Intro Best Featured Products Template WordPress
Over the past ten years, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was fairly good. But I still had to do a great deal of customization to make it do and work how I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I’ve found in 10 years. I was blown away and am now moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Best Featured Products Template WordPress
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Evaluation
GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. However, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.
I Really set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking precisely how I was imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the theme, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.
Characteristics
Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you do not 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 better results in SERPs.
Impressive integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of this customizer previously, 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 the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built-in.
A lot of hooks and filters that make it great for programmers.
Excellent active service from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I wholeheartedly during 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 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 could expect by the time I add everything for this. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was quite impressed.
One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to generate a lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. But the size is! Take a look at a few 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
This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same during all the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving round the cornerwe can anticipate that to secure smaller also.
The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to guarantee they do not load on your site. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.
If You are interested, 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 need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very minute and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Best Featured Products Template WordPress
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On each Page/post that you have a lot of options. You can alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can quickly swap a page between the default option to a complete width page, in addition to disable elements.
The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these options are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. 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 made by precisely the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Characteristics include:
Desktop grid width
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid thickness
Insert custom classes
Add custom inline styles
Equal height columns
This is An example under:
You May Want to Also grab his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also have it show last modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
Sections Add-on
The Sections add-on in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.
Speed Tests
For those Of you that are regular readers, you likely 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 is a comparison below.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I invested a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a great deal 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 motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, 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’re in luck. Tom asked if he can create a copy of woorkup to your new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now install my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress site with only a single click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog layout immediately.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, since I don’t use it to get much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to duplicate the entire appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.
forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best Featured Products Template WordPress
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able 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 my websites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my life will be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.
And The best thing isI now have a thousand more choices to pick from than I did earlier.
What GeneratePress Is Good For…
GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users who wish to be able to customize and control precisely how their site appears.
You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the website that you build will have a fantastic base to make it load fast.
Because Of that, people who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.
However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…
…you Want something that will instantly look perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you realize you want to create a style blog, you might be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.
While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you first install it.
So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and personalize things. And though the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .
GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique
Here Are a few of the specific characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed common.
Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.
GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient as you’ll 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 have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much everything about your website.
For Example, if you go into the Design region, you can configure comprehensive settings for your:
- Header — you can move your header around and alter its styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
- Sidebar design — you can use one or two sidebars
- Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — just like how many widgets to add
Likewise, That the Typography place lets you control the font to get each and every element on your website, such as buttons:
And You also get a thorough region to control the colour of each and every element on your website.
All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you understand how the settings come together, you’ll have complete control on how your website looks.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Across All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it is about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.
Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.
First, I put up an empty site using a random popular WordPress.org theme (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 at all! But GeneratePress can do better.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on the exact same test website without changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:
- Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points better
- Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
- Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
- Had 9 requests, ~40% less
If You perform that same test with other topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Best Featured Products Template WordPress
Other Useful 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 like:
- Elements — a exceptional feature which allows you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
- Page Header — allows you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
- Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page building. It lets you create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own layout and column settings.
To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can select and choose what features you want to trigger.
That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a quality that you’ll never use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Site
In The past, you needed to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.
Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any one of 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 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 may have some custom templates or formats — but you don’t have very much control beyond that.
GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a brand new Layout meta box for each and every page and post:
You Can utilize this meta box to:
- Change the number of sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as changing the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose how many footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured image, post title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” to your own page builder
Where These controls are the most helpful is if you are using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder design, making it easy to create custom content as needed. Best Featured Products Template WordPress
GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress motif is available at no cost at WordPress.org.
That said, If you’re serious about using GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as numerous configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium is also still quite reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you just won’t get any more upgrades ).
When You believe the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.
Wrap-up
As I mentioned, I do not think GeneratePress is for everyone.
If You desire a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by buying a theme that fits your needs for your market out of day one.
But If you are willing to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you might even have the ability to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.
If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your website load in under one minute. Best Featured Products Template WordPress
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.