Why I Switched To GeneratePress From Genesis

As we all know the one thing I care about effectively more than anything for a website is its performance but I also care about user experience. One, thing that was holding back my old website design is that while it was fast it objectively wasn't the best looking it was functional but it didn't really inspire.

The Genesis Framework was a great base especially when the site was built using it, blocks were just starting to "become a thing" most themes and frameworks didn't support it. The Genesis Framework also made it easy for me to swap to blocks from their existing template system which was great.

#1. Lack Of Customizability

While a great framework it was incredibly limiting in its flexibility. For instance, if you wanted to change the color of say some text you would need to use custom css which for me was no problem. But making small adjustments all through custom css becomes a bit of a chore. Often times, I want the ability to experiment with layouts and color schemes without needing to write a bunch of code. The plus side to this though is the Genesis Framework is one of the fastest frameworks on the market when paired with the block editor I scored on average on mobile page speed insights a 93 across multiple runs on multiple days.

However, the Genesis Framework also was dependent on Ionicons a font library that is comparable to Font Awesome. Whereas GeneratePress used SVG's for any icons (though you can change this in the options panel). Icon fonts are great if you use many icons but at the end of the day, it leads to a bit of bloat for my total CSS size for Icons i never really used.

#2. Development & Changes

GeneratePress has been getting a lot of new features, and quite a few updates whereas the Genesis Framework until its recent acquisition with WPEngine was going quite strong and then went radio silent the last couple of months. Don't get me wrong though I do believe that WPEngine was a good influence on the project overall, that being said the lack of features in comparison to GeneratePress really put into light how behind the project felt. Keep in mind that the additional features from GeneratePress still managed to yield me performance gains over my older site while serving virtually these same content (though with a fresh coat of paint).