Trellis Open Beta: It’s Finally Here!

They say the best things in life are worth waiting for.

I couldn’t tell you who “they” are … or if they really do say that, honestly. But it sounds good, and in this case, it’s actually true. 

Trellis is here. At long last.

After two years of development and nearly a thousand sites helping us through the testing phase, Trellis is finally in open beta.

No more teasers. It’s here if you want it. Here’s the lowdown on Trellis and why you should install it if you haven’t already.

What is Trellis?

For those of you living under a teal-colored rock, Trellis is a WordPress theme optimized to help you pass Core Web Vitals without any technical knowledge.

In typical Mediavine fashion, Trellis follows all Google best practices and is built using the latest web technologies — oh, and did we mention it’s optimized for ads?

Long story short: Trellis is optimized to help you pass Google’s Page Experience metrics, increase your website traffic and make you more money.

Does it Work?

With 77% of Mediavine sites running Trellis already passing Page Experience on mobile — and that number increasing every day — that’s a resounding yes on the Google front.

As for traffic and revenue? 

Trellis websites are seeing 30% more monthly sessions, on average, compared to non-Trellis websites, along with 35% revenue growth. 

That’s worth repeating: 30% more traffic and 35% more revenue, on average.

What is an Open Beta?

With the release of Trellis version 0.14.3 to the public, we’re no longer requiring an invitation in order to be able to install Trellis. 

Hence, the open.

As for why it still has the beta label, this just means that the product is still receiving rapid development. It’s more than ready to go live on your site.

Trellis is already live on over 1,000 Mediavine sites, some of which have been running it for years with few, if any issues.

In fact, the blog you’re reading this on has been running Trellis for over a year. 

Yup. This is Trellis. (We know, it’s a lot … try to lift your jaws up off the ground.)

The beta is simply there because we’re in the process of making even more innovative changes. Have no fear.

Consider this: Gmail was an open beta for five years! This is a real thing companies do, not just a Trellis phenomenon.

Now that we’ve convinced you, here’s how you get it.

Head to the Mediavine Marketplace and Purchase Trellis Today

Starting right now, anyone can follow this link to the Mediavine Marketplace and purchase Trellis.

Wait, did we lose you? Come back!

How Much Does Trellis Cost?

Trellis will be available for $149 per year or $14.95 a month. It’s available to both Mediavine publishers and publishers not using us for ad management.

Why the Recurring Fee? 

With Trellis, you get more than just the theme framework source code.

You’ll have access to the Trellis API, which includes Trellis Images — a way to generate WebP images using artificial intelligence.

By generating the smallest WebP files with the least quality loss, you’ll make both Google and your users happy.

The Trellis API also includes another first-of-its-kind feature: Critical CSS and the removal of unused CSS at the page level.

This unheard-of speed optimization will not only help with PageSpeed Insights and Core Web Vitals, but it will make your website noticeably faster.

Unlike other offerings, we generate this on each page, ensuring that if you design a page with Gutenberg and use different blocks, for example, every page renders exactly as it should, all while preserving the all-important speed boost.

Most importantly, your Trellis subscription includes ongoing support and development. 

This represents perhaps the greatest value of all; I’m sure you’ve learned by now that the Internet is constantly evolving — and fast.

Mediavine isn’t just interested in improving Page Experience today but years down the line, whatever Google and the rest of the web throws at us.

That’s why we built Trellis and why it’s worth the wait.

What About Child Themes?

If you’re familiar with theme frameworks, then you know that in all likelihood, you don’t want merely the framework itself but also what’s called a “child theme.”

That’s the part that will make your site look the way you want it to.

With your purchase, we’re including three free Trellis child themes for you to choose from: Bamboo, Birch and Wisteria.

In this open beta phase, we’ll be working with popular theme developers to bring additional theme options to our publishers.

But if you don’t want to wait, you can build your own custom themes as well. Have you seen Mediavine.com?

Is it Hard to Install?

Not at all. We’ve put together a ton of resources to help you out and of course, you’ll have Mediavine’s award-winning support if you need it.

NOTE: Please follow our advice and set up a staging site where you test and tweak things before you push it live. 

Your host should be able to help set this up. It’s better to troubleshoot any issues that arise before flipping the switch, if at all possible.

Even More is Coming Soon!

If you’ve stuck with us this long, you deserve the fun stuff. We’re honestly just getting started with Trellis and have so much more in the works!

Trellis Blocks

Even if most users arrive at individual posts or landing pages, publishers always take great pride in their homepages. We get it.

While we’ve encouraged publishers to use a static page with Gutenberg to build their own homepage, it’s often tough to make them look good.

Enter: Trellis Blocks.

Mediavine will be releasing a plugin, included with your Trellis subscription, featuring several Gutenberg blocks, as well as patterns to help construct beautiful homepages and other key pages like your recipe index.

That’s Not All!

Not even close! We’re working on a plugin to help you build really cool category pages with Trellis Blocks as well.

We have plenty more tricks up our sleeve as we go to migrate our own sites, including The Hollywood Gossip, to WordPress and Trellis.

Mediavine’s full resources and support are behind you.

Thanks for reading and happy installing!