News

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.

The results are in!

Remember back in October we announced a global survey of the Genesis community?

Well, smarter folks than me have been calculating, collating and counting, and now the results are ready to share!

67% of them say the framework has, in one way or another, changed their lives.

(61%) of the survey respondents said they work at agencies or identified as freelancers, the vast majority of them (85%) said they use the Genesis Framework for the work they do for small or medium-sized business.

U.S. (54%) […] top countries were the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, India and France. In Asia, the top four countries included India, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.

64% of respondents said they had tested their Genesis site using Gutenberg

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.

The results are in!

Remember back in October we announced a global survey of the Genesis community?

Well, smarter folks than me have been calculating, collating and counting, and now the results are ready to share!

67% of them say the framework has, in one way or another, changed their lives.

(61%) of the survey respondents said they work at agencies or identified as freelancers, the vast majority of them (85%) said they use the Genesis Framework for the work they do for small or medium-sized business.

U.S. (54%) […] top countries were the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, Holland, Italy, India and France. In Asia, the top four countries included India, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.

64% of respondents said they had tested their Genesis site using Gutenberg

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.

One of the stated goals of the Genesis team at WP Engine is to

ÔÇ£make the Genesis community one of the fastest-growing and most open communities in WordPress.ÔÇØ

There are many ways we plan on achieving this goal, including increasing product feedback in mediums like Slack and Github, but also by introducing new ways for people from across the community to have a voice in the future of Genesis.

WeÔÇÖre excited to announce the launch of one of these initiatives: The formation of the Genesis Shapers!

The Genesis Shapers are a 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.

The Genesis Shapers will meet in person twice a year (roughly around WordCamp US and WordCamp Europe) and participate in ongoing working groups and Slack meetings in-between. The first meeting of the Genesis Shapers took place in Nashville during WordCamp USÔÇöas Brian mentioned in his recapÔÇöand all members of the Shapers group were in attendance either in person or by video. HereÔÇÖs a great picture of the Shapers along with the Genesis R&D team at WP Engine.

Through the lens of being the most open community in WordPress, we also wanted to share with you what we discussed at this first meeting.

Getting to know each other

Many of the people in the Genesis Shapers group knew each other from their participation in the community; however, that wasnÔÇÖt true for everyone. We started the meeting by doing a quick round robin where everyone shared their connection to Genesis, a little bit about their business, and their Genesis origin story.

While this took up quite a bit of time, it was a great starting point for everyone to orient to each othersÔÇÖ perspectives and get to know each other a little better.

A special message from Brian Gardner and Jason Cohen

After the acquisition of StudioPress and Genesis by WP Engine in late June of 2018, there have been a lot of questions around the future of Genesis and how WP Engine intends to support the Genesis community. To address this, we invited StudioPress Co-founder Brian Gardner and WP Engine Founder and CTO Jason Cohen to say a few words at the beginning of the meeting.

Brian shared some interesting stories around how he and his partners ultimately decided to sell StudioPress and how their journey led them to believe that WP Engine would be good stewards of Genesis and its community. He also shared his excitement for the future of what that relationship, investment, and attention means for Genesis and the community.

Jason also shared his thoughts about the future and how the Genesis engineering team has an opportunity to do great things for the community that relies on that product. He addressed the need for innovation that matches the speed of innovation in WordPress core, and how as product and community leaders, we have an obligation to help the community not just address the new Gutenberg era, but also benefit from it and lead within it.

Quick roadmap rundown by Nathan Rice

Nathan RiceÔÇöthe lead developer and co-creator of GenesisÔÇötook some time to review the existing Genesis roadmap with the Shapers group so everyone would be aware of what has already been planned. As published in many places including the StudioPress blog, GitHub, and Slack, Nathan shared the following:

• 2.8 – With Genesis 2.8 we will be extending the power of Gutenberg to help you spin up sites faster allowing you to autoload demo content and weÔÇÖve included other optimizations for Gutenberg. This will include phase 1 of the demo content feature with further improvements to come.  
• 2.9 –  Will include much needed refactoring including a bump for what minimum versions we support in an effort to make Genesis faster and to simplify the code base in order to help the Genesis community take advantage of the advances in the underlying technologies of Genesis. This is in alignment with similar efforts and timing within WordPress core.
• 2.10 – This release will continue on the refactoring efforts of 2.9 including moving settings and layout APIs to classes among other improvements.
• 3.0 – In addition to further refactoring, we plan on adding in a few more capabilities to help with mobile including a special AMP integration the Genesis R&D team is working on in partnership with Google.

As always, weÔÇÖll be releasing beta versions for each release for testing and direct feedback from everyone in the community.

Strategic discussions on the future of Genesis

After the formalities of introductions and announcements, Shapers group members were finally able to focus on a discussion around product strategy.

In order to frame this discussion and make it more efficient, we decided to discuss specific assertions the Genesis R&D team has made when thinking about the future of Genesis. This is based off an exercise where the team makes assertions on what will/wonÔÇÖt be true in the future (backed by data), sets goals based on those assertions, and then identifies tactics to achieve those goals.

For example, the goal ÔÇ£to be the most open community in WordPressÔÇØ and the tactic ÔÇ£create a representative group from the community called Shapers,ÔÇØ came from this exercise around assertions, goals, and tactics.

For the Shapers meeting, we decided that we would surface one of the assertions that had generated a ton of internal debate within the Genesis R&D team.

The assertion that was discussed was that. In five years, Gutenberg will have full site-building features (vs. page building), and WordPress/Gutenberg will continue to allow for advanced customization and integration by developers.

As IÔÇÖm sure you can imagine this sparked a lively debate not only around the role of the developer in the future full-Gutenberg world, but also the role of a theme framework in that world.

Ultimately, the group agreed with the assertion that WordPress will continue to allow for advanced customization and integration by developers, but noted the challenge of the current WordPress community to learn the requisite skills in Javascript, the Javascript tool-chain, React, and other technologies that are required for Gutenberg but new to the WordPress world.

The urgency of the need to learn the requisite skills for Gutenberg (such as Javascript generally and React specifically) was an interesting turn in the discussion, and it was fun to discuss the intersecting lines between how the group saw Genesis serving the advanced developer community in the future, and the role of Genesis in helping those who donÔÇÖt learn the requisite skills for Gutenberg still be able to create custom sites in future.

Of course, this was exactly the point of the Shapers meeting!

By gathering a diverse group of opinions, we were able to identify critical needs that Genesis as a product and we as educators in the community could help address. How can Genesis help theme creators in a world where Javascript is the primary programming language? How, as educators, can we help theme creators learn the skills they need to continue to create and customize WordPress experiences in meaningful ways?

As is always the case, we had more ideas than time, but it was a special moment for the Genesis R&D team to get direct feedback from leaders within the community.

What have the Shapers done since WCUS?

The Shapers are furthering the discussion on how Gutenberg will change the role of a theme framework. This is happening over Slack; weÔÇÖll be sharing the results with you. The most interesting part of these discussions so far has been deciding on a firm answer to the question: ÔÇ£What will a theme be in five years?ÔÇØ

The Shapers will continue this journey of helping shape the future of Genesis along with you as you provide feedback in Slack and during beta releases.

How can you shape the future of Genesis?

We will be cycling membership within the Shapers group over time to give others a chance to participate; however, there are tons of ways you can shape the future of Genesis today!

Genesis GitHub – watch for new versions of Genesis or tickets related to upcoming features to see whatÔÇÖs being planned and leave your own comments and feedback.

Genesis Framework Slack – Join various real-time discussions with Genesis core contributors and the Genesis R&D team about upcoming features and strategy.

Sign up for the Genesis Developers announcements – Get on the developerÔÇÖs mailing list to receive email updates for forthcoming betas, features & announcements about Genesis.

Subscribe to the StudioPress Blog – We always announce newly released features, betas, and releases on the StudioPress blog, so subscribe to keep up to date with all the latest happenings with Genesis.

The Genesis Shapers

• Bill Erickson – Billerickson.net
• Jon Brown – 9Seeds
• Jennifer Bourn – Bourn Creative
• Sara Dunn – 11Web
• Tonya Mork – XWP / KnowTheCode
• Lauren Gaige – Restored 316
• Gary Jones – WordPress VIP (Automattic)
• Sridhar Katakam – SridharKatakam.com
• Lee Anthony – SEO Themes
• Robin Cornett – Robincornett.com
• Greg Boser – Foundation Digital
• Carrie Dils – CarrieDils.com
• Jonathan Jeter – ClickHereLabs

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.

Genesis 2.8 provides developers with new tools to make Genesis themes with less code and better user experience!

Child themes, now config-driven

Child themes should be simple. But lately, they’ve been getting more and more complicated. So in Genesis 2.8, we’re introducing a new function to locate and load config files to enable and configure Genesis features ÔÇô features such as a new onboarding experience, custom header images, default editor colors, and font size selections, using the new block editor in WordPress 5.0.

This new configuration-driven approach will allow us to build more features into Genesis, while only loading the ones your child theme needs.

New child theme onboarding experience

Have you ever activated a WordPress theme and been disappointed by that first impression?

Sometimes starting from scratch is too intimidating ÔÇö or too time consuming.

Genesis 2.8, when running on WordPress 5.0 or later, includes a new “onboarding” tool. This allows Genesis theme users to import some homepage demo content, just to help get things started.

Of course, the homepage can also be built using the new block editor released with WordPress 5.0.

Just install the theme as you normally would, and the onboarding tool will walk you through the process.

This new feature only requires a config file (loaded using the new config loader), and no special code!

You can see the onboarding feature in action by using the Genesis Sample child theme beta, currently available on our Github.

Get all the details

We keep a detailed changelog for each release. The changelog for Genesis 2.8 can be found here.

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.

Genesis 2.8 provides developers with new tools to make Genesis themes with less code and better user experience!

Child themes, now config-driven

Child themes should be simple. But lately, they’ve been getting more and more complicated. So in Genesis 2.8, we’re introducing a new function to locate and load config files to enable and configure Genesis features ÔÇô features such as a new onboarding experience, custom header images, default editor colors, and font size selections, using the new block editor in WordPress 5.0.

This new configuration-driven approach will allow us to build more features into Genesis, while only loading the ones your child theme needs.

New child theme onboarding experience

Have you ever activated a WordPress theme and been disappointed by that first impression?

Sometimes starting from scratch is too intimidating ÔÇö or too time consuming.

Genesis 2.8, when running on WordPress 5.0 or later, includes a new “onboarding” tool. This allows Genesis theme users to import some homepage demo content, just to help get things started.

Of course, the homepage can also be built using the new block editor released with WordPress 5.0.

Just install the theme as you normally would, and the onboarding tool will walk you through the process.

This new feature only requires a config file (loaded using the new config loader), and no special code!

You can see the onboarding feature in action by using the Genesis Sample child theme beta, currently available on our Github.

Get all the details

We keep a detailed changelog for each release. The changelog for Genesis 2.8 can be found here.

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.

This past weekend nearly 2,000 folks from around the globe gathered in Nashville, Tennessee to attend WordCamp US. #WCUS, as it is known on Twitter, is the largest in-person WordCamp in North America, and it was the first significant event our team attended after the acquisition by WP Engine.

StudioPress was well represented, as I was joined by Nathan Rice, Matt Lawrence, Jen Baumann, Chris Garrett, Bryan Smith, Mike McAlister, and John Parris. (Mike and John have recently joined our team as a result of the Array Themes acquisition.)

As you can see, weÔÇÖve been busy this year. With two acquisition events, ongoing development of Gutenberg and WordPress 5.0, and WordCamp US, we have had our hands full. But thatÔÇÖs ok, because the transitions are nearly complete, and we will hit the ground running as the new year turns.

WordCamp US ÔÇö Thursday, December 6th

Things at WordCamp US unofficially kicked off Thursday evening with an impromptu gathering at the Frothy Monkey in downtown Nashville. Some might be surprised that I didnÔÇÖt choose to host it at Starbucks, which is across the street, but once in a while, you have to throw your community a curveball. (Not to mention I have grown an affinity for localÔÇöand some might say goodÔÇöcoffee.)

While I considered having this meetup at the host hotel, I decided that I wanted to provide a smaller, intimate environment for us to hang out. The food was delicious, as was my hummingbird latte, but most importantly, we enjoyed good conversation.

After our time at Frothy Monkey, we headed back to the hotel, where we spent another meal and more time with folks from our community. And of course, ran into some old friends from the greater WordPress community as well.

WordCamp US ÔÇö Friday, December 7th

Before we checked into the event and attended opening remarks, a few members of the StudioPress R&D team met at The Diner for an engineering meeting. With the recent release of WordPress 5.0 (and yes, the Gutenberg editor!) we had some things to discuss.

When we decided to sell StudioPress, one of the biggest reasons for it was the desire to push Genesis ahead, and I knew we needed more resources to do that. There were six of us at this breakfastÔÇöfour more than the usual ÔÇ£Nathan and BrianÔÇØ call.

While much of our team attended sessions at WordCamp US, I spent the majority of my time in conversations with folks from the Genesis community. I figured that I could watch the sessions on video, and I wanted to take full advantage of the time I had with connecting in-person.

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing success stories from designers and developers and loved being able to communicate some of our upcoming plans with Genesis, themes, and blocks.

After the sessions ended, I had lunch with a few close friends and then prepared for the WordCamp US after party which was held at the Adventure Science Center. This was the same location as it was last year, which I lovedÔÇöample space, quiet atmosphere, great food and drinkÔÇöall primed to set the mood of a ÔÇ£good time.ÔÇØ

Unfortunately, during the event, I fell ill, and couldnÔÇÖt stay as long as I had hoped. (Dehydration from a trip to the sauna and getting a massage earlier that day was likely at fault, I suppose.)

Before I left, however, I had the pleasure of (finally) meeting Lee Anthony of SEO Themes and his fianc├®e Jade, who traveled all the way from Perth, Australia, to hang with our team.

Here are some thoughts on the time we spent together.

Speaking of Australia, I also had a chance to meet up with Sridhar Katakam. Sridhar needs no introduction, as his tutorials have helped thousands of Genesis users. What I love about him most is his heart for our community.

One super cool thing on the exhibition floor was the Google booth! We are working with Google to build out AMP integrations within Genesis and at their booth they demoed Genesis + AMP, using our recently released Breakthrough Pro theme.

WordCamp US ÔÇö Saturday, December 8th

Saturday morning came, and my plans to run the Santa Dash 5K were foiledÔÇöletÔÇÖs say the weather in Nashville was suboptimal while we were there. A quick trip to Starbucks solved #alltheproblems.

WordCamp US sessions kicked back into gear, and sideline conversations in the hallways, as well as the WP Engine sponsor booth, were in full effect. I had the pleasure of speaking with longtime WordPress friend Cory Miller of iThemes for 45 minutes.

We compared notes and shared stories of the acquisitions we both went through this past year. It was refreshing to know that CoryÔÇÖs experienceÔÇöas was mineÔÇöwith the process of turning something over that he built was good. In short, no regrets, with the right partner, and still very much excited to be involved with the project.

After chit-chatting with various folks, a group of core/community members gathered together for lunch to talk about the future of Genesis. This is part of our Shapers initiative which weÔÇÖll be providing more details on soon.

One of the things that I value, as does our team, is the contributions of our community. I thoroughly enjoy listening to their feedback, discovering new, innovative ways to press forward, and ultimately doing what I can to help their business succeed.

Speaking of photo ops, we organized a meeting place to take the annual Genesis community photo. This photo typically is displayed at the top of the Genesis Facebook Group. The Genesis community represented well at WordCamp US, and we wanted to capture the essence of who we are.

On Saturday afternoon, a number of usÔÇö40 somethingÔÇögathered at The Flying Saucer to view Matt MullenwegÔÇÖs State of the Word. At last yearÔÇÖs WordCamp we did something similar and found that it was a fantastic way to spend time with peers as well as hear what Matt had to say.

As expected, Matt demonstrated Gutenberg, the new block editor that was recently merged into WordPress Core. He also talked fundamentally about the future of WordPress and outlined what they imagine as phases 2, 3, and 4 of this implementation.

Many have opinions about the roadmap, but itÔÇÖs clear to me that the future of WordPress is going to look a lot different than it does now.

Huge thanks to Amy Masson, Tara Claeys, and Sara Dunn for organizing the eventÔÇöI had a great time, and appreciate the time they spent putting this together.

A quick congrats to Mike McAlister from our team for the work he has done with Atomic Blocks. Atomic Blocks was a finalist (out of hundreds) for Best Solution in the Automattic Design Awards, which honor the best site, solution, style of 2018.

Last, but certainly not least, the day ended at The Honkey Tonk Central with hundreds of WP Engine/StudioPress community members unwinding from a busy WordCamp. (There may or may not be a video of me, Seth Spears, and a few others singing Friends in Low Places by the legendary Garth Brooks.)

My favorite moment was watching Sridhar facetime his wife from the second-floor balcony, which overlooked flashing lights and thousands of country music fans in (and out of) harmony with the local bands playing at their respective venues.

As a longtime country music fan myself, it was a splendid way to end a wonderful WordCamp. I am grateful for the experiences I had while in Nashville and can sayÔÇöwithout questionÔÇöthat this was my favorite WordCamp that I have attended.

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.

The time has arrived! WordPress 5.0 is here!

As WordPress 5.0 delivers the new editing experience, Gutenberg, weÔÇÖre re-releasing six StudioPress themes that now feature more advanced Gutenberg support to help you get more out of your new editing experience.

Six Newly Gutenberg-Optimized Themes:

• Authority Pro
• Essence Pro
• Magazine Pro
• Infinity Pro
• Monochrome Pro
• Breakthrough Pro

All StudioPress themes are Gutenberg-ready, but these six themes have been enhanced to be specially optimized for Gutenberg.

Added Features:

To help you get the most out of the new editor, these themes have been upgraded with …

• Gutenberg theme support┬á– Quickly make changes to things like block color palettes, font sizes, editor width,┬áand image sizes, just to name a few.
• Custom styling and default Gutenberg block styles – Styles that work with the full range of available editor widths.
• Easy WYSIWYG editing – Build pages and posts using Gutenberg blocks with matching front end and admin styles. Styles, and editor widths, that match on the front and back-end.

How to Update Your Theme

Existing customers can log in and read this guide for updating your existing theme to the new version.

And there’s more …

We have plans to upgrade all of our StudioPress themes, plus as usual, weÔÇÖll also be releasing new advanced Gutenberg themes.

In addition to the child theme upgrades and new releases, Genesis itself will be upgraded to add more tools to your editing experience. Look out for those as we approach Genesis 2.8.

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.

The time has arrived! WordPress 5.0 is here!

As WordPress 5.0 delivers the new editing experience, Gutenberg, weÔÇÖre re-releasing six StudioPress themes that now feature more advanced Gutenberg support to help you get more out of your new editing experience.

Six Newly Gutenberg-Optimized Themes:

• Authority Pro
• Essence Pro
• Magazine Pro
• Infinity Pro
• Monochrome Pro
• Breakthrough Pro

All StudioPress themes are Gutenberg-ready, but these six themes have been enhanced to be specially optimized for Gutenberg.

Added Features:

To help you get the most out of the new editor, these themes have been upgraded with …

• Gutenberg theme support┬á– Quickly make changes to things like block color palettes, font sizes, editor width,┬áand image sizes, just to name a few.
• Custom styling and default Gutenberg block styles – Styles that work with the full range of available editor widths.
• Easy WYSIWYG editing – Build pages and posts using Gutenberg blocks with matching front end and admin styles. Styles, and editor widths, that match on the front and back-end.

How to Update Your Theme

Existing customers can log in and read this guide for updating your existing theme to the new version.

And there’s more …

We have plans to upgrade all of our StudioPress themes, plus as usual, weÔÇÖll also be releasing new advanced Gutenberg themes.

In addition to the child theme upgrades and new releases, Genesis itself will be upgraded to add more tools to your editing experience. Look out for those as we approach Genesis 2.8.

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 a community, we love to get together, and when we do we love to take a photograph to commemorate the occasion … and it is time to do it again!

Lots of us will be gathering at WordCamp US in Nashville this week so PLEASE join us at the WP Engine booth on Saturday (8th December) at 3:30pm for a group photograph.

If you know someone from the community who will be there, please invite them too!

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.