Background 50 Best WordPress Themes

Over the previous 10 decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. But I still had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to do and operate how I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I had been blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. 50 Best WordPress Themes

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have actually seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there is not that good, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually set up the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the premium version of the subject, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you don’t need running. This is only one of the biggest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser support back to IE8.

Additionally, it works great with the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built in.

A lot of filters and hooks which make it great for developers.

Excellent active service from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have great documentation on their site, the theme has been around long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how fast the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time that I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as important. However, the dimensions is! Have a look at some of the center GeneratePress files below:

/generatepress/css/unsemantic-grid. min.css 2.9 KB

/generatepress/style. css 7.1 KB

/generatepress/css/mobile. min.css 1.6 KB

/generatepress/js/navigation. min.js 1.1 KB

/generatepress/js/dropdown. min.js 1.5 KB

That is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same during each of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe could anticipate that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script manager built, I felt right at home with this. Everything should be made this way.

If You are interested, I am using the following add-ons on this website:

Website

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a young child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. 50 Best WordPress Themes

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post that you have a great deal of options. You are able to alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

You Can quickly swap a page involving the default to a complete width page, in addition to disable elements.

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are enabled by the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. But let me show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be created by the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert Customized classes

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress lets you do all sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of you who are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the whole theme that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress theme I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t have a kid motif. All the customizations were made using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could create a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif in your own GeneratePress website with only a click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. 50 Best WordPress Themes

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news isI finally have a billion more choices to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users who wish to be able to customize and control exactly how their site appears.

You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the site that you build will have a great foundation to make it load quickly.

Since Of that, people who assemble WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Want something that will immediately appear perfect from the box.

For Example, if you realize you wish to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And though the significant advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are some of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so common.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be convenient because you will be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your website.

For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you can configure detailed settings for yourown:

• Header — you can move your header around and alter its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post design — such as featured picture size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

Likewise, That the Typography area enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your website, such as buttons:

And You also get a detailed region to control the color of every single element on your site.

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But once you realize the way the preferences come together, you’ll have full control on how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and clean code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Put That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.

First, I put up an empty site using a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing its functionality with Pingdom, it:

• Had a performance grade of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 seconds
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

That is Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:

• Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points better
• Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
• Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
• Had 9 asks, ~40% less

If You do the exact same test with other themes, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. 50 Best WordPress Themes

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more design controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other useful features like:

• Elements — a exceptional feature which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — lets you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
• Sections — that is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create different”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own layout and column preferences.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you can select and choose exactly which features you would like to activate.

That Way, you don’t need to slow your site down for a feature which you’ll never use.

Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Website

In The past, you had to construct GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a new Website Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this Website still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a couple buttons to import a demo site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Every Piece Of Content

With Most themes, each page and post will use the same configurations for the most part. You may have some custom templates or formats — but you do not have very much control beyond that.

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a new Design meta name box for every single post and page:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

• Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose how many footer widgets to utilize
• Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
• Create a special”container” for your own page builder

Where These controls are the most useful is if you’re using a WordPress site builder.

By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. 50 Best WordPress Themes

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as numerous settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that gives you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the initial year without renewing — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You believe that the normal premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic price.

Summary

As I mentioned, I don’t believe GeneratePress is for everyone.

If You want a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your needs for your market from day one.

However, If you are ready to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great choice.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no problem making your website load in under one minute. 50 Best WordPress Themes

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.