9seeds

Building Custom WordPress Solutions | Plugin Development

 

Jon Brown

WP Engine and StudioPress logos

WP Engine Acquires StudioPress: The Future of Genesis Themes Is Stronger Than Ever

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There’s big news in the WordPress ecosystem this week! Our favorite WordPress web host has acquired our favorite WordPress theme shop — besides us, of course — and its cornerstone framework Genesis.

“If a company with greater resources than ours could demonstrate that they understand the multi-faceted value and go-forward potential of StudioPress and Genesis, it was worth considering. More importantly, any suitable successor to the brands needed to grasp the worth of the people within the vibrant community of designers and developers who have built businesses around Genesis, the broader StudioPress customer base, and our StudioPress team.”
Brian Gardner, StudioPress founder

That’s right, WP Engine, “the WordPress digital experience platform,” purchased StudioPress and their “themes and tools that make WordPress easier.” VP of Web Strategy David Vogelpohl says WP Engine is “investing heavily in Nathan [Rice] and the engineering team, and they’re excited for the next evolution of Genesis and the SP themes.”

That means the de facto community of businesses and sites who have built on and around Genesis aren’t going anywhere, 9seeds included.

We all go way back

To give you an idea of how far, we started this agency almost a decade ago. For that entire time, the Genesis framework has ridden shotgun on our journey. It’s been a core component of a vast majority of the bespoke custom sites we’ve built.

We benefit by bringing back what we learn from other frameworks and integrating it into our build process. So along the way we’ve dabbled with other frameworks, from _s to the latest compelling framework WP Rig. In the end, however, we always return to Genesis. We’re wiser for having taken the detour but get pulled back by the simple fact that Genesis is the hands-down fastest and most powerful framework for doing what we do.

9seeds hasn’t just been WP Engine customers since their inception. We’ve also been WP Engine agency partners since the very beginning. Over the years that program has given us a lot of inside access to WP Engine. It also offers insight into what’s coming and the ability to help shape some of that. I’ve been sincerely impressed by the resources WP Engine pumps into engineering and development.

While I occasionally drop the “I remember when WP Engine had five employees and I knew them all personally” line, when I visited their Austin offices last September it was hard to find someone I recognized to show me around. At that point, I think they were over 300 people occupying three floors. These days it’s 500+. That growth didn’t come at the cost of their service, either. We’ve interacted with WP Engine support hundreds (maybe even thousands) of times over the years, and they’re consistently great.

“There are many founding moments in a company.”

Two of 9seeds’ best friends getting hitched is awesome news. This is a landmark “founding moment,” and we look forward to seeing what it gives rise to.

Genesis has long been the much-favored and most robust framework for building WordPress sites. In recent years, there have been conversations within the WP Genesis community regarding the slow pace of Genesis development. Our team has often been appreciative of the deliberate, keep-it-simple methodology StudioPress practices. But there’s some legitimate concern about keeping pace with increasingly critical features like web accessibility guidelines, Google AMP, and that hot topic everyone’s talking about: Gutenberg.

So what now, then?

Brian Gardner addressed ongoing Genesis development, saying, “WP Engine has committed time, resources, and money toward the development of the framework and those who build around it.”

WP Engine leadership has been quick to assure the public that Genesis development and support will continue well into the future. They’ve also made it clear via social media channels that they’ll be honoring all existing customer commitments. Continued lifetime support, documentation, and upgrades for Genesis and StudioPress child themes were specifically mentioned. Pro Plus users will still have access to the full StudioPress catalog.

“I would characterize our attitude as ‘Genesis Community First.'”
Jason Cohen, WP Engine founder

As many of you know, we sell the Jessica theme both in our shop and via the StudioPress marketplace. WP Engine has confirmed that there’s no plan to change any existing third-party Genesis developer agreements, so Jessica will remain available in both places. You can also rest assured that (just like Genesis) we’ll continue supporting Jessica for a long time to come.

Happy 15th Birthday, WordPress

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This past weekend people all over the world joined together to celebrate WordPress’ 15th anniversary. That’s a mighty impressive life for an open source software project whose mission statement is “democratizing publishing” and which now powers a third of the internet. And the WordPress meetup has become a staple of our community.

To celebrate this auspicious date, I attended a WordPress meetup group in Bucharest, Romania. (I’m here before moving next door to Belgrade, Serbia for WordCamp Europe next month!) Big thanks to the Bucharest crew for their hospitality, and for the cake. Mmmmm, cake.

I’ve been to a lot of meetups around the world, and they never fail to impress me. They’re one of the most dynamic things about the community around WordPress. Universally, I find them to be places web professionals and hobbyists come together to share knowledge.

Meetups Create Relationships and Grow Your Skills

We say it a lot, but the spirit of WordPress community has run strong and deep here at 9seeds since we were founded as an agency nine years ago. Do yourself a favor: find the nearest WordPress meetup — even one of the smaller ones — then go check it out. Gather up your skills and your questions and take them there. Then keep doing that.

You can start your search for a WordPress meetup here. And if you ever spot any of the 9seeds gang at one, please come over and say hi.

4 of the Best WordPress Themes for Genesis

We’re Genesis Child Theme Champions in the WP Arena

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Part of WP Arena’s stated mission is to elevate WordPress by providing valuable resources. Toward that end, they recently published a list of over 30 themes that they’ve dubbed “the best Genesis child themes ever created for WordPress.”

The 9seeds team is feeling the love because four of our themes made the cut:

  • Jessica, a super-flexible e-commerce theme
  • Lisa Marie, a theme for hairdressers, salons, and spas
  • Patricia, our theme for non-profits
  • Sarah Ellen, a feminine theme for bloggers and other digital professionals

 

Here’s how they each shook out in the lineup

Patricia is our theme built specifically for non-profits. Loaded with useful tools, it grabbed the #2 spot.

Lisa Marie was created for salons, independent hair professionals, and spas. It came in at #7, described as “…perfect for the beauty industry.”

Sarah Ellen, the #31 pick, has always been billed as a blog theme with a feminine flair. But WP Arena dubbed it a ‘great choice’ for a professional website, saying “It’s not only for feminine blogs; the theme is actually versatile with its clean and modern design.”

Jessica is our e-commerce theme and rounds out the list at #36. “Jessica is one of the most robust Genesis child themes for building online stores.”

It’s a great compliment to have even a single one of our themes considered a valuable Genesis resource, much less four. And 9seeds being listed alongside some of the best theme shops in the WordPress community is gratifying.

Thanks to WP Arena and Ben Shepardson for the hat tip in our direction!

9seeds Founder Jon Brown Sponsors WordCamp Phoenix

WordCamp Phoenix Grows Open Source Community

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Last month 9seeds Founder Jon Brown attended WordCamp Phoenix, witnessing the growing WordPress community in Arizona. Held at a co-working space named Galvanize, the open venue offered plenty of seating and was a natural space to gather as WordPress users.

WordCamp Phoenix was smaller than expected at under 200 attendees (another larger version is planned for February 2018), and only showcased a single panel of speakers. Initially this seemed odd, but it meant that each speaker benefited from a larger crowd and that each attendee had exposure to new topics. The successful format illustrates that bigger isn’t always better.

WordCamp Phoenix attendees included a wide mix, with sponsors and advanced users mingling with beginning and intermediate users.

A beginner workshop was held alongside the speaker track on Saturday morning speakers for several hours, in the large co-working room. After the workshop concluded, speaker presentations and panel discussions could be heard and seen virtually in the extended space. It was a different approach, but seemed to be welcomed.

Session topics included the REST API, Business, Poetry, Data and Analytics, Security and others. You can see the schedule here.

Held the weekend before Halloween, the WordCamp Phoenix After Party turned into a costume party. The After Party was combined with local AIGA members who finished up their own conference that same weekend. All in all, WordCamp Phoenix proved to be a great way to grow the open source community and we are happy to have been able to attend the event and make many more friends in Phoenix.

 

9seeds dual store news

9seeds’ WordPress Theme Store Launched

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We are super excited to announce our 9seeds has completed the move of Web Savvy Marketing’s theme store and forums over to 9seeds.com!

Everything theme related from sales to support now occurs over here at our Theme Store. If you are an existing customer of WSM or 9seeds and ant to get to your existing account history it’s here at My Account and the support forums can be directly accessed via this link.

As many of you know immediately after the acquisition was announced Robert and I took over providing support but were doing so on WSM’s forums. We felt that would be the best way to intimately understand the running of the store and support forums. We also started making a plan on how to bring all that was there over to 9seeds.com.

Are two WordPress e-commerce stores better than one?

We considered merging the two stores for a long time. WSM’s WooCommerce installation has a long order and customer history selling Genesis Child Themes for over 5 years. Our site had an equally long order and customer history selling WordPress plugins for over 5 years, however using Easy Digital Downloads with software licensing and subscriptions.

In the end, we determined it was just way to much unnecessary work and far too likely to have bugs and issues that would cause customers grief.  So, we did what we tell our custom development clients all the time, “take it one step at a time.”

WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads or Something else?

For now, we have two storefronts on one domain: one for themes and one for plugins. You’ll notice a “Theme Cart” and “Plugin Cart” up in the top menu. That might be a little confusing to some but we suspect it’s extremely unlikely any of you are going to try to buy one of our themes and one of our plugins at the same time, at least in the near term.

A lot of you are probably wondering since we’re now working with both if we really like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads better. The answer is no, we like them both and more. Really. We remember a time when the only e-commerce solution for WordPress was WP e-commerce. In fact, we even built a couple of commercial plugins for WPEC many years ago, one was sold to another maintainer and the other we still actively sell.

In fact, these days there are several great options for e-commerce on WordPress including not just those, but iThemes Exchange and Freemius and a bunch of others.

We may settle on one solution to rule them all at a later date, but for now, we don’t want to give up EDD’s Software Licensing and updates for our plugin sales. Nor do we don’t want to give up WooCommerce’s follow up email system and cart experience.

We will share more on this in the coming months as things evolve, rest assured one of our aims continue to be to make things painless for all our existing and future customers.

A Smooth Transition for Customers

We think we’ve got all the kinks worked out for now. If you notice anything amiss, please let us know and we’ll get it fixed up right away. We want your experience at the 9seeds theme and plugin store to be the best possible.

Of course, I also know many of you want to hear news about new themes and plugins. Those are coming very soon and are in final testing now that the store/forum merge is behind us that the store work is behind us, so stay tuned!