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Hello @itsraviranjan - Your site isn't a Genesis or WordPress site, so I'll close this thread as this is a Genesis / WordPress forum. If you end up switching your site to Genesis / WordPress, this forum would be okay for this type of question.
Good luck!
Hey @bugg - I'll pass along the feedback for sure. The FOMO thing has been on our mind and we think has been exacerbated by the fact we released the Pro versions before the free ones. Once the free versions come out in the next couple of weeks, we expect FOMO to be relieved since everyone will be able to use the core value of those products.
RavenManiac - We're looking to find ways to deliver a trial experience for the pro versions of those plugins. Right now the closest thing we have is the demo video by Carrie on studiopress.com/genesis-pro.
Hey Baz. Sorry for the confusion on all this. With big changes coming to WordPress with FSE we're in a bit of an awkward transition time. Answers in line..
One of my main concerns is what happens to custom websites built with Genesis 3.0?
Nothing really. We'll continue to update the Genesis Framework including after "Full Site Editing" is released in WordPress Core. With FSE, the way themes will be built will be totally different than they are today, so if you want to build an FSE theme when FSE is released, you'll need to do it in the new way.
For us, the new way will be with future features being added to Genesis Blocks which will be freely available to anyone (StudioPress or otherwise) and won't require a Genesis Pro subscription to access the primary benefits you get from the Genesis Framework today.
As with every other kind of theme (Genesis or otherwise) the old style of themes (version we all build today) will continue to work in WordPress well after FSE is released.
Will Genesis 4.0+ and Genesis Pro be backward compatible for those users who are unable (or cannot afford) to update their sites to use Genesis Pro?
Genesis Pro is a package, not a product. Today it includes the pro version of Genesis Blocks and will in the near future contain the pro version of Genesis Custom Blocks. Both Genesis Blocks & Custom blocks will have very functional and free versions of those plugins, so the cost to switch would be $0.
If you find the pro features helpful, then you could buy Genesis Pro.
Future versions of the Genesis Framework (4.0+) will still support building themes in the current way well into the future. Not everyone will switch to the new way immediately 🙂
It is bad enough to second-guess what the next Gutenberg update will do to your new website, now we have to contend with what Genesis will do too!
Genesis Blocks / Custom Blocks do not affect the Genesis Framework or your site, unless you install those plugins and use them to build awesome block-based designs 🙂
As for worrying about what Guntenberg will do next, that is exactly what we are doing and is exactly why we're taking these approaches to make sure the Genesis community is ready for that with a suite of tools that help you keep winning with WordPress as WordPress evolves.
By offering free and extremely functional versions of Genesis products (e.g. GB / GCB), we hope to have an even bigger impact for the Genesis community and WordPress community than we ever have in the past.
Our goal here is to do the worrying for you, and most importantly to act to make sure you're prepared!
Hello RavenManic. I see that your posts have been appearing / disappearing. I'm not sure why, but I'll look into it on our side. We don't really mess with people's messages unless they're spam or a flat out policy violation (which is rare), so this one is a mystery :/
Relative to your questions...
So if I understand what you're saying, Atomic Blocks will become Genesis Blocks. A Genesis Pro subscription will add additional "subscription only" features to Genesis Blocks and will require a subscription key.
Atomic Blocks will become Genesis Blocks, but the pro features are delivered through a separate pro plugin. That plugin is currently available in the Genesis Pro plan. The title of that plugin is "Page Builder", but will change to "Genesis Blocks Pro" when the free version of Genesis Blocks is released.
If so, will Studio Press ProPlus members also have access to these "subscription only" features or will they have to upgrade to a Genesis Pro subscription?
Genesis Pro is a separate package from ProPlus. The Genesis Blocks Pro (and soon to be released Genesis Custom Block Pro) plugins are not included with the ProPlus all themes package.
While both Genesis Pro and the old Pro Plus package offer access and support for all StudioPress-made themes, Genesis Pro’s primary value positioning is within the set of pro block editor features delivered via Genesis Blocks Pro and Genesis Custom Blocks Pro. Of course, existing ProPlus customers already have access to and support for all StudioPress-made themes (and future themes) which are also included in Genesis Pro.
As a ProPlus customer, you wouldn't find value in the themes included in Genesis Pro, but you may find value in the block editor plugins that are the central focus of Genesis Pro.
There's still a lot in the air with all this, but I'll answer as best I can...
* FSE themes will be drastically different than themes are today. You can read more about that at https://wpengine.com/blog/full-site-editing.
* As mentioned, the notion of what a theme is and can do will be way different with FSE. Traditional theme frameworks like the Genesis Framework just won't work in that world. In time, the old way of building WP themes will be a thing of the past, but I expect WP #Core to support backwards compatibility for a very long time. There will be no rush to switch sites using "old themes" when FSE is launched.
* Frameworks like the Genesis Framework will have to evolve in one way or the other in order to support the new ways. For every framework this means being block-first. Frameworks will still exist, but will focus more on blocks than themes.
* Page Builders like Beaver Builder are more a competitor to the block editor itself than Genesis or any of our products IMO. Genesis Blocks enhances the block editor kind of how like the Genesis Framework enhances WP themes. We think of this as a core-adjacent approach vs. ~forking off into totally different design & build systems like traditional page builder plugins.
We'll be publishing content on the SP blog as FSE evolves in WP #Core and our strategy evolves in kind.
In general, our goal here is to help the Genesis community adopt and win with the new capabilities in WP #Core and to do so in a way that doesn't create a dependency on the Genesis Pro plan. If you build with Genesis today, you'll be able to build with Genesis in the future and without any additional charges 🙂
1) The Genesis Framework as we know it is finished ? in the video she mentioned it was installed but no longer required.
The Genesis Framework is not finished. Genesis Blocks and its pro features are not dependent on any theme as is the case with pretty much any block plugin.
2) Genesis will become a Block Plugin with some extra pre-built page templates.
When "full site editing" hits WP #Core, ALL parts of a WP site will be controlled by blocks. At that time the value you get through the Genesis Framework today would be delivered through the Genesis Blocks plugin for Full Site Editing based sites. The Genesis Framework will continue to work for building themes as you do today.
For FSE-based sites, Genesis Blocks will have analogues to features in the Genesis Framework and our FSE themes AND Genesis Blocks plugin will have pre-optimized block templates. In FSE themes, it looks like the WP #Core team will do away with page templates. That's one of the major changes coming with full site editing themes.
Since WP itself is changing to be 100% block-focused, so is how we deliver value through the Genesis experience will also change.
Keep in mind, everything in WP will be making similar changes as FSE becomes the "new way". Every framework must either be completely refactored or spit into two separate products. These overarching changes are not unique to the Genesis Framework.
3) It will work with any WordPress theme.
Yes. Genesis Blocks and Genesis Custom Blocks will work with any theme now and in the future.
4) There will be no more actual 'Themes' released or updated once the Pro Blocks Plugin is released in its final form - August ?
We WILL release new themes. Currently we're working on converting existing themes to full site editing themes (which are completely different than themes today), so those themes will be available at the launch of FSE in WP #Core. We'll also continue to release new FSE themes in the future.
All our FSE themes will be made available to Pro Plus and Genesis Pro customers of course.
Hello all. I wanted to respond here and provide some clarity around Genesis Pro.
For context, I'm the brand lead of Genesis within the WPE business, ran a Genesis agency for 5 years, and my agency was featured on the "Recommended Developers" list on StudioPress.
The TLDR on Genesis Pro is that is a package that includes premium features for plugins as well as access to and support for Genesis & StudioPress-made themes. This is somewhat similar to how Pro Plus was an all themes package that included our themes. Pro Plus wasn't a product, it was a package.
Other details that may be helpful..
* Genesis Pro is a plan (package). It is not a product.
* The GP plan currently contains the pro features for the soon-to-be-released Genesis Blocks plugin (mid Aug).
* Genesis Blocks is a rebranded & expanded version of Atomic Blocks.
* The free version of Genesis Blocks will be released on http://wp.org/
* Genesis Pro will also contain pro features for Genesis Custom Blocks which will also launch in mid Aug.
* In the future the GP plan will also include cloud storage / retrieval capabilities for blocks, sections, and layouts. The idea here is that you can quickly save and access your custom blocks / customized blocks on any site you're working on. This will be launched in ~Q4.
* The GP plan also includes access to and support for the Genesis Framework & premium child themes.Pro Plus all theme package customers won't get access for free to Genesis Pro, but we will be offering a discount for Pro Plus customers soon. Please note that every theme available in Genesis Pro is also available to you in the Pro Plus "all themes package" as the name describes 🙂
Hello @vanderbeam. I work for StudioPress / WP Engine. Thanks so much for your feedback and suggestions on Gallery Pro. I'll pass this post / feedback along to the engineering team for review for future updates to GP 🙂
@wadams9 - I'm David with WP Engine / StudioPress. As Anita pointed out, if you could submit a support ticket with any specific observations around accessibility in News Pro, we'd love the feedback. Accessibility is definitely an area we focus on. We're not currently planning an update for News Pro this quarter, but your feedback may likely be helpful for a future release. Thanks!
That's a really interesting idea. I know the designer of Atomic Blocks and Atomic Themes are the same person so there should be a lot of similarities in design styles 🙂
If you're trying to emulate the style without knowing code (primarily CSS), you could use the design controls in the blocks in Atomic Blocks (e.g. colors, fonts, etc.) to dial in the deign as close as you can to what you like about the Atomic Theme.
If you were able to hire someone to code the styles, you could emulate the designs pretty much exactly and still be able to use the blocks. You can find some good folks for that here https://www.studiopress.com/genesis-developers/ or check out Codeable.io. They have quite a few good Genesis devs over there and are often fairly affordable.
As for future blocks in Atomic Blocks that specifically emulate the designs from that theme, we don't have anything imminent that we're releasing on that fronts. That being said, I'll pass along all this feedback to the right folks 🙂
If there's anything else I can help with, please let me know!
Thanks,
DavidHello Michael. I work for WP Engine / StudioPress and can answer your question.
We did in fact purchase the theme inventory and previously stated we may / would use the designs of those themes for future SP themes; however, we did not plan on selling / releasing the theme as it is (e.g. not a Genesis child theme).
The main reason is that all of our theme support systems and documentation around Genesis.
If you have a copy of Atomic Theme it will still work I'd imagine, but we won't be selling / releasing it under it's non-Genesis form.
Are you interested in the design of the theme or the way it is coded currently?
Thanks for the feedback!
-David
Hello @greenstreet. I work for WP Engine / StudioPress. Thank you so much on sharing your thoughts on all this.
I address a few of your points specifically down below, but I can assure you StudioPress and Genesis ARE alive and well. Registered community members continue to grow, many new commercial themes are being created across the community, and new developers are adopting Genesis every day.
We've more than 4x'd the investment in Genesis and the StudioPress themes since the acquisition. Those products have gotten more love than they have in a *very* long time.
Relative to your specific points...
> I've purchased a child theme at
> https://genesisdeveloper.me/daily-news/ a year ago.
> But theme stopped working on mobileI'm sorry to hear you had this experience. This is a 3rd party theme provider's theme as I think you know, so we obviously can't guarantee how they support their product, etc.
That being said, there are many theme providers who do update and support their themes. In addition to the themes listed in the StudioPress marketplace you can buy themes directly from companies like 9Seeds, BrandID, SEOThemes, etc. which are wonderful themes and are maintained and fully supported.
> Is Genesis going to dead?
Definitely not. In addition to the over 4x in engineering investment in Genesis & StudioPress themes, WP Engine has also put its marketing muscle around promoting those products and bringing new Genesis developers and agencies into the community via the scale of the WP Engine platform.
> Genesis Framework continues with its upgrades
> and great improvements, however the last theme
> released by StudioPress dates back to February 2019.We have a new theme coming before the end of the year!
This past year we've focused on improving existing themes by adding in features like one-click-theme setup, starter packs (different demo content configs), and Gutenberg enhancements. We've also released and re-released a few 3rd party themes in this timeframe.
We're working feverishly and investing heavily in all these products and our software releases (updates to Genesis and themes) over the last year have been at a faster pace that at any time in the past.
That being said, we definitely hear you that new themes are important and we have what I believe is a really wonderful theme planned to release by the end of the year.
> Moreover, many authors have stopped developing
> themes for Genesis, for example Seothemes,
> Zigzagpress, Wpstudio, Appfinite, Themedy and
> many others including Design By Bloom which
> has completely abandoned Genesis.Of course some companies may abandon one tech or the other at any moment in time. I know some of these companies have NOT abandoned Genesis. By sake of example Lee with SEO themes is a Genesis Shaper.
I'll reach out to these folks though to see if / why they might have abandoned Genesis and provide that feedback to the product and engineering team. Some may have just stopped making themes for other reasons to as I know is the case with at least one of the companies you listed.
All that being said, the community is growing and there are many fantastic theme companies using Genesis and developers using Genesis to create custom themes.
> Gutenberg doesn't seem to be holding up anyone else
It's not holding up us. We're re-releasing existing themes with new capabilities of course, but we've already made great strides here in Genesis and many of our existing themes.
> This often happens when a company has a
> few years of success and rapid expansion,
> they lose sight of the customers.
> Sadly I don't think Studiopress will
> be around much longer.It is true that this can happen, but I can assure you that is not what is happening here.
Since the acquisition Genesis and the StudioPress themes have had more investment than ever, the engineering team has more freedom to innovate than ever, there's more marketing muscle than ever, there have never been as many investments to grow and support the community, and of course Genesis and the SP themes benefit from the scale of the WP Engine platform and community.
Time will tell of course if all this energy results in Genesis and the community continuing to grow, but we're working really hard to make that true 🙂