This post assumes you’ve honed in on the fact you want to use the Genesis Framework on your website – awesome! What comes next? Do you need a custom theme or will one of the existing StudioPress themes work right out of the box?
With 50+ child themes available from StudioPress and another dozen+ from their community marketplace, it is daunting to figure out which one is best for your website. By going through the questions here, you can narrow down the search a bit.
So, how do I pick the best StudioPress Theme?
Ask me the questions, bridge keeper. I am not afraid.
1. Who are you and what is your quest?
Are you a photographer, designer, or freelancer wanting to show off your portfolio? These themes come with portfolio-style home pages, ready to show off your creative side:
- StudioPress Crystal Child Theme (includes specific portfolio page template)
- StudioPress Expose Child Theme
- StudioPress Landscape Child Theme
- StudioPress Legacy Child Theme (includes specific portfolio page template)
- StudioPress Manhattan Child Theme
Are you going for a corporate or business feel to your site? Do you want to highlight a specific few features or products? Consider these:
- StudioPress Associate Child Theme
- StudioPress Agency Child Theme
- StudioPress Corporate Child Theme
- StudioPress Enterprise Child Theme
- StudioPress Executive Child Theme
- StudioPress Metric Child Theme
- StudioPress Venture Child Theme
Are you a real-estate agent? Stop. Right here. This theme is made to work with seamlessly with an IDX plugin:
Are you planning a wedding, keeping the family in touch, or just sharing your creative side? Check these out:
- StudioPress Bee Crafty Child Theme
- StudioPress Blissful Child Theme
- StudioPress Fabric Child Theme
- StudioPress Family Tree Child Theme
- StudioPress Modern Blogger Child Theme
- StudioPress Pretty Young Thing Child Theme
Are you a musician? These will make you tap your toes:
- StudioPress Amped Child Theme
- StudioPress Production Child Theme (if you have a lot of videos, this is the theme for you)
2. Do you need a shopping cart?
You can actually integrate a shopping cart with just about any theme from StudioPress, but if you’re looking for something that’s sharp and comes out of the box with product page templates, look no further these
- StudioPress Clip Cart Child Theme (Cart66)
- StudioPress Agency Child Theme (WooCommerce)
3. Is a mobile responsive design important for your site?
Responsive design is built with the mobile user in mind. Depending on your current user base (or your target user base), you may need a site that looks good across a variety of mobile platforms. If that’s the case, consider these child themes:
- StudioPress Balance Child Theme
- StudioPress eleven40 Child Theme
- StudioPress Focus Child Theme
- StudioPress Generate Child Theme
- StudioPress Streamline Child Theme
(Side bar: You can use Google Analytics to see what percentage of your site traffic comes from a mobile device. Here’s a helpful article on mobile visitors if you want to learn more on that.)
Go on. Off you go.
Regardless of which theme you pick, you’re guaranteed of getting a top-notch support community and all the benefits of a site built on the Genesis Framework.
If you’ve ever seen a house being built, you know that even once the foundation is laid and the frame is up, the final vision is still to be realized. The Genesis Framework is everything you need to build on – you can paint the walls, choose different flooring, and upgrade the counter-tops. It’s the underlying structure that’s important. So whether you see a theme you could move right into or need a little custom work done, I happen to know somebody who can help you with your website.
I LOVE the theme you’re using – I just saw that Brian Gardner posted about it yesterday and was considering buying it – you’ve done a great job with it. (in)SPYR theme – very cool:
http://www.studiopress.com/themes/inspyr
Thanks, Adam! I do love it! The *only* downside to changing over to it was the proportions of the thumbnail images. Since they’re pretty long on the horizontal, I ended up having to re-create a lot of my featured images to look good at those dimensions. Luckily my site’s pretty small so it didn’t take too long.
Great write up Carrie, thanks for the pointers.
Absolutely! Hope it helps!
Hi Carrie! Nice job on this. You got this done pretty quickly. I just got this theme yesterday to build a site for an idea on a startup pitch for a grad class I’m in at TCU (in your neck of the woods), hopefully will be built out by the weekend. Your site looks insanely good on mobile! Don’t forget to let your readers know to visit on their Iphones, because it looks slick, slick, slick on mobile. I mentioned slick right?
Ha! Thanks! I does render well on the iPhone.
Good luck with the TCU project. I’m an alum myself. Give a shout if you want to bounce questions or ideas.
Great post grouping the Genesis StudioPress’ child themes in categories. I’ve tried most of them and I particullary liked the old Focus with two widget areas under the post. Prose is cool and I also like eleven40. Streamline 2 is my favourite and I m working to upgrade one of my sites to it.
There are so many great ones to choose from! Do you have the Pro Pack? I don’t, but if I did I’d probably change themes like underwear…
Lol Carrie, go and get your digital underware right away
). Im a Pro Pack member and this is by far the best purchase of last year. Everything for just under $300 (at the time) was a really good deal.
Hi Carrie
I’m a Genesis man and I love the Studiopress themes.
Lots of people must wonder which theme to get and this is a fabulous place to start.
Love the way you’ve put the themes into categories.
Under “Do you need a shopping cart?” you can now add Agency 2, which is WooCommerce compatible.
Great post and love the (in)SPYR theme.
The guys over at SPYR media ate complete lunatics, but talented lunatics.
Hey Keith, thanks for heads up on Agency 2! Sounds like you have some experience with the lunatics – they are brilliant indeed!
BTW, looking at the Genesis child themes, Clip Cart never jumped out at me. In fact, I didn’t even see it. Then I ran into this article. Thanks, ’cause that’s the theme I needed. You get your commission. Cheers, Danny
Thanks, Danny! Glad it helped! I’ve got it running pretty much “as is” on stanleyeisenmanshoes.com. Feel free to post back if you have any questions.
Hello Carrie,
This was a fairly simple, but very good post. I really like the StudioPress themes, but for a non-designer and someone who does not know how to code, it is difficult to decide what theme is going to meet your needs. Right now my site is using WooThemes with WooCommerce. I didn’t know the Agency theme was compatible. Do you know if any other themes are compatible now, or will be in the future with WooCommerce? I felt a bit stuck with having to continue to use WooThemes, but you may have just helped me find a solution.
Thanks
Robert
Hi Robert, thanks for stopping by. Since I wrote this post I’ve learned about a plugin called Genesis Connect for WooCommerce that makes for a nice integration of WooCommerce with any StudioPress theme. For example, I’m using it on this site, which is based off the Associate Theme.
From what I’ve seen so far, I think the StudioPress community will continue to build for/support WooCommerce.
You might also like this link: It’s a gallery of sites built off the Agency 2.0 theme. As you can see, design possibilities are plenty!
The Genesis Framework is definitely noteworthy. It distinguishes itself from the other big theme producers (IMHO) as a better integration with core WordPress and a better foundation for developers to add-on to. I’ve tried heavy customization with Elegant Themes and it’s just a major pain. Nowhere near the same level of support in the forums either… Just my two cents!