Help Me Choose a Genesis Child Theme for a Thesis Conversion

[eluviis]

Hello, this is my first post on the new forum…

I've been using Genesis for a while on other sites, mainly for clients. However, I have one of my own sites running on Thesis 1.85 that I'm seriously considering moving to Genesis. My favorite Genesis theme at the moment is Minimum, so I was thinking of starting there. But I wanted to see if any of you had a better suggestion.

This is what I will do. I will show you the site in question and then list some of the plans for the redesign.

This is the site

Plans:

1. Homepage will not be the main blog but must feature the latest post and have a couple of post excerpts below that.
2. I'm thinking the homepage will have a large image to introduce the topic of the site. Not sure yet.
3. The site is currently only monetized with ads - So good ad placement is somewhat important.
4. Email list signups is the other big conversion goal.
5. Photography is big on the site - Very important. Usually, photos will be big and detailed.
6. Lots of white space, simplicity and breathing space.
7. Wide 2 column design. Likely aiming at 1024px wide at least.
8. Post images are important, but I'm not sure whether they will be square or rectangular. Current post images are 180x180. But I don't currently like how my excerpts look.
9. Text will be the same size or maybe a little bigger, but more spaced out and with more padding. Considering the possible move to a serif font.
10. I want to have an extra taxonomy for a quick blog - effectively separating long-detailed articles from quick and short blog posts without causing any permalink problems. Might need more advice on this.

Eventually I might make a small section for an actual shop for soft goods.

Anything else I might be missing I'll post later. I would love any advice for a starting theme as well as design things I might want to keep in mind.

Plus, given I'm converting a site that already has at least 40 post/pages I need to be careful to keep in mind it's a conversion and not a brand new site. Also, I want the site to last after the redesign, so I don't have to worry about a design anytime soon. The current posts use captions and blockquotes heavily, so I have to keep in mind how those will convert from Thesis to Genesis.

[Susan]

I think Minimum would fit the bill for you; as you said, you're looking for simplicity, and Minimum is one of the most simplistic (yet dramatic) themes available.

It also has the built in portfolio page, so you can feature more of your posts/pages with great space for images.

Plus, the front page has that not easy to miss "subscribe" button for an e-mail list sign up.

Definitely worth taking for a drive 🙂

[eluviis]

^^^ By the way... Thank you! I'm finally working on redesigning the site!

[Author]

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