Introduction Best Template Free WordPress

Within the previous 10 decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. But I had to perform a lot of customization to make it perform and work the way I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been blown away and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Best Template Free WordPress

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer 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 ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually installed the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should get the job done. And I will 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 . Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items 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 outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of the customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser service 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 really are a great combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

A lot of filters and hooks that make it good for programmers.

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has existed long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup process was found within a couple of seconds in their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right from the box without any customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time 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 quite impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of files isn’t as significant. But the dimensions is! Take a look at a few 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’ve Seen exactly the same during all of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe can anticipate this to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to guarantee they don’t load on your website. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt right at home for this. Everything ought to be made this way.

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

Website

Shades

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 young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very moment rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make this possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best Template Free WordPress

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. However, allow me to show you couple which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be made by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his amazing 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 can also get 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 Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of you that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the entire motif that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was pretty quickly, but I invested a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child theme. All the customizations were created with the awesome 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 can make a replica of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m pleased to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your own GeneratePress site with just a click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, as I do not use it to get much. Since 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 since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a few plugins that weren’t needed due to 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 pretty basic minimal site, as we just use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Best Template Free WordPress

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was 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 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 finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my sites for this (which includes several EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP with no child themes, my life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best thing is, I now have a billion more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who wish to have the ability to customize and control precisely how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the website that you build will have a great base to make it load fast.

Because Of that, those 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 type of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Need something that will immediately look perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you realize you want to create a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a lot simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you initially install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and personalize things. And though the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Lots Of Customization Options In 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’ll be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you may configure comprehensive 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 design — you can use one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like the number of widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography area lets you control the font for each and every element on your website, such as buttons:

And You also get a thorough area to control the colour of each and every element on your site.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you realize how the preferences come together, you’ll have full control over how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, and it is about as little as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Place That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I put up an empty website using 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 seconds
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

That’s Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can perform.

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

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

If You perform that same test with different themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Best Template Free WordPress

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a exceptional feature which lets you create custom hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a exceptional 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 webpage, each with their own layout and column preferences.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could pick and choose what characteristics you want to trigger.

That Way, you don’t need to slow your site down for a feature which you’re never going to 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 regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Yes this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Give You Detailed Control Over Every Bit Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Layout 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 (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose the number of footer widgets to use
• Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” to 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’re able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Best Template Free WordPress

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You believe that the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.

Conclusion

As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

But If you’re ready to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will find. So if you’re seeking 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 problem making your website load in under one second. Best Template Free WordPress

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.