Preparing for Genesis 2.0

If you’re active in the Genesis community or if you simply use a Genesis child theme, you probably know Genesis 2.0 is coming and right around the corner. We’re excited about the release and we know our customers are because we’re starting to get oodles of questions about the release of Genesis 2.0 and how HTML5 will alter things for existing Genesis users.

Fear not my Genesis children, Brian Gardner and his team of uber smart WordPress coders have you covered. Genesis upgrades have always been backwards compatible. This means new Genesis releases don’t break existing themes. StudioPress does this for a reason. They don’t want an avalanche of support issues due to things mysteriously breaking. The good news is things don’t break and we rarely ever see anything go wrong with a Genesis update. Things just work in harmony and existing themes are good to go with the new version.

What’s Coming in Genesis 2.0?

There are a lot of great things happening with the new release of Genesis. No wonder it is the most popular WordPress framework available.

Genesis 2.0 highlights include:

• CSS3 – Geeky code features tied to design and making things pretty
• HTML5 Markup – Geeky code that helps support multimedia and responsive design
• Microdata – Geeky code geared towards search engines and helping people found stuff on the web

If you’re a non-coder like me you are probably reading this and hearing “blah, blah, blah” in your head. I know, it all sounds a bit boring, but it is important nonetheless. All of these things help keep Genesis at the cutting edge of web design and the Genesis 2.0 release will make sure the framework and your website stays at the top of it’s game.

A Little Bit More About HTML5

HTML5 is a biggy and we are all really really excited about it. When you upgrade to Genesis 2.0 your existing Web Savvy Marketing child themes won’t be HTML5 ready. Our child themes, along with StudioPress and any other developer, have to prepare for HTML5. Themes need to be converted to use the new markup by converting code from old to new.

This means we (or should I say Chris) will have to go back through our child themes one by one and update the code to support HTML5. We are doing this and we are preparing to launch new HTML5 themes this summer. When these are available, you’ll find them right within your WSM account. The upgrade of our themes to Genesis 2.0/HTML5 will be delivered automatically at at no additional costs to our customers.

As always, when we move closer to launch we’ll provide more information in our forum and blog posts. We’ll make sure you know what to look out for and what steps to take to get the latest theme (and framework) options and features.

Additional Genesis 2.0 Articles

While this post is geared towards our customers, other Genesis 2.0 articles are available that have more of a technical focus. Some of the ones I’ve found worth reading are:

• Genesis 2.0 Beta Now Available
• Genesis HTML5 Markup
• Add HTML5 Markup Structure
• Genesis HTML5 Loop Hooks
• What’s the Deal With Genesis 2.0?
• New Genesis 2.0 Loop Hooks & How To Use Them
• Schema.org & Genesis 2.0
• Genesis 2.0, HTML5, and Schema Oh My!!!
• Genesis 2.0 Hook Changes

We’ve Got Your Back

Sit back, relax, and keep marketing. Know our team, and the team at StudioPress, are both gearing up for the release of Genesis 2.0 and all it’s goodness. We’ll continue to push updates via our blog as things progress.

Did I mention a new WordPress release too? Yep, WordPress 3.6 is coming and it will drop right before Genesis 2.0. So much technology, so much fun, and so exciting.

Design on my friends and know WSM and the world of WordPress has a lot of great things coming soon.