You don’t have time to sweat the design details of your website.
You shouldn’t spend hours learning to code and maintain a content app, or a separate mobile site.
And you certainly don’t want to spend another minute worrying about complicated manual updates that can potentially crash your site (see: put you out of business).
With the release of the new Prose Theme for WordPress, those frustrations are over.
Prose 1.5 offers you — the online publisher — powerful point-and-click design controls, built-in mobile responsive design, and automatic, one-click updates.
This is the WordPress theme you’ve been waiting for, and we’re only getting started …
Prose 1.5 + the Genesis Design Framework for WordPress is the premier online publisher’s website solution.
Here’s why …
1. Prose has even better point-and-click design controls
The point-and-click design controls built into the Prose theme changed pretty much everything we’d always hated about running our own websites.
With a few clicks — from within your WordPress dashboard — you could control site colors, typefaces, font sizes, and other critical elements of your site design … instantly.
And you didn’t need to touch a single line of code to make any of those changes.
Well, those famous Prose point-and-click design controls are even better in version 1.5:
- Customize virtually every element of your site
- New Design Settings UI, presented in a single, easy column
- Beautifully updated typography
- Even more detailed control of the Genesis framework
- Easier custom header switching
- Effortless background image control
Prose is a WordPress theme that puts you in control of how your online publishing future looks.
2. Prose is now fully mobile responsive
Prose is now fully mobile responsive, which means that it automatically adapts to allow your audience to view your perfectly displayed content — whether from a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet.
For your audience this means:
- No more pinching and tapping for the right view
- No more microscopic fonts or unreadable calls to action
- No more mistaken clicks, taking them away from what they want to read
- No more wondering if they’re on the right site due to horrible layout and design
For you this means:
- No expensive app development and maintenance
- No secondary mobile site to spend time and money on
- No worries that your content won’t work well on a phone or tablet
- No need to rely on — and update — poorly designed mobile plugins
- Keeping all the SEO benefits of publishing to the open web
The dirty little secret of mobile content distribution is that you only need one website to serve every device.
You create the content and Prose will automatically display it correctly for you, no matter where your audience views it from.
3. Prose now features automatic theme updates
For many of us non-developer types, updating your WordPress installation and theme can be … a bit of a headache.
Let me re-phrase: clicking that manual update button can sometimes cause hours of painful recoding, redesigning, and remembering just how things used to be on your site.
No more.
After you purchase Prose 1.5, you’ll never have to worry about scary theme updates again.
With one easy click, Prose will update itself, giving you the state-of-the-art in security, design controls, SEO, and mobile responsiveness.
Grab Prose 1.5 right now
If you need to get back to work as an online publisher, you need the out-of-the-box simplicity and power of the Prose Theme for WordPress.
Here’s a summary of what you’ll get …
- Customize virtually every element of your site with point-and-click design flexibility
- Reach your audience wherever they are (automatically) with mobile responsive design
- Automatically update future Prose releases with one click
- Rest easy with the rock solid security of the Genesis Design Framework
- Bulletproof SEO optimization and customization
And, once you’ve purchased Prose, you’ll continue to benefit from its stability, security, and ease-of-use — at no further cost — as we make it even better into the future.
69,874 people take WordPress further with StudioPress
You might be asking, “This sounds cool, but what’s this Genesis thing?”
Our Genesis Framework from StudioPress empowers you to quickly and easily build incredible websites with WordPress.
With search-optimized code and functions, 47 turn-key designs, and unlimited support, updates, and websites you can build, Mashable calls Genesis the “best of the best” among premium WordPress themes. And it comes with, and powers, Prose.
Click here to check out Prose + Genesis right now.
I love what you guys have done with Prose and the Mobile stuff, it’s just amazing. But what’s even better is your awesome mobile responsive slider plugin. I am so looking forward to using both to build amazing sites.
I have Prose on my new site and I have to say it is completely awesome. I had NO idea that I could make something that looks so darn professional and works so well without having to pay a web developer a whole heap of cash. I also really appreciate the responsiveness of folks like Brian Gardner on Twitter if I have a question about something. Thank you.
Thanks for the kind words, Katherine, that makes us feel great.
I love the prose theme and use it on my site. I am a bit confused though. Will my old prose theme be able to update to the 1.5 version or is it a separate them? Thank again and I love your themes.
Hey Patrick,
You do need to update manually to Prose 1.5, which is the last manual update you’ll do.
Much of the core code was rewritten, so there’s just a couple steps to take in upgrading, which you can find right here:
http://sitesetupkit.com/upgrading-prose/
Thanks so much Robert,
I’ll be looking to upgrade me theme today. You guys are great!
Hey Robert,
some weeks ago I installed Prosa 1.5.0 beta in WP 3.3.1 for a BuddyPress installation. It works fine and I appreciate the overwhelming design possibilities in Prosa.
My question: Will even the beta-version update automatically itself or should I reinstall the last Prosa-version 1.5. ??
Regards
Eduard
And you can do that without additional cost, which may not have been 100% clear.
Thanks Sonia,
and sorry for the typos, my keyboard is on the fritz.
Sorry, but I’m still a bit lost here. I bought Prose v1 a while back, but can’t seem to find the place where I can download Prose v1.5. So, where do I go to download this latest version (where in Studiopress)?
Sorry for the confusion, but usually it’s so painless to update and buy stuff from you guys I usually forget how hard it can be sometimes… Thanks for all the hard work you do and this great new-looking product. Can’t wait to delve into this one
Hi Olle,
To upgrade your purchase you’ll need to download the new theme from the support forum.
You can login here: http://www.studiopress.com/support/
After you log in click the link for Genesis Child Themes Download forum and find the Prose theme. The first post in that thread will have the download link.
Hi Josh,
Thanks for that!
Sarah – thanks for mentioning the slider plugin — I’ve been looking for a good one and it’s been challenging!
It’s the best slider Plugin I have come across
I think you might like it too.
I am with the others, I love this theme. In fact just installing it on two clients sites today : )
You are so right on with the fact of it’s flexibility and what customizations you can easily make. The thing is people see the demo and feel it’s so plain looking, but don’t realize what they can do with it. And the fact that they made 1.5 mobile responsive is great. I just switched to the Balance child theme and it’s also mobile responsive. Love it!
How’s it look with BuddyPress?
You can see what Prose 1.0 looks like with BuddyPress here: http://connect.studiopress.com/prose/. The next update to Genesis Connect for BuddyPress will address the minor things in Prose 1.5 that affected the BP support.
Thanks for your prompt response, Ron.
I will be looking forward to the next update to Gensis Connect for Buddypress, as I believe in the Genesis system and would much prefer to use it (when proper support is established).
Hi – I am not a tech peson and am very interested in The Genesis framework.
Is this a “shell to overlay with whatever WordPress applications we already use? Or a separate web site development program?
Hi Caron,
Genesis is a “Parent Theme” for WordPress. When you use WordPress you typically install two items (or applications as you may call them) to give your site design and functionality – a theme and plugins. The theme is major component which controls the majority of how your site will look and function and the plugins are typically little add ons that do specific things in conjunction with your theme.
Since Genesis is a parent theme it handles all the heavy lifting and functionality behind the scenes and allows you to then install and use “child themes” which lets you then modify, or add to, the functionality of that parent theme without having to mess with all the stuff in the background.
I’ve posted a link that talks more about Genesis and why its awesome!
http://www.studiopress.com/features
Genesis is a design framework for WordPress — it provides the underlying stable code that doesn’t change every time you change designs. It also provides SEO controls and other functionality that helps you get things done without getting into code.
A child theme is the design portion (the pretty pictures that the world sees). In this case, the child theme is Prose, which is unique from our other child theme designs in that it allows you to control design elements themselves (like color, fonts, layout, etc) without coding. It’s all point-and-click controlled.
Hope this helps.
Can you point me to a couple of mobile-enabled sites based on Prose or other Genesis Framework themes?
My mobile device is a Blackberry Bold 9000 from about three years ago. The browser is pretty clumsy. I’ve found that many supposedly mobile-enabled sites still appear as though being rendered for a full-size computer monitor.
I honestly don’t know if part of the problem is my BB browser.
My concern is that I plan to build a new website in the near future and I want it to be mobile-enabled from the start. Will Prose or any of the other Genesis Framework themes give me what I need? How do I verify it?
Thanks,
Laurence Hansen
Hi Laurence,
I do believe it may have everything to do with the browser on your phone. Blackberry browsers only started supporting media queries (a key component to sites being viewed well on a mobile device) in version 4.7.1
Take a look at any of the demos of our responsive themes and you’ll get a very good idea of how they work on a mobile browser out of the box.
The vast majority of mobile phones support responsive frameworks. We test all of our themes out on as many as possible to ensure that they will work the best they can. Probably the best way to verify the theme will do what you want on the device you want is to test it out. You could go to any consumer electronics store and try out several websites on several different types of phones – I’ve done that for testing before
I’ve pasted in all the links to the demos of our responsive themes to give you a quick place to reference from.
Agency – http://demo.studiopress.com/agency
Balance – http://demo.studiopress.com/balance/
Eleven40 – http://demo.studiopress.com/eleven40/
Focus – http://demo.studiopress.com/focus
Generate – http://demo.studiopress.com/generate/
Streamline – http://demo.studiopress.com/streamline
Prose – http://demo.studiopress.com/prose
THANKS!
I’ve only tried a couple of these examples but they look great on my BB browser. I guess I’ve just been looking at non-mobile-responsive sites in most cases.
Seems like a dumb question but does Pro Plus All-Theme Package really include all the themes? Is there a “but wait, there’s more?”
Laurence
It includes all of the themes over on the StudioPress site. Obviously it doesn’t include child themes developed by people who aren’t us, but yep, you get all of ‘em.
Laurence
I have the Pro Plus licence and use Genesis on my own site and all my client sites.
It allows me to keep down the cost of client sites.
The package includes all current Genesis themes and… all future themes.
It really is fabulous value.
As Sonia says “it doesn’t include child themes developed by people who aren’t us,”
As simple as that.
I bought 1.5 this morning without even reading this post or any post at that. Impulsively making good decisions since 2012. lol
Does this theme natively/easily support bbPress? I’m currently using Thesis and having a hard time making it “worK” with bbPress, even though I’m reasonably PHP/development savvy.
Thanks, Chris
You can use the bbPress plugin with any Genesis child theme. Depending on the child theme you may need to add a bit of css to style buttons, text areas, etc.
Love it.
Very easy to learn which is key for me lol!
One of the prose reviewers said about the previous version:
“The Prose Theme layout only permits a blog-style format. It does not offer a static home page option like other StudioPress child themes. You can create a fixed page for the home page, but you don’t get home page widget placement. If you’re looking for a static home page with widget options for content, then don’t use Prose.”
Is this still true for Prose 1.5?
I’m a voice-over professional hoping to find a new look and platform for my site. Ideally, my current WordPress blog has to be integrated into my new site, but I don’t want the whole site to look like a blog.
I do want a fixed home page as well as the option to showcase audio samples. I also want to use my site to sell audio books and written guides, and it has to be fully mobile responsive.
If Prose is not the right theme for me, which theme would you recommend?
While Prose does not currently support a “widgeted” homepage, we could push that out quite easily in an update. However, you’d still need to have a bit of custom code to arrange widgets the way you’d like because there’s not an easy way to universally offer homepage layouts for all uses.
Thanks for answering my question, Brian. One of the attractions of Prose is not to have to deal with custom code.
Which theme would you recommend I use instead?
Yes, I too have the same question RE: home page vs. blog format.
Thks for your reply, Allen
Just replied to his comment, so check out what I wrote!
With genesis and the child themes we use you still have the WordPress function to make your front page static – I’ve not used prose (yet!) but I guess it will let you do that.
Thanks so much, I’ll be looking to upgrade me theme today.
You guys are great!
I am trying so hard to become a fan of Genesis. Bought the developer’s package, played around with Prose, and also looked at the updated version. Reluctantly – and I really mean this – I’m going to stick with Canvas by WooThemes. It feels to me like you’ve got two places to significantly improve the Prose/ Genesis experience:
1) A better user interface – 1.5 is definitely an improvement over 1.0, but it still lacks that “presentation” I’ve come to love with Canvas. There’s an extra step they’ve gone to that makes it that much easier to get right to what you want without trying to second-guess what you’re actually doing to the site.
2) WAY better documentation – This is where I think Genesis really flops. The easiest way to teach somebody how to use a new product is to SHOW them. And the easiest way to do that is with videos. Yet there are barely any vids (If any) in the tutorial section on how to actually use the child themes. That seems mind boggling, given that the Copybogger/ StudioPress empire also includes Teaching Sells. I mean …you guys WROTE THE BOOK (metaphorically speaking) on how to teach!
And this seems to extend across other products. I also have Premise, and the best instruction I’m finding for it is on independent vids done by people who’ve mastered it.
I take a hit for this. While I gain better usability and a faster ramping up with WooThemes, I also end up with sites that require more database calls, longer loading times and (I’m guessing) more bloated code.
All in all, I’ll wait for the next rev of Prose (hopefully the interface will be better), and also hope that StudioPress will create some nice, easy-to-follow, step-by-step vids on how to use this stuff. I would highly encourage you to look to WooThemes as an example of how to do both.
For not only do I want to use StudioPress for myself, I also want to also use it with client sites and make it easy for them to learn how to use the theme. The easier you can make it for that to happen, the more customers you’ll get.
But I could be missing something here, too. Maybe you WANT there to be a certain degree of difficulty in learning how to use it to keep it relegated to more serious users.