Meredith Marsh Interview: Trellis Case Study

We’ve shared about a lot of exciting things last year, including our awesome new website, Grow, the PSAs and of course — Trellis! In case you aren’t familiar with it, Trellis is the WordPress theme framework Mediavine has created, with speed and revenue optimization as a priority.

We first launched the core Trellis theme last March, and as of the end of October the Trellis beta program has been going strong. Over 1,600 sites, in pretty much every niche, now run the Trellis framework. (Update: the Trellis theme is now live and available to all WordPress users!)

We love celebrating our publishers for their hard work and constant pursuit of ways they can implement new things to help increase their sites’ traffic and revenue, all while sharing their expertise and knowledge to help others learn and grow.

Similar to our Publisher Interview series, Content During Covid series and our Traffic Case Study, our Trellis Case Studies also share success stories of how our MVPs started their blogs, plus how Mediavine has helped shape their businesses and lives for the better.

This series focuses on the transition to Trellis, site improvements, traffic increases, favorite features and their recommendations to other bloggers about whether or not they should make the switch.

Join us for our interview with Meredith of VidProMom, a site all about helping people create fun to watch videos so they can capture life’s relivable moments and share them. Meredith strives to help others start and grow their online businesses.

We’re excited to have Meredith back on the blog, so please say hello and learn how Trellis has helped her site look better, run faster and ultimately increased her income.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, your family and your everyday life.

I live in rural Upstate New York with my two daughters and my husband.

When I’m not creating YouTube videos, blogging and running my membership program, I love to binge Netflix!

How long have you been blogging and how did you get started?

I’ve been a content creator for about six years now. I started blogging while working full time and that led to creating a YouTube channel.

Within a few months, I began making a little bit of money. I lost my job a year and a half later, which is when I decided to take my business full time.

How long have you had Trellis?

I have had Trellis for approximately three months. I have the main Trellis theme at the moment, as the Child themes haven’t been made available to me yet.

Was it difficult to switch to Trellis?

Not at all, and actually, it was way easier than I anticipated it would be!

I thought I’d need to dedicate a day to installing Trellis and making any necessary changes to the design, but it was super quick and painless.

You installed Trellis yourself. Tell us about the process. How hands on were you?

The process was totally smooth. I’m already a “hands-on” WordPress user so everything was clear and simple. (I’m a geek about these kinds of things, so I embrace new technology!)

What would you tell anyone who is moving to Trellis to help them have a smooth transition?

If your current theme has custom short codes only available within that theme, be prepared to make some changes to pages and posts that utilize those short codes.

You can easily figure out if you’re using those codes by doing a search of your pages and posts from your WordPress dashboard.

It took me about an hour to adjust mine, but since I’m using Mediavine’s Create plugin, all I had to do was create (see what I did there?) a few new Create lists to embed in my posts (which is a much better long-term solution anyway).

What improvement have you seen in your pagespeed with Trellis?

I am excited to share that after implementing Trellis, my homepage GPSI went from 50 to 84.

What excited you most about being part of the Trellis beta?

It feels like we’ve been hearing about it for ages, and I like to fiddle with new themes.

It’s been exciting to spend time working with a new theme that’s created by developers who I know are trustworthy and knowledgeable.

Would you recommend Trellis to other bloggers? Why or why not?

Yes, absolutely!

Trellis is easy to install. You can make tweaks to it and have confidence in knowing the changes you’re making are going to IMPROVE your site’s performance.

Faster pagespeed, more traffic and increased ad revenue!