Intro Bare WordPress Theme

Over the past 10 years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I still had to do a lot of customization to make it do and work how I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Bare WordPress Theme

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have actually seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really set up the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the qualities. I will be covering the premium edition of the subject, because it’s worth . Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not need running. This is one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

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

Additionally, it works great with all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these really are a terrific combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

Tons of filters and hooks that make it good for programmers.

Great active support from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a few seconds in their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

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

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as important. But the dimensions is! Have a peek at some of the center GeneratePress files under:

/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

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same throughout all of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe can expect that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your site. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

If You’re curious, I’m using the following add-ons on this site:

Blog

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a young child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact minute and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Bare WordPress Theme

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

You Can quickly swap a page between the default to a full width page, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. However, allow me to show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also created by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert custom courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m 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 kinds of things concerning design. Think of it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created with the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve running on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could make a replica of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme on your own GeneratePress website with only a click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, since I don’t use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins which 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 theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Bare WordPress Theme

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 see it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my sites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that wish to be able to customize and control precisely 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 fast.

Since Of that, those who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll typically pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any type of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

…you Need something that will instantly appear perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you know you want to create a style blog, you may be happier choosing a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you first install it.

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

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are some of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient as you will be able to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Layout region, you may configure comprehensive settings to your:

• 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 one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

Likewise, The Typography place enables you to control the font for each and every element on your website, such as buttons:

And You also receive a thorough area to control the color of every single element on your website.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you much more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you realize the way the settings come together, you’ll have full control on how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy 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 themes are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I put up a vacant website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality with Pingdom, it

• Had a performance grade of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 moments
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 asks

That is Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test site without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:

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

If You do the exact same test with different topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Bare WordPress Theme

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Past Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other helpful features such as:

• Elements — a unique feature which allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a exceptional page header on a per-page basis.
• Sections — that is sort of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” on a page, each with their own design and column preferences.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could pick and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not need to slow down your site for a feature that you’ll never use.

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

In The past, you needed to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them right from your WordPress dashboard.

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

Page-Level Settings Give You Detailed Control Over Each Piece Of Content

With Most topics, each page and post will use the same settings for the most part. You might have some custom formats or templates — however you do not have very much control past that.

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a brand new Design meta name box for each and every page and post:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

Where These controls are the most helpful is if you are using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain components, you’re able to create the proper baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Bare WordPress Theme

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress motif can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on infinite sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t get any more updates).

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

Summary

As I said, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everybody.

If You want a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by buying a theme that fits your needs for your niche out of day one.

But If you are willing to spend time changing settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save some time.

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

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one minute. Bare WordPress Theme

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.