We use and strongly recommend the Genesis themes by StudioPress. Nearly all of our website designs are built on the Genesis platform, and our main website and support website both use the Prose theme. Our Premium Web Hosting customers can use any of the themes, as included with their hosting plan. You can view screenshots on our Genesis Themes page.
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If you have some knowledge of WordPress, you probably know that there are many free themes available in the theme repository. So why should you pay for themes when you can get them for free?
- Quality. Free themes can be developed by anyone, even people without any expertise. You never know if your theme may have a gaping security hole, if it doesn’t work on all of the major web browsers, or if it is incompatible with popular plugins. Premium themes are typically produced by professional coders and designers with many years of experience, and you can expect a much more stable and compatible product.
- Commitment. With a free theme, you never know if the developer will update the theme with each WordPress release, or if he or she decides to abandon the theme altogether without notice. You may be faced with the choice of upgrading and potentially causing errors on your website, or not upgrading and laving your website vulnerable to the latest hacks. With a premium theme from a reputable company, you can expect a higher level of commitment. The free theme developer is essentially working on a volunteer basis, while the premium theme developer depends on theme sales as a revenue source, so he or she has significantly more motivation to deliver a quality product.
Benefits of the StudioPress Genesis Themes
- Quality and variety of design. With over 30 theme designs, including the customizable Prose theme, you have a lot of choices. And since they are built on the same framework, if you switch from one theme to another, you will have consistent theme settings and SEO settings.
- Multiple layout options. While many themes have limited layout options, Genesis gives you 6 combinations of displaying the main content and 0, 1, or 2 sidebars.
- SEO-ready and customizable. A website using a Genesis theme will typically have no need to install and configure SEO plugins, as all of the important SEO functionality is built-in.
The individual themes typically cost around $100, while the full package of all Genesis themes (over 60, plus all future Genesis theme releases) is just $499.95. This includes access to the comprehensive support forums. For the quality of the product and the level of support, there is no question that it’s well worth the cost. You can purchase the themes at the StudioPress website.
