The 11 Best Genesis Plugins for 2021

The Genesis framework is great. It’s structured well for solid SEO, it’s built so it won’t break with WordPress updates, and it’s super flexible. But what are the best Genesis plugins?

Plugins make the Genesis Framework even better. Especially if you’re new to building websites.

Our list of the best Genesis plugins will include both paid and free plugins.

But we’ve only included the plugins that are worth their weight in gold (and are updated frequently).

Let’s get started!

1. Genesis Design Palette Pro ($)

As great as the Genesis Framework is, it’s not for beginners. If you want to do any customizing you’ll need to code.

Or do you?

Genesis Design Palette Pro turns the Genesis framework into a user friendly, drag and drop interface.

A word of caution. Design Palette Pro doesn’t work with every theme.

If you plan to use Design Palette Pro be careful when choosing your theme.

2. Genesis Events Calendar (Free-mium)

Events Calendar is the #1 calendar on Wordpress, and for good reason. It’s a simple way to quickly create and manage an events calendar on your website.

Events can be in-person (eventually) or virtual (the Covid special, as we call them at Website Fixer).

The plugin is regularly updated and supported by a talented team of programmers.

3. Genesis Custom Headers (Free)

Don’t let the name fool you. This versatile plugin lets you do a lot. With Genesis Custom Headers you can add custom and featured images to pages and posts, display iframes or raw HTML content like Google maps, enable custom headers on any public custom post type, and set a global header position or page/post specific header positions using Genesis hooks.

The plugin does occasionally need some custom CSS so if you’re not familiar with CSS you may want to go with an option like Design Palette Pro.

4. Blox Lite (Free-mium)

Made by the same developer who built the Custom Headers plugin. Blox Lite lets you easily customize the content of your website through content blocks. Add banner images, dynamic content areas, and custom footers.

Add content to any page on your website including 404 pages, search pages, and archive pages. It also lets you position content anywhere with 50+ Genesis hooks. For dynamic content, it lets you use shortcodes.

Not for beginners but very useful.

5. Genesis Simple Sidebars (Free)

Create dynamic widget areas and sidebars across your website with the free Simple Sidebars plugin.

You can customize your widgets from a simple administration menu, and assign widget areas to sidebar locations with simple drop-down menus when you are editing a post or page.

You can also assign widget areas across your site on a “per post”, “per page”, or “per tag/category” basis.

Super handy.

6. WP Responsive Menu (Free-mium)

Responsive Menu is a simple but super useful plugin. It lets you quickly add a highly customizable, responsive menu to any WordPress site.

You can customize your menu with no code directly from your settings page.

Pretty straight forward. Not much more to say. 🤷‍♂️

7. The Genesis Extender Plugin ($)

The perfect plugin if you want to customize your Wordpress site and know your way around a code editor.

The Genesis Extender plugin upgrades your child theme to include “Custom Coding & Code Building tools along with custom template, widget area, & content creation options”.

8. Genesis Layout Extras (Free)

Genesis Layout Extras is an easy option to customize the layout of your site. From your homepage to your 404 page, Layout Extras gives you more flexibility to build your website your way.

9. Genesis 404 Page (Free)

Didn’t use Layout Extras and need to easily customize your 404 page? This plugin lets you change your 404 pages without touching the 404.php template file.

It also allows you to use shortcode to add a search function to your 404 pages.

10. Genesis Connect for WooCommerce (Free)

If you’re a WooCommerce user, this plugin is a must-have. It fixes an important taxonomy bug between Genesis and WooCommerce and allows you to display the single product page, the main shop page, Product Category, and Product Tag archive pages.

As an added benefit, this plugin makes Genesis Simple Sidebars or Genesis Simple Menus compatible with WooCommerce.

It does have some drawbacks, though. The plugin requires a bit of code to set up and you can’t customize your templates.

11. Genesis Responsive Slider (Free)

Personally, I’m not a fan of sliders. They usually slow down your page load speed and I think they look a tad old fashioned. But don’t let me stop you if you’re a Slider fan.

This plugin lets you create a simple, responsive slider that displays a featured image, along with the title and excerpt from each post.

Responsive Slider does need a bit of code to set up.

Bonus #1: Yoast SEO (Free)

This isn’t a “Genesis Specific” Plugin. But it IS a must have for every WordPress site. I install Yoast SEO on every single client website.

Why?

It’s easy to use, provides solid advice (for free), and adds some nice functionality to the site in a simple to use interface.

What’s not to love?

Bonus #2: Google Language Translator (Free-mium)

Who else would you go to if you need to translate your site into a language you don’t speak? This plugin gives you free, automatic machine translation from Google.

You can translate anything from posts and pages to your entire WooCommerce shop.

And if you upgrade to the paid version, it will help you with Multilingual SEO, getting your site indexed in multiple languages!