Since launching in the first week of August, Genesis 2.0 continues to win over even those who’ve been occasional skeptics.
Kudos to the StudioPress team. I love seeing big iterations like these that bring a huge swath of the theme market up in quality. – Brian Krogsgard
The reasons for the outpouring of Genesis 2.0 love are what we thought they’d be:
- Responsive design
- Support for HTML5
- Integration of Schema.org microdata
- Enhanced security
- Improved performance
Today, we want to zero in on that last one…
Genesis 2.0 + W3 Total Cache Pro
When we launched Genesis 2.0, we only partially revealed details about performance improvements in the framework.
Today, we are unveiling a collaboration we’ve been working on with W3 EDGE that was silently released in W3 Total Cache (W3TC) 0.9.3. This release includes the Fragment Cache engine as well as W3TC’s first ever extension, exclusively for the Genesis Framework, plus our brand new whitepaper “The Truth About WordPress Performance: Why You May Not Need What You’re Being Sold.”
Performance is paramount. The most breathtaking design with all the bells and whistles in the world is rendered useless if the site does not perform.
And by perform, I mean load completely before readers and search engines get impatient — in about 1.5 seconds, to be exact.
Which is, of course, just a minimum expectation. StudioPress.com loads in roughly half that amount of time, in mere milliseconds.
How can your site do the same?
Do what we do: make Genesis 2.0 and W3 Total Cache the foundation of your website’s optimized core.
What is an Optimized Core?
Your WordPress site’s performance core consists of its plugins, theme, and hosting.
You already know that a minimalist plugin strategy is the way to go. Simply put: if you or your readers can live without a plugin, do so.
You also know, or at least suspect (you are reading this site), that a theme framework is the best long-term decision for your site.
And you have choices, of course, when it comes to theme frameworks.
So what makes Genesis the one to choose for an optimized core? Here are three easy reasons:
- HTML5 makes your site cross-browser compatible and more efficient when it comes to API interaction, storage, and other elements that impact reader experience.
- Small, subtle “under-the-hood” upgrades like coding widget classes in PHP5, minifying admin CSS and Java, and removing inline HTML comments add up to reduce bloat, which reduces page load time.
- Genesis 2.0 supports W3 Total Cache Pro fragment caching.
You already knew about numbers 1 and 2. Number 3 is the feature we are incredibly excited to unveil today because it will truly turbocharge your Genesis site.
But what does it mean?
Caching is a basic element of almost every WordPress website. It increases page load speed by caching fully-formed HTML files that can be quickly served up to users without calling the database.
Fragment caching takes this a step further by allowing you to cache portions of a page. This maximizes your site’s ability to be dynamic and fast.
Led by WordPress performance pioneer Frederick Townes, the expert team at W3 EDGE has been hard at work for months and months perfecting the integration of fragment caching into W3 Total Cache Pro. And they used Genesis 2.0 during the development process, building Genesis-specific support right into the plugin itself with the Genesis W3 Total Cache Extension.
Genesis was already one of the most clean, streamlined themes available. With fragment caching, it gets even better. In fact, fragment caching improves performance between 30-60% on page areas that utilize transient variables.
How to Optimize Your Site’s Core … Today
So how do you get this on your site?
You can pick up a copy of Genesis 2.0 and W3 Total Cache Pro individually and get rolling right away, but you would be forgetting about the third ultra-important element of an optimized core: hosting.
Embodying its name, Synthesis delivers Genesis 2.0 (including the Sixteen Nine child theme) and W3 Total Cache with fragment caching on its WordPress-optimized Nginx hosting stack.
This means that for as low as $27 per month, and with 30 (completely risk-free) days to try it out, you can experience what an optimized WordPress core is all about.
With Synthesis, you sign up and get a configured and ready-to-run website … today with W3 Total Cache Pro included for free and pre-configured! All you have to do is simply turn fragment caching on.
You cannot find this combination of hosting, theme, and next-level caching anywhere else. It’s a core that cuts through the buzzwords, bells, and whistles to deliver what you need: a website that performs.
Optimize your core with Genesis 2.0 and W3 Total Cache Pro today.
And while we’re on the subject, let us do a little demystifying for you when it comes to WordPress performance.
There is a lot of noise out there, and you are constantly being sold “solutions” that you most likely do not need. Our whitepaper addresses this and gives you a road map for arriving at the right performance formula for your site.
Download it now: The Truth About WordPress Performance: Why You May Not Need What You’re Being Sold