Trellis Review

This is a review of Mediavine’s Trellis Framework.

I was in the beta testing for Trellis and had been using it for about a year and a half before it went public and before it even had themes.

Needless to say, I have quite a bit of experience using it.

Way back when I even wrote a post on the top 5 reasons I love Trellis.

So, if you’re wondering whether or not Trellis is right for you and whether or not you should make the switch, keep reading.

First of all, what is Trellis?

Trellis isn’t actually a theme but a whole framework.

What does that mean?

Long story short, it is a whole lot more than just a theme you use to make your site look good – but it is that too.

Trellis makes your site fast. In fact, I was shocked by how much faster my site was when I switched from Genesis (which was the popular framework Food Bloggers used when I started blogging) to Trellis.

I knew before I signed up to be a part of the beta that it was fast. What I didn’t know is that speed increases your ad revenue by a lot.

I saw a pretty instant boot to my earnings and contacted Medavine right away to ask if this was Trellis or coincidence. They told me that other Trellis users saw the same thing and it was due to the increase in speed.

If you’re wondering what the connection is between speed and ad revenue is, it’s actually pretty simple. The faster your site it the more opportunities your site has to load ads and the more ads get seen.

Trellis Child Themes

When you get Trellis, you get one free child theme.

These themes are very customizable and easy to use – very much unlike the Genesis version of Foodie Pro which at first I thought broke my site and then took forever to set up.

If you want a custom child theme, you can do that too. Mediavine’s own site runs on Trellis but uses its own custom design.

Trellis and SEO

Mediavine‘s CEO Eric is a search engine optimizer and is obsessed with site speed so I knew Trellis would be very SEO (search engine optimization) friendly.

What I didn’t expect is just how easy they’d make it for their users.

They put a place for your Google Analytics Tracking ID and an easy way to access your footer and header sections if you need to paste something there, like your Google Site Verification Code.

It also optimizes your images.

Basically, if you want Google to love your site, this is the closest thing to a love potion you’ll be able to find.

Customer Service

I cannot say enough good things about the customer support provided to Trellis users.

Since I was in the closed beta testing group and one of the early testers at that, there were a lot of bugs to deal with and I was in daily contact with customer service and they were always helpful and nice.

Does it play well with other plugins?

Mediavine has done a lot to try to address and avoid conflicts with plugins and servers which is why the closed beta testing and open beta testing were so long.

That said, if you use Trellis chances are you can remove a bunch of plugins making your site lighter and less bloated.

One of my favorite things about Trellis is that it works seamlessly with my favorite plugins like Create which is also built by Mediavine.

Do you have to have Mediavine to use Trellis?

While Mediavine ads and Mediavine products like Create, Grow, and Grow.Me all work amazingly with Trellis – trust me, I use all of them – no, you can use any ad network you want or none at all.

That said, I am a big fan of Mediavine and always recommend that bloggers. If you’re interested to know why, feel free to read my post on why to join Mediavine.

However, if you are a Mediavine publisher, contact Mediavine Support to see if they are still giving discounts as a special gift to Mediavine publishers.

Do I recommend Trellis?

Honestly, I have Trellis on all my sites and recommend it to anyone who asks. I really cannot recommend it enough since it is a large part of what allowed me to fulfill my dream of becoming a full time blogger.