Genesis, the premium WordPress theme framework has been updated with the beta version 2.0. Genesis is one of the robust theme frameworks out there for WordPress.
On Wednesday, StudioPress founder Brian Gardner announced on the blog that Genesis 2.0 Beta version is ready for testing.
To test beta version, try the Genesis Beta Tester plugin (link) or you can download the beta files from the Members area, said Brian. The ability to test beta version is very similar to WordPress but you won’t have access to the bleeding version of Genesis.
Genesis 2.0 Features:
StudioPress made a number of nice improvements to the framework and I can’t wait to try my hands on it.
Brand New Design
When I suggest or recommend Thesis 1.8 to anyone, they always complaint about how ugly the default design looks. Although, I don’t use Thesis anymore but it’s one of those things that a lot of guys never liked about thesis. Because then you have to purchase the child theme to improve the design.
But with Genesis, the default design looks so clean and awesome, that you wouldn’t want to install a new child theme.
HTML5 Markup
Genesis theme now outputs the HTML5 in place of the old XHTML tags. The StudioPress team has always used the cutting edge of web technology, and the version 2.0 continues in that excellent tradition.
Microdata
If you’ve HTML5 enabled, the theme will output your markup using microdata. StudioPress did all the research and modified the markup to serve search engines the microdata they’re looking for, so you don’t have to.
Removing Features
To keep the software as lightweight as possible, the folks over at StudioPress removed the following features & settings from the latest version.
- Latest Tweets
- eNews and Updates
- Post templates feature
- Fancy dropdown settings
There are some great plugins you can grab and install, if you want to continue using those functionalities.
Further Boring Improvements
Here’s a list of the technical changes in this latest release of Genesis:
- Better named loop hooks for HTML5.
- Network Upgrade now upgrades the Genesis database for all sites in a network when running WordPress in multisite mode.
- Widget classes are now coded in PHP5 format.
- Admin CSS and Javascript are now minified.
- Inline HTML comments have been removed to reduce page size.
- The Scripts option now has its own metabox when editing an entry.
- Custom Post Type archive pages now have a settings page so you can control the output.
- Genesis tracks displayed entry IDs so you can exclude entries from showing twice on a page.
- Entries without titles now display a permalink after the post content.
What do you think about the Genesis 2.0?
