobe *That* collection is the all-encompassing solution that many folks want.

Great food for thought, isnÔÇÖt it?

Conclusion

The conversation weaved its way through and around the application in the real worldÔÇöfrom the use of widgets and impending movement to blocks, while also addressing whether or not those who build with WordPress do it exclusively.

All in all, it was an hour packed with great insight and was time well spent. It was for me, and I certainly hope it was for the Shapers. I look forward to the next Slack meeting weÔÇÖll have, and once again plan to share a recap here as well.

We want the Genesis community to be the most open and transparent community in WordPress. It was one of the most significant factorsÔÇöand most compelling reasons from WP EngineÔÇöto pursue their desire to acquire StudioPress.

WeÔÇÖre happy to be able to deliver on that goal through the feedback we receive from the Shapers group and from you through your feedback in social channels, on Slack, and through your feedback as customers.

We are deeply appreciate everything the Shapers and you do to help make Genesis and the StudioPress themes better.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Is your website getting enough attention and engagement?

One of the key ways you can gain more traction in your market is through creating content that gets shared.

To get shared, ideally, your content will be read, and a good way to increase the chances of that is if your content is attractive, readable, and inspires people to share.

Let’s look at how the Atomic Blocks plugin, along with the new WordPress 5.0 “Gutenberg” editor can help with this challenge.

What is Atomic Blocks?

The new WordPress content editor, code-named Gutenberg, allows you to format your posts and pages, and embed multimedia content, using blocks.

This enables you to have rich, attractive content using a couple of clicks, that would otherwise have taken custom HTML and CSS, or a bulky page builder.

Out of the box there are some useful blocks already, but with Atomic Blocks you get some enhanced feature-rich blocks that would otherwise be unavailable.

Mike McAlister, the creator of Atomic Blocks, smartly created a set of beautiful but also useful blocks for all kinds of purposes.

As a marketer, one of my favorite blocks is the Call to Action block:

It features an attention-grabbing title, explanatory text, plus an obviously-clickable button (with customizable target URL).

Why Use Blocks?

As I mentioned in the introduction, it’s not enough to get a reader to land on your content, they need to consume it, and hopefully take action on it.

With this in mind, blocks, and especially Atomic Blocks, enable you to create content that:

• Draws the eye
• Makes it easy to skim and get a good impression of the content
• Understand the most important elements
• Read supporting elements (testimonials, notices, break-outs)
• Know what action to take

More than Posts

Blocks can be used for more than adding interest and call to actions to articles. Increasingly you will see blocks being used for landing pages, sales pages, and even home pages.

For landing pages, the Testimonial block comes in handy to give the reader an added feeling of confidence in their decision to opt-in or take action, a small psychological nudge of reassurance.

The Post Grid makes it easy to show some recent articles, on the homepage or as a means to keep the visitor reading.

For Frequently Asked Questions, product details, or instructions, the Accordion is a good choice. It allows the reader to fold details open and closed.

That is just a few ideas, I am sure you will have many more.

Save Time, Prevent Errors

A little-discussed aspect of the blocks way of content creation is the fact blocks can be reusable. This means you can create a block, reuse it, change it, and hand it over to someone else (a client, colleague, your future self) and know it will be correct and consistent across your site.

Especially great when you want to use specific tracking links or phrasing.

What Next?

Atomic Blocks is now part of the WP Engine family, which means it will have more time and resources to grow and improve. Keep watching as we will be adding more blocks in future.

Even better, you will see Atomic Blocks, StudioPress themes, and the Genesis Framework growing together.

Check out Atomic Blocks now and see what it can do to make your content better!

(See what I did there? )

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Is your website getting enough attention and engagement?

One of the key ways you can gain more traction in your market is through creating content that gets shared.

To get shared, ideally, your content will be read, and a good way to increase the chances of that is if your content is attractive, readable, and inspires people to share.

Let’s look at how the Atomic Blocks plugin, along with the new WordPress 5.0 “Gutenberg” editor can help with this challenge.

What is Atomic Blocks?

The new WordPress content editor, code-named Gutenberg, allows you to format your posts and pages, and embed multimedia content, using blocks.

This enables you to have rich, attractive content using a couple of clicks, that would otherwise have taken custom HTML and CSS, or a bulky page builder.

Out of the box there are some useful blocks already, but with Atomic Blocks you get some enhanced feature-rich blocks that would otherwise be unavailable.

Mike McAlister, the creator of Atomic Blocks, smartly created a set of beautiful but also useful blocks for all kinds of purposes.

As a marketer, one of my favorite blocks is the Call to Action block:

It features an attention-grabbing title, explanatory text, plus an obviously-clickable button (with customizable target URL).

Why Use Blocks?

As I mentioned in the introduction, it’s not enough to get a reader to land on your content, they need to consume it, and hopefully take action on it.

With this in mind, blocks, and especially Atomic Blocks, enable you to create content that:

• Draws the eye
• Makes it easy to skim and get a good impression of the content
• Understand the most important elements
• Read supporting elements (testimonials, notices, break-outs)
• Know what action to take

More than Posts

Blocks can be used for more than adding interest and call to actions to articles. Increasingly you will see blocks being used for landing pages, sales pages, and even home pages.

For landing pages, the Testimonial block comes in handy to give the reader an added feeling of confidence in their decision to opt-in or take action, a small psychological nudge of reassurance.

The Post Grid makes it easy to show some recent articles, on the homepage or as a means to keep the visitor reading.

For Frequently Asked Questions, product details, or instructions, the Accordion is a good choice. It allows the reader to fold details open and closed.

That is just a few ideas, I am sure you will have many more.

Save Time, Prevent Errors

A little-discussed aspect of the blocks way of content creation is the fact blocks can be reusable. This means you can create a block, reuse it, change it, and hand it over to someone else (a client, colleague, your future self) and know it will be correct and consistent across your site.

Especially great when you want to use specific tracking links or phrasing.

What Next?

Atomic Blocks is now part of the WP Engine family, which means it will have more time and resources to grow and improve. Keep watching as we will be adding more blocks in future.

Even better, you will see Atomic Blocks, StudioPress themes, and the Genesis Framework growing together.

Check out Atomic Blocks now and see what it can do to make your content better!

(See what I did there? )

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Think back to the very first time you installed a WordPress theme. Do you remember what that experience was like? Was it a joyful one?

Did you get up and going in minutes bringing your voice, your products, or your services to the world?

Chances are like millions of other WordPress users, you didnÔÇÖt.

Instead, you likely exclaimed ÔÇ£Hey?! My site looks nothing like the theme demo!ÔÇØ.

Most of us are familiar with this experience either directly or through supporting others.

The underlying issue driving this experience is that when loading a new theme the demo content for that theme (which often helps make the theme experience compelling and beautiful) does not automatically load along with the theme. This results in frazzled users fumbling through documentation on how to load demo content, getting frustrated, and in many cases abandoning WordPress altogether. Yikes!

ÔÇ£My site looks nothing like the theme demo!ÔÇØ, is what I affectionately call ÔÇ£The most annoying problem on the InternetÔÇØ.

It is annoying. It is frustrating. It can be a disappointment. And it could be sooo much better.

Empowering builders to deliver joyful themes with Genesis 2.8 & Gutenberg

When WP Engine acquired StudioPress in June 2018, we made a commitment to vastly increase the investment in the R&D efforts for Genesis. We wanted to deliver a roadmap that helped the community of builders that rely on Genesis take advantage of some of the biggest opportunities to delight the customers they build for, empower the content creators they serve, or improve their own ability to bring their voice, their products, or their services to market faster.

After interviewing people and companies from around the Genesis community, it became clear that helping to improve the demo content loading experience and helping Genesis builders take advantage of the power of the new block editor in WordPress (Gutenberg), were top priorities for the community.

This is why weÔÇÖre proud to announce that as of Wednesday 16th January, the new Genesis 2.8 will be available and includes powerful new features that address these areas and empower builders, theme companies, and anyone in the Genesis community to deliver joyful WordPress experiences that ÔÇ£just workÔÇØ.

Genesis Onboarding with Gutenberg Blocks

Genesis 2.8 includes a new demo content onboarding tool which theme authors can use to define plugins and demo content that can be set up when a user installs a new theme. Theme authors can now package perfectly-designed homepages using Gutenberg blocks that can be set up with a click of a button.

See it in action:

The result of these new capabilities in Genesis 2.8 is a joyful experience when installing a new theme, reducing the time to load demo content and dependent plugins from hours, days, or weeks to minutes.

Additionally, the default Gutenberg blocks and custom blocks which can be loaded with the demo content can be re-used by the content creator on any other page/post thus delivering an even more powerful and modular experience when building new content in the future.

Not only does the experience of setting up a new site ÔÇ£just workÔÇØ for the user, but the re-usability of the Gutenberg blocks means the experience keeps ÔÇ£just workingÔÇØ over and over again.

These exciting new capabilities have been added to Genesis 2.8 for the benefit of the entire Genesis community.

“Genesis 2.8 marks an exciting step forward for child theme developers like us, that will benefit our customers as well. Initial site setup has always been a WordPress pain point and the new on boarding and config tools make that dramatically and more powerful.ÔÇéÔÇéPrepackaged Gutenberg layouts for home pages and more are going to revolutionize WordPress themes the same way GenesisÔÇÖ widgetized layouts did a decade ago.”

— Jon Brown, 9seeds

We will be updating the StudioPress themes to take advantage of the new content onboarding capabilities in Genesis 2.8 so everyone buying a StudioPress theme directly or using a StudioPress theme for free on WP Engine will be able to take advantage of the power of having a faster and more powerful experience when setting up new sites.

Genesis-based theme companies can also benefit from the new onboarding feature by incorporating it into the themes they build. WeÔÇÖre super excited to see how theme companies in the Genesis community will deliver even more compelling, intuitive, and useful experiences to their customers!

Finally, weÔÇÖre also excited to see the impact that adding the ability to define plugins and demo content can have for agencies and in-house developers. Genesis onboarding is another powerful tool in the toolbelt of developers, agencies, and freelancers to help them get projects done more quickly and profitably.

The Genesis R&D team will be adding additional capabilities to the onboarding tool in the future including the ability to load in sidebar/menu blocks when theyÔÇÖre available in WordPress #core, loading demo content into any type of page/post, and a wide variety of other joy-inducing content experiences.

There is so much more we plan to deliver through this technology, but weÔÇÖre super excited for the role Genesis 2.8 and the brand new demo content loader can play in building joyful WordPress experiences that help solve ÔÇ£the most annoying problem on the InternetÔÇØ.

Empowering developers to create maintainable themes

The second major feature that was added to Genesis 2.8 is the Genesis Configuration API. This helps theme developers organize configuration information such as Gutenberg color palettes and font sizes in one place, and improves the readability and maintainability of child themes.

Theme creators can use the Configuration API to store theme specific design configuration for Gutenberg blocks, including editor color palettes, editor font sizes, and theme support arrays.

By making it easier for builders to deliver experiences that are easy for content creators to use, yet are in alignment with the beautiful designs they create, everyone using Genesis can take advantage of the power of Gutenberg while still respecting the style of their brand.

Joyful experiences for the content creator and the builder

Our hope is that the combination of the theme onboarding and configuration features makes it even easier for theme builders to create compelling, intuitive, and useful experiences for the content creators they serve.

As we continue to invest in and evolve the Genesis Framework, weÔÇÖll expand on and release more new features to help theme builders deliver even more joy in the experiences they create.

If youÔÇÖre an existing Genesis user, after 16th January, you can update to version 2.8 by hitting the update link in your WordPress dashboard. If youÔÇÖre an agency, developer, or freelancer keen to get started with the new onboarding and configuration features, you can find information on the new Genesis developer documentation site.

If youÔÇÖre new to Genesis, you can purchase Genesis yourself or get Genesis for free if youÔÇÖre a customer of the WP Engine platform..

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Did you know there are some fantastic deals to be had all this week?

I completely understand if you missed the announcement we posted. It’s a busy time, right?

Today especially is a good day to get some discounts, due to it being Boxing Day. If you are unfamiliar, Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, and is a holiday started in the UK that spread to other Commonwealth countries.

In addition to Boxing Day is “Web Week“, which runs right up to the new year, where we encourage you to take advantage of the low traffic period to make improvements and much-needed tweaks to your site to set it up for the year ahead.

StudioPress Web Week Deal

At StudioPress we are offering $100 off our Pro Plus All Theme package (bigger discounts for existing customers). You can get this discount here.

Pro Plus includes all of our StudioPress child themes, plus 29 third party themes, making it the most comprehensive package of themes that we do! Many in the Genesis community have used this package as a springboard to launch their own site-building service.

Over at our parent company, WP Engine, there is a great deal on annual hosting plans:

WP Engine┬áÔÇô 4.5 Months FREE on Annual Plans┬á

WP Engine is the WordPress Digital Experience Platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP EngineÔÇÖs combination of tech and innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 85,000 companies across 135 countries to provide counsel and support, helping brands to create world-class digital experiences.┬áUse code WEBWEEK2018 to get 25% off your first payment┬áÔÇô thatÔÇÖs 4.5 months free on annual plans! Valid 12/25/2018 ÔÇô 12/31/2018.

Many other companies are offering Web Week deals too! Check out the full list over at the WP Engine article right now.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

Did you know there are some fantastic deals to be had all this week?

I completely understand if you missed the announcement we posted. It’s a busy time, right?

Today especially is a good day to get some discounts, due to it being Boxing Day. If you are unfamiliar, Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, and is a holiday started in the UK that spread to other Commonwealth countries.

In addition to Boxing Day is “Web Week“, which runs right up to the new year, where we encourage you to take advantage of the low traffic period to make improvements and much-needed tweaks to your site to set it up for the year ahead.

StudioPress Web Week Deal

At StudioPress we are offering $100 off our Pro Plus All Theme package (bigger discounts for existing customers). You can get this discount here.

Pro Plus includes all of our StudioPress child themes, plus 29 third party themes, making it the most comprehensive package of themes that we do! Many in the Genesis community have used this package as a springboard to launch their own site-building service.

Over at our parent company, WP Engine, there is a great deal on annual hosting plans:

WP Engine┬áÔÇô 4.5 Months FREE on Annual Plans┬á

WP Engine is the WordPress Digital Experience Platform that gives companies of all sizes the agility, performance, intelligence and integrations they need to drive their business forward faster. WP EngineÔÇÖs combination of tech and innovation and an award-winning team of WordPress experts are trusted by over 85,000 companies across 135 countries to provide counsel and support, helping brands to create world-class digital experiences.┬áUse code WEBWEEK2018 to get 25% off your first payment┬áÔÇô thatÔÇÖs 4.5 months free on annual plans! Valid 12/25/2018 ÔÇô 12/31/2018.

Many other companies are offering Web Week deals too! Check out the full list over at the WP Engine article right now.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.

To celebrate Web Week, we have decided to make a special offer for anyone on any platform wanting to leverage the power of having all StudioPress Themes available.

Until December 31st, 8pm EST we are taking $100 off the Pro Plus All Themes package, which includes every single theme we make, now and in the future, plus 29 third-party themes.

This blog was originally posted on Studiopress.com This post is in no way associated with Kembel.ca. For more posts by this author, please click here.