WooThemes, Genesis and Standard Theme, oh my!
So I've been a user of Elegant Themes for just nearly a year now. I've created some decent sites and have been generally proud of what I've done. But with a new project I'm working on I wanted to try something new. The theme templates at Elegant just don't fit the look and feel I'm trying to get.
One thing I feel about Elegant is that the sites look really nice but trying to customize them more than they allow takes some doing. In my opinion they tend to be more oritented to those that want something straight out of the box without changing much at all. The themes also feel a bit cumbersome which makes them load somewhat slowly. Not a good thing with Google if you load it down with plugins.
I've been looking to try something else and so far I'm torn between Canvas on WooThemes, Genesis utilizing a Child Theme and Standard Theme.
I like WooThemes since the Canvas Theme can be customized endlessly and they have some nifty looking plugins, like Sensei and WooCommerce. And I hear they are more SEO friendly than Elegant which is always crucial. But I've read the code can be cumbersome as well.
Genesis seems to be more well liked than Woo. Apparently it's a very streamlined framework that works well with Child Themes and plays nicely with SEO plugins like Yoast's All-In-One. Updates are a breeze allegedly since the framework gets updated automatically without affecting the Child. But I hear you have to know some CSS/PHP code for some portions. I know a little but would be on a learning curve so it would slow me down a bit. Still, I understand some novices have thought Genesis to be a breeze and will go with nothing else.
Standard is one I tripped upon looking for a comparison of Woo and Genesis. It seems like it starts with a choice between two very vanilla themes which can be endlessly customized the way you want them. They are built around a framework similar to Genesis. It doesn't say much about what your knowledge of code needs to be but I assume you have to be more than just a novice. It might be too much for me tackle at this moment if that's the case.
So, what I perceive is, in order of difficult from easiest to hardest is Woo, Genesis and Standard. Does anybody have any direct experience with these three theme providers? I'm gravitating towards Genesis but comments are welcome.
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I use Genesis Themes and really like them. Also, their customer support is second to none, should you have any questions. I am kind of particular to the Prose child theme, the only downside that I don't really like is that you can't have a static home page as you can with some of the other child themes.
Thanks keith! Both you and JonnyX have helped a lot here with your insights. Cannot express my appreciation enough!
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I have been a member of elegant themes for couple of years. Lately I have have been checking out Genesis and yes, Woo Themes, and yes particularly Canvas Themes. My experience is - with Elegant Themes there are some beautiful and highly functional themes. They are of very good value for what you pay for however I have found some of them are not easy to customize unless you have coding experience, which most people do not. A lot of Nicks theme are highly developed for a look and feel and the value of them lies with that.
The best way I believe if you want to make the custom CSS changes is to manufacture a basic child theme from the main theme you are using. You can make basic child theme for theme really and it is quite easy to do. Generally any CSS changes you would make would be immune from any theme updates and so forth. You could even use a custom CSS plugin to save your changes if you don't want to make a child sheet.
Anyways I find that the Epanel which is really nicely designed by the way, confusing to use. Although the code used in Elegant Themes may not as streamlined as say Thesis or Genesis, I have seen some websites that use his themes rank highly.
I am just getting into Genesis and its a very smooth framework with a really good feel to it. What I don't like about it is whats this hook business? I mean to design are website the way we want we can use the brilliant functionality of hooks! To customize your site just put this code in the "hooks header where it will be executed before any of the other code when your site loads. What? What the bejeezes does that mean!?
I mean I really do understand what it means but that's for people who like code and not for the other 95% of the people who are actually try to find useful functionality for customizing their sites! I find myself wasting a lot of time figuring out what I need in the way of code to afford myself with what I need so I just use a child theme with Genesis
.The coding is high end optimized for SEO though and so is Thesis. That is probably why Matt Cutts uses Thesis and so does Jay here. I have 't used it myself yet. Which brings me to Woo Theme Canvas. I saw it used on another site and was very impressed with its clean functionality I am currently giving it a go and I like what Ive used so far.
So, I like yourself am in these themes and I would for ease of use go with Woo at the moment but if your content with the look of a skin for Genesis that's great as well. I have seen terrible coded sites and ugly sites that rank really well so even though Elegant Themes is kind of clunky there still great looking themes and well...elegant! I don't know if this provided any actual usable help whatsoever..but cheers!
And I find it hard to write stuff!?
Thanks Jonny. I see a lot of different forum comments about how streamlined the Genesis framework is crafted, that's it's quite SEO friendly and will actually disable if you use the Yoast plugin and that they're are more positive posts about it than negative.
I think I'll try a Child Theme with the Genesis Framework. You and keithinohio have certainly helped me in my decision here. Thanks for helping me think through this!