Intro Best Theme Of 2016

Over the past 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. However, I still had to do a lot of customization to allow it to perform and operate how I needed it to. A few weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in 10 years. I was dismissed and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Best Theme Of 2016

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve really 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 dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that good, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. 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 get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the qualities. I will be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you don’t need running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.

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

Additionally, it 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 have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

Excellent active service from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box with no customizations to 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 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 design was going to produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as important. However, the dimensions is! Have a look at a few of the core 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

That is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same throughout each the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we can anticipate that to secure smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to guarantee they do not load on your website. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built, I felt right at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.

If You are curious, I am 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 that I no more have to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally update my GeneratePress theme this very moment and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best Theme Of 2016

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post that you have a lot of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

You Can quickly swap a page involving the default option to a full width page, in addition to disable components.

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. But let me 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 is also made by precisely the same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to add responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add Customized courses

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also have it show past modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, 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 in terms of design. Think of it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was pretty fast, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot 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

With the New GeneratePress motif I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a child motif. 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 can make a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress website with only a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal site, since I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins that weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as we just use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best Theme Of 2016

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which comprises several EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child topics, my life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news is, I now have a thousand more options to choose from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who want to be able to customize and control precisely how their site looks.

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 foundation to make it load quickly.

Because Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

For Example, if you know you wish to create a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a market theme that is 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 when you initially install it.

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

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Performance, another area where GeneratePress does well is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be convenient as you will be able to see all of the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize pretty much everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure detailed settings to your:

• Header — you can move your header round and alter its styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

Similarly, That the Typography area enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your website, including buttons:

And You also get a detailed region to control the color of each and every element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you understand the way the settings come together, you’ll have complete control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and clean code. The whole theme 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 topics are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

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

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

First, I put up an empty 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 is Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can perform.

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

• 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% less

If You perform the exact same test with different themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Best Theme Of 2016

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a unique feature that lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header onto 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 design and column settings.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could pick and choose what features you would like to trigger.

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

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

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

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

You Can import them right 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 Every Piece Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a brand new Layout meta name 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 altering the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose the number of footer widgets to utilize
• Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

Where These controls would be the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain elements, you are in a position to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Best Theme Of 2016

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you’re serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, which gives you use on infinite sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without beating — you just won’t get any more upgrades ).

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

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everyone.

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

However, If you are willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to find a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is 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 base is a good decision.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no problem making your website load in under one second. Best Theme Of 2016

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.