How Strong Is The StudioPress Pulse?

[ajbf150]

Hi, I've been a premium member and huge supporter of StudioPress for years. (I'm proud to have built one of the only two AgentPress showcased themes for Marotta Realty here: http://www.studiopress.com/theme/agentpress )

I owe tremendous thanks to the folks behind this framework. It's just so classy, so user friendly, and I never have to worry about sites cracking from updates - not to mention the sites running Genesis child themes excel in searches because of a variety of factors like speed, clean code, and much more.

My question is how is the future of Genesis themes looking? Are there plans to continue rolling out themes? I haven't seen anything otherwise but it feels like to me that things have started to slow a bit....

Here's the deal, up until now I've worked with dozens (plural) of local SMB businesses and I'm taking a project for a national medical company and I'm recommending they redesign to Genesis. My decision is big and a lot (more than usual) of people are counting on me.

I'd rest easier knowing that StudioPress and Genesis themes have plans to continue to set the industry standard of WP themes, support, and updates...

Anybody have any insight they'd like to share?

Thank you for reading.

Respectfully,

Alan Boyd

[MoodyRiviera]

Excellent question...and it's something I think lots of people have been wondering about. In fact, I've seen other posts on this forum asking pretty much the same question.

It does seem that the StudioPress developers are devoting more and more time and talent to their other projects and not paying as much attention to theme development.

It reminds me of Apple...who made their name and their fortune based on the Mac OS and their excellent Macintosh hardware...but now they seem to have become mostly a phone company...and obviously all their attention is now on further development of iOS and the iPhone...because that's where the real money is now...and OS X seems to be almost ignored...seems that the "second-string" developers are the only ones still working on OS X.

Not saying that StudioPress is leaving the theme business in the hands of less-talented developers, but things are definitely not the same as they once were here in StudioPressLand.

Having said all that, I still think that Genesis and StudioPress themes are the way to go. I say that because of how well they work, and because it's seems very unlikely that StudioPress is just going to give up on this whole thing and only pay attention to Rainmaker or whatever it is that seems to have all their attention.

I also say this because themes I see coming from other developers, even though they may be slick and cool and all that, just don't seem to have the same infrastructure behind them. StudioPress has a long history...and seems solid...but can we really say that about a theme developer who hasn't been around very long?

I'll keep using Genesis and StudioPress for my customers' web sites, because they work, and (equally important) I trust them for support...I because I think they'll still be here when I really need something.

*MoodyRiviera*

[ajbf150]

Thank you for your insight MoodyRiviera.

Would you happen to be able to provide any of those links to other threads posing similar concern? I've done some searching on the forum and can't seem to find any examples on my own.

Best regards,

Alan

[MoodyRiviera]

Sorry I can't think of any of those posts right this minute, but I know there were a few people asking about the perceived lack of new themes.

Bottom line for me is that I don't see anything on the horizon that indicates that StudioPress is going to give up and/or collapse, and don't see anything coming that's likely to topple StudioPress and Genesis from their lofty perch.

Of course nothing lasts forever. Not sure if you know much about print production, but in the 1990s and into the early 2000s, QuarkXPress (page layout program) was the mainstay of the print-publishing business. Just about every professional designer and production person used QuarkXPress for everything...brochures, books, ads, catalogs...you name it.

QuarkXPress was at the top of the heap.

But, something else did come along...something produced by a large company with lots of resources...something that addressed many of the shortcoming of QuarkXPress, and addressed many of the bad feelings people had about the company that created QuarkXPress...and in a matter of a few quick years, Adobe InDesign had replaced QuarkXPress almost everywhere.

That was something almost no one could have seen coming...but it did happen.

My bottom line is do the best you can to investigate what you think is going to happen...and then realize that you can't build your business on worrying about a problem you think might happen when there's no real solution to look forward to.

There's no such thing as a sure thing.

*MoodyRiviera*

[Erik D. Slater]

Hi Alan,

It’s just so classy, so user friendly, and I never have to worry about sites cracking from updates

I agree completely. It is extremely robust 🙂

... sites running Genesis child themes excel in searches because of a variety of factors like speed, clean code, and much more.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Can you elaborate?

My question is how is the future of Genesis themes looking? Are there plans to continue rolling out themes? I haven’t seen anything otherwise but it feels like to me that things have started to slow a bit ...

The current focus of Copyblogger Media is their new(ish) Rainmaker platform (of which I am a Reseller). All StudioPress-built themes - and at least one other - are available to Rainmaker customers. If StudioPress are slowing down a bit, it doesn't mean there is anything to fear. I would be more concerned about a vendor who churns out a theme every month or so ... than a vendor who is solid, supports and is supported by other lines of business, and who creates maybe 1-3 new themes a year 🙂

I’m taking a project for a national medical company and I’m recommending they redesign to Genesis. My decision is big and a lot (more than usual) of people are counting on me.

Since you are not building the technology itself, the good news is that they are not actually counting on you, per se. They are - however - counting on the technology. You are Obi-Wan Kenobi, while your client is Luke Skywalker 🙂

If you know of a better vendor for WordPress themes and functionality, I would definitely want to know 🙂 There are some great ones out there, for sure. But the Genesis Framework works superbly. It has numerous hooks into which you can tap. The back-end functionality is solid. Everything else is just CSS ... no matter which vendor you go with 🙂

I’d rest easier knowing that StudioPress and Genesis themes have plans to continue to set the industry standard of WP themes, support, and updates ...

Don't just point them to StudioPress. Point them to Copyblogger Media. StudioPress no longer exists as a single business entity. It is now a line of business in a bigger entity ... and it is an integral part of the everything offered by said bigger entity 🙂

---

Erik D. Slater: Digital Platform Consultant • LinkedIn

[ajbf150]

Hi Erik,

Thanks for chiming in. Appreciate the feedback.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean here. Can you elaborate?

All other things equal, from my experience, a site running on Genesis will outperform a site running on a different theme in organic search.

An example: I built two sites for companies competing in the same county, providing the same services, around the same time period. The sites were setup similarly and without any extra help, the site running Genesis moved up in organic search much further/faster and continues to do so to this day. Both are blue-collar businesses that don't do any peripheral efforts that would make one presence more powerful than the other, so my assumption has always been that the Genesis framework was a main influence.

Best regards,

Alan

[Erik D. Slater]

The thing I was questioning was your mention of "child" ... which itself would have zero impact on anything SEO-centric ... since all the work is handled within the framework itself ... unless the child theme was so heavily customized through the use of numerous hooks.

I would love to see the two domains side-by-side ... just to see if there is something going on there. There may be some glaring markup differences that Genesis handles better than the non-Genesis site.

Even if the two sites were exactly the same in every way, they belong to two different companies. The way in which those companies execute their services may also have a significant impact ... since they couldn't possibly be the same 🙂

The companies themselves don't need to "do any peripheral efforts that would make one presence more powerful than the other". The activities of their clients/customers are a greater signal for search engine rankings.

One of the sites may have been affected by an algorithm update more than the other.

One of the domain names could have been older than the other.

The domain names themselves could have played a significant role.

Lots of other factors are involved.

SEO should never really be used as a metric to justify one product over the other ... since we have no direct control over the decision-making processes that go into determining the SERPs.

Previous SEO results cannot be taken as a reliable indicator for the success of future SEO endeavours 🙂

---

Erik D. Slater: Digital Platform Consultant • LinkedIn

[ajbf150]

Totally agree on everything you mentioned, especially here:

SEO should never really be used as a metric to justify one product over the other … since we have no direct control over the decision-making processes that go into determining the SERPs.

This was where my judgement led me:

There may be some glaring markup differences that Genesis handles better than the non-Genesis site.

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