Intro Best Seo Template WordPress
Over the past 10 years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. However, I had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to do and work the way I needed it to. A few weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have discovered in a decade . I had been blown away and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Best Seo Template WordPress
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The theme now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.
I Really set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the premium 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 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 quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you don’t want running. This is one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.
Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.
Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.
Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser support back to IE8.
It also works great with the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these are a terrific combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built-in.
A lot of filters and hooks that make it great for developers.
Excellent active service from the programmer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the theme has existed long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds in their forum.
Diving Into GeneratePress
Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time that I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme 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 layout was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but this is not the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as significant. However, the size is! Have a peek 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 performance! And I have Seen exactly the same during each the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe can expect this to get smaller too.
The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home for this. Everything should be made this way.
If You’re interested, I am using the next add-ons on this website:
Blog
Shades
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no longer need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very minute and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Best Seo Template WordPress
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On every Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can easily swap a page involving the default to a full width page, as well as disable components.
The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are permitted from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, let me show you couple 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 created by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to add responsive columns to any page or article. Characteristics include:
Desktop grid width
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid width
Add Customized classes
Insert custom inline styles
Equal height columns
Here is An example below:
You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured articles 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 might also get it show past modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works terrific.
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.
Sections Add-on
The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things concerning design. Think of it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.
Speed Tests
For all those Of those that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It only 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 old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, 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 now is, just get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
Together with the New GeneratePress theme I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were made using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).
Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he can create a replica of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif in your own GeneratePress site with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a great blog layout instantly.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as I do not use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to duplicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even 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
I also Moved over our business site, 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 for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best Seo Template WordPress
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able 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’m moving over all my websites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.
And The best news isI now have a billion more choices to choose from than I did earlier.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the ideal 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 since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the site that you build will have a fantastic base to make it load fast.
Since Of that, people who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any kind of website.
However 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 fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a market theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.
Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you initially install it.
So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And while the significant advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes .
GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique
Here Are a few of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.
Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Beyond Performance, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.
GeneratePress Uses 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 decent possibilities, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize nearly all about your site.
For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure detailed settings for yourown:
- 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 — such as featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include
Similarly, That the Typography place enables you to control the font for each and every element on your site, including buttons:
And You also receive a thorough area to control the color of every single element on your site.
All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you understand the way the settings come together, you’ll have full control on how your website looks.
Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times
Across All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.
Put That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I conducted a small test.
First, I put up a vacant site utilizing 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 in any way! But GeneratePress can perform.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on the same test website without changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:
- Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points greater
- Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
- Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
- Had 9 requests, ~40% fewer
If You perform the exact same test with other topics, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Best Seo Template WordPress
Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach
Past Giving you more design controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other useful features like:
- Elements — a exceptional feature that lets you create custom hooks, page headers, or design 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 port where you can select and choose what characteristics you would like to activate.
That Way, you don’t need to slow your site down for a quality that you’re never going to 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 left the motif difficult for casual users to install.
Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .
You Can import them directly from your 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 Detailed Control Over Every Bit Of Content
With Most themes, every page and post will use the very same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — 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 post and page:
You Can utilize this meta box to:
- Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose how many 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 page builder
Where These controls are the most useful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Best Seo Template WordPress
GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress theme can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.
Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium is also still quite reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, and that gives you use on unlimited websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the initial year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress after the first year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).
When You consider that the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic price.
Conclusion
As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everyone.
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.
However, If you are willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will find. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good decision.
If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your site load in under one minute. Best Seo Template WordPress
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.