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A Revolutionary Education Starts with a Killer LMS

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In order to create an outstanding learning environment, you need an exceptional LMS WordPress theme. That’s what we have in Derrick, our Genesis child theme geared especially to digital learning and membership communities of all kinds. I’ll write more about Derrick in a bit, and bring you up to speed on some updates we’ve made to it — as well as highlighting our other Learning Management System (or LMS for short) themes that sort of fly under the radar.

But before we get into that, let’s throw a few paragraphs at what an LMS is: how it came to be, and what a great a tool it is for building out courses and structuring digital coursework specifically for your audience and users.

Distance Learning Gave Rise To The LMS

Once upon three centuries or so ago, people started figuring out how to teach others via correspondence courses. Initially coursework was sent through the post. After completing a lesson, students mailed it back to the instructor for grading and received another. This type of distance education continued for some time. Then the 20th century saw it morph into multimedia learning, using a combination of audio, video, and print materials to deliver the course curriculum.

In the 1980s, the marriage of education and telecommunications went somewhat mainstream. College classrooms started broadcasting televised courses and began to consider computerized courses.

An LMS hauls around the books for virtual learners and instructors alike

So what’s a Learning Management System, anyway? The short answer is that an LMS is like the Swiss Army Knife of both education AND software. It’s crazy-versatile and highly customizable.

The longer answer is, “A neat piece of software magic that has all the tools needed to create, organize, manage, and deliver education via a digital platform.”

As a result of all this functionality, you can use an LMS in a variety of ways, from employee training to custom workshops, as well as academic instruction and continuing education hours.

    Your basic Learning Management System:
  • Enables the delivery of course components to students
  • Tracks student progress
  • Allows quick viewing/sorting of data
  • Makes course materials accessible from anywhere at any time
  • Supports various content formats (video, audio, ebook, etc.)
  • Enables synchronous (classroom-style) or asynchronous (flexible, student-led) learning

Most well-rounded LMSs have options to create an online training program, a membership site with digital download sales, and build an email list.

Say Hello To Derrick, An LMS WordPress Theme

All in all, Learning Management Systems have gotten pretty sophisticated, given all the features and functionality even the most basic platforms offer. There are many LMS platforms now, some of which are very specialized to their respective industries.

Today you can find LMSs in use by colleges and universities, businesses large and small, government agencies, and even your local elementary school.

Derrick is our answer to a broad need for Genesis child themes with LMS integration. It was recently given a spit shine, a bow tie, and a handy new version number (1.3.0). In addition to integrating with the premium LearnDash learning management system plugin, Derrick now supports LifterLMS.

Why? Because we’ve always loved offering our customers choices, and we think LifterLMS is a terrific product. (I mean, check out their advanced quiz functionality and the impressive social learning option.)

Derrick’s Available In Our Theme Store

Click here to experience the Derrick demo right now.
Ready to purchase? Just click here.

If you’ve purchased the Developer Pro Pack, Derrick is already in your account, ready and waiting for download.

Don’t have our Developer Pro Pack yet? Click right here to find out how to get immediate, unlimited access to all our themes (present and future!) at a killer discount.

And … we didn’t stop at Derrick!

Derrick is the only theme we specifically market as LMS-friendly. But it’s not the only Genesis child theme on the 9seeds roster that supports LMS functionality, though.

Caroline is billed as a theme for universities, and Fernando is a theme for authors. They’re both LMS-ready Genesis child themes. With versions 1.1.0 and 1.3.0 respectively, Caroline and Fernando have both been updated and offer LearnDash and LifterLMS integrations.

Set up a private community. Carve out a passive income stream with digital products. Create an exceptional virtual learning environment. LMS website builders Derrick 1.3.0, Caroline 1.1.0, and Fernando 1.3.0 are at the ready to help you accomplish any of these goals and streamline the process along the way.

WP Engine Summit

WP Engine Summit 2018 and the future of StudioPress

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For the third year in a row, we were graciously invited to the WP Engine Summit in Austin, Texas to talk WordPress, learn about industry trends, and spend time with other digital agencies. Over the past three years, the summit has grown from a single day of talks with 50 attendees, to a three day conference with over 300 attendees!

Every year we look forward to attending because we get an awesome opportunity to chat with much larger agencies like RG/A and GSD&M (these are agencies with clients like Nike and Volkswagen).  However, this year because of WP Engine’s recent acquisition of StudioPress, we attended with excited curiosity as to what the future of StudioPress’s Genesis framework might be.

A short history of StudioPress and why we’ve been building sites on Genesis since 2009.

Brian Gardner founded StudioPress in 2007. In 2010 StudioPress merged with Copy Blogger Media, the combined entity heavily focusing on value-added products and SASS based services like Premise, Scribe, Rainmaker, Synthesis and more. Over intervening years, the Genesis Framework remained the most popular framework for WordPress themes, and still is today.  As Brian and Nathan Rice (Genesis lead developer) split their attention across many projects, they focused on mostly maintenance updates that kept the Genesis platform stable without introducing many new features. While we’ve evaluated other frameworks like Hybrid/Mythic and Roots (and others), we’ve continued to build Genesis sites every day because of how reliable the maintenance release cycle has been, and how solid the framework continues to be.

Genesis today

Moving up the timeline to late 2018, StudioPress, including much of it’s talent (Brian Gardner and Nathan Rice), was un-bundled from CopyBlogger Media and acquired by WP Engine, a company we love. We’ve been a customer of WP Engine since their founding in 2010, and an Agency Partner since 2015.

That’s why we were excited by WP Engine’s promise to invest in StudioPress and the Genesis Framework. Of course, we were watching this acquisition carefully considering that the majority of our clients and products rely on the platform.

Over the 3 days of the summit, we spent a lot of time talking with the new product team behind StudioPress and Genesis within WP Engine. Here’s what we learned from the c-suite, engineers, and everyone in between.

More development resources for Genesis

Post acquisition, there is a lot more dev talent focused on Genesis than has been in a long time.  Nathan Rice has been freed from the competing priorities of CopyBlogger to focus exclusively on Genesis. Anthony Burchell (release lead for WP 4.9.9 and author of the Gutenberg’s Playlist Block), Mike McAlister and John Parris (both from Array Themes and authors of the most popular Gutenberg block library in the .org plugin repository, Atomic Blocks) have also joined the StudioPress team so we expect a lot of awesomeness going forward.

StudioPress brand and marketplace

We also learned during our time at the WP Engine Summit that the StudioPress brand and marketplace are staying around for the foreseeable future. The WP Engine partnership team is also working on making the StudioPress theme marketplace an even better place for 3rd party theme developers like 9seeds.  

The big takeaway

The biggest takeaway from the WP Engine Summit this year was that the future is bright for both StudioPress and WP Engine. Genesis themes are by far the most popular themes on WP Engine for both small and enterprise sites, and the dependence of both brands on each other creates a symbiotic relationship that will only benefit the greater ecosystem, companies like 9seeds, and the clients we serve.

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!