Introduction Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
Within the previous ten decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. But I 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 give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I had been dismissed and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve 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 lot of stuff on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The theme currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, 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 exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the superior edition of the subject, because it’s worth . In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.
Characteristics
Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you do not want running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.
Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.
Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.
Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser service back to IE8.
It also works great with all the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.
Translation ready.
Font awesome built in.
A lot of hooks and filters that make it good for developers.
Great active support from the programmer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have great documentation on their website, the theme has been around long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup process was found within a few seconds in their own forum.
Going Deep Into GeneratePress
Now it’s Time for the fun part! I always test a new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how quickly the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was quite impressed.
One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. But the size is! Take a look at a few of the core 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
That is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen the same during all of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe could anticipate this to secure smaller also.
The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you are not using to guarantee they do not load on your website. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built, I felt at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.
If You’re curious, I’m using the following add-ons on this site:
Website
Shades
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no more have to use a young child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this exact moment rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On each Page/post that you have a great deal of options. You are able to change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.
You Can easily swap a page involving the default to a complete width page, in addition to disable components.
The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are permitted from the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. But allow me to show you few which actually come in handy.
Responsive Columns
Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by precisely the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid width
Insert Customized classes
Insert custom inline designs
Equal height columns
This is An example below:
You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works great.
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
Sections Add-on
The Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running 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 those that are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the entire theme that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My old MyThemeShop motif was pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
With the New GeneratePress motif I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).
Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he can make a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress website with just a click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started with a fantastic blog layout instantly.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly 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 was Able to duplicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins which weren’t needed due to GP.
forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!
I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my life will be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.
And The best news is, I finally have a thousand more choices to choose from than I did before.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to customize and control precisely how their site appears.
You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the site that you build will have a fantastic foundation to make it load quickly.
Because Of that, those who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.
But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…
…you Need something which will instantly look perfect from the box.
For Example, if you realize you wish to produce a style blog, you may be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for trend 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 initially install it.
So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And though the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .
GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique
Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so common.
Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Performance, another area where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.
GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you’ll have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.
The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly everything about your site.
For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure comprehensive settings to yourown:
- Header — you can move your header around and change its own styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
- Sidebar layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
- Blog post design — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — like how many widgets to include
Similarly, That the Typography area lets you control the font for each and every element on your site, such as buttons:
And You also get a thorough region to control the colour of every single element on your website.
All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you realize how the settings come together, you will have full control on how your site looks.
Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times
Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which will be about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.
Place That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I ran a small test.
First, I set up a vacant website utilizing a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance with Pingdom, it:
- Had a performance grade of 77
- Loaded in 1.05 seconds
- Had a page size of 243.9 kB
- Had 15 asks
That’s Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test site without altering anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress failed:
- 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 perform that same test with different themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach
Past Giving you more design controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other helpful features such as:
- Elements — a exceptional feature which allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
- Page Header — allows you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
- Sections — that is sort of like lightweight page construction. It permits you to create separate”sections” onto a page, each with their own layout and column settings.
To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you want to activate.
That Way, you do not have to slow down your site for a feature that you’ll never use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Website
In The last, you needed to construct GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.
Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demo sites.
You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Yes this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a couple buttons to import a presentation site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Piece Of Content
With Most topics, each post and page will use the same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — however you do not have very much control beyond that.
GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Design meta name box for every single page and post:
You Can use this meta box to:
- Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose the number of footer widgets to use
- Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
- Create a special”container” to your own page builder
Where These controls are the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress site builder.
By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to create the correct baseline for your own page builder design, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.
That said, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly affordable. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on infinite websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the initial year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t get any more upgrades ).
When You believe that the typical premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a great value.
Summary
As I mentioned, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everyone.
If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your needs for your market from day one.
But If you’re willing to spend time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will locate. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.
If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one minute. Best Classifieds Template For WordPress
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.