This brings you all the things you love from Trellis, plus:

• a modern homepage layout
• improved category pages
• index pages to better organize your categories
• optimized category grids
• scheduled categories to automatically surface relevant posts around holidays or seasons
• premade block patterns to showcase your content and calls-to-action
• breadcrumb optimization
• WordPress admin enhancements and fixes
• optimized table of contents
• improved image thumbnail management to reduce disk space usage moving forward
• no-code hook integration to easily insert content
• 40+ one-click optimizations
• customizer options to make styling your site simpler

Upgrading to Trellis 2.0 requires migrating to the Feast setup, with the option to use one of 11 new Kadence themes.

Why

Trellis was built with publishers in mind, at a time when many solutions were trying different approaches to solve technical restrictions. The coding libraries and APIs that Trellis was built on were leading edge at the time, but haven't received the same updates and features as other solutions.

Confused about what the word "Trellis" entails? We were too - that's why we compiled this Trellis Terminology page to explain what a Trellis theme and Trellis tech stack and Trellis subscription are.

​Click here for an explanation of the different Trellis terminology​

When Feast acquired Trellis, the goal was to bring users up to more modern standards to enable a better user experience and compatibility with modern technology.

We spent the first half of 2025 looking into how we can either:

1. update Trellis to copy these new solutions
2. migrate Trellis tech behind the scenes without impacting users

Unfortunately, the cost and time to copy and integrate dozens of features using the existing Trellis tech stack isn't feasible, because it requires replacing existing parts of the site, and manual configuration from the site owner. There is no way to do this automatically for you.

More importantly, the effort that each of you individually would need to expend to be compatible with this updated tech stack means that you would need to effectively perform a full migration, while keeping a setup that's no longer optimized for the internet of 2025.

Because a full migration is required either way, then it should be to a more complete solution, like the one built into the Feast setup with Kadence, which we're labeling "Trellis 2.0".

Trellis 2.0 Benefits

The benefits of migrating to the Feast setup are:

• identical support for Mediavine Ad Tech that was built into Trellis that maximizes RPMs and compatibility with ads
• more theme customization options available through the ​customizer​!
• support for PHP8.3 which offers big server performance improvements
• a user-experience and SEO-focused homepage that doesn't use outdated "Read more" text for links
• enhanced category pages to improve SEO, including the ability to use the block editor create high quality category pages
• support for modern image and pagespeed solutions via Shortpixel and WP Rocket
• lower disk space usage for images, because unnecessary thumbnail sizes and image formats (eg. webp) are removed, saving you hosting costs
• stronger E-E-A-T through best practices with the author bio, sidebar bio, and author links (this is missing from 99% of Trellis sites)
• more flexibility in footer layouts using a more user-friendly setup

These upgrades improve the overall visitor experience, improve SEO through site structure optimization and E-E-A-T compliance. There are also multiple publisher-focused tools to fix common issues without manual coding.

Next steps

We'll be discontinuing the existing Trellis tech stack on October 20, 2026 and encouraging everyone to migrate over to the Feast setup, which we're calling Trellis 2.0.

This means that:

1. All existing Trellis renewals are $0 as of October 20, 2025, but subscriptions will remain active for 12 months
2. Everyone with an active Trellis subscription on October 20, 2025 will get 12 months of image and pagespeed optimizations through the current Trellis tech stack, giving you a full year to make the transition without rush or interruption
3. After October 20, 2026 (in 12 months), any sites wishing to remain on the Trellis theme will continue to function as-is, but without the image optimization or pagespeed optimization from the shut-down Trellis API.

IMPORTANT! If you don't migrate, your Trellis theme will continue to operate as-is after the Trellis subscription expires and will not crash, you will simply stop receiving image and pagespeed optimizations.

Before the 12 months are up, we recommend that you:

1. subscribe to the ​Feast Plugin​ using the discount code Trellis149 for a single-site subscription, or Trellis249 for a 2+ site subscription, and
2. sign up for a free single site migration via the ​Trellis Migration​

​Additional migrations can be done for free following the tutorials​, or via a ​paid migration service​

Why 12 months?

The internet evolves are a rapid pace, and ever-evolving requirements for servers, hosting, Google, AI, social networks and user experience means that all sites that want to be competitive must continually evolve as well. This is true regardless of what platform, theme or setup you use.

12 months is an extensive amount of time for any active website to plan a migration to Feast, and is not difficult.

Feast Design Co. introduced the Feast Plugin to address the need of delivering incremental updates continually to help avoid the need for a major website overhaul every 2-3 years, keeping your site optimized and compliant with modern standards.

Trellis does not offer incremental updates.

Alternatives

The Feast setup provides publisher-first benefits to all industries and is the spiritual successor to Trellis, having all the same benefits plus many, many more.

We've ensured that all the ad-optimizations and RPM improvements that were built into Trellis, are built in by default to the Feast setup.

We believe that we're the best solution for revenue-focused publishers who want to focus on writing content instead of constantly fighting tech headaches. This is the ethos that Trellis was built on - to help with as much tech as possible, so that you can focus on your content.

However, there are publishers out there who have expensive professional tech support to rebuild existing functionality, or create custom solutions for themselves instead of publishing content, and that's great, but we're not the best fit for those.

We want this to be a good fit on both sides, and the last thing we want is publishers forced into using our setup, when they feel that they can pay to develop their own custom solutions.

Anyone with a tech background, or an in-house developer, may benefit from a more flexible solution, such as those offered by Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence - or full custom theme development. If you have a budget of $5,000+, we recommend you pursue this option.

Far from being a goodbye, we encourage these customers to subscribe to the ​Feast newsletter​ to keep on top of industry-leading updates and solutions that they can replicate, to keep their sites up to date.