To be a proficient developer you need to constantly refresh your technology stack to remain a sharp coder and keep up with the web world. So after years of writing WordPress websites in Sage Starter Theme and Bootstrap 3+ I decided to try something new to me and update my website to Genesis. This was a test to see the power of StudioPress’s framework. I approached the project with the mindset of creating a feature rich site leveraging the tool set in Genesis and with the least amount of code possible.
What I gained:
- A quick and easy website that has a lot of plug and play elements already cooked in including social sharing, sticky headers, most recent posts and other elements. All without writing any code!
- SEO best practices without having to think about it.
What I miss:
- The flexibility of and custom coding a theme with a front-end framework.
- My technology stack: CSS Preprocessor with Browser Sync, Node, Gulp and Bower at the start. Sage provides you with so many great tools from the get go that once you start to create a theme without it you realize how spoiled you were. Luckily I already have a starter gulp file for occasions just like this. (I just can not stand to code without my Sass.)
From a developer stand point Sage clearly has the competitive advantage when it comes to tools to build an awesome custom WordPress theme. Ben Word, the creator of Roots/Sage, even has an article on his site comparing Sage, Underscores and Genesis. From a non-developer stance I can create a relatively nice looking WordPress site with no coding skills what so ever.
Have you tried Sage, Genesis, or Underscores for developing your WordPress themes? What were some of your challenges that you faced?
I’ve used both Genesis and Sage. Genesis is my go to for a custom project on ‘small scale’, while Sage is for the more thorough and advanced work where you can profit from the modern dev process, I’d say. It can quickly become overkill too, it feels to me, to stay up with all the tooling they’ve set up for you. In that way it’s quite ‘bloated’ and unflexible tbh.
After having used Genesis a few times, I’m still not sure where to put it. The extensive hook system puts it up there for thorough customisation as well, but I find it gets really messy and clunky over time. The hook system is not best to maintain a clean project. Unless you pretty much stay within the tradition ‘blog look’ they serve, I guess in that case it’s a good and clean fit.