Intro Best Word Themes
Over the past ten years, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. However, I still had to do a great deal of customization to make it do and work the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I was blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Best Word Themes
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.
I Really set up the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium 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.
Features
Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not want running. This is one of the biggest reasons I love GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks great across all devices.
Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.
Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of this 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.
Additionally, it works great with all the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these really are a great combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built in.
A lot of hooks and filters that make it great for developers.
Excellent active support from the programmer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup procedure was found inside a few seconds from their forum.
Diving Into GeneratePress
Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right from 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 to it. 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 worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of files isn’t as important. But the size is! Have a look at some 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’ve Seen the same during all of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the corner, we could expect this to get smaller too.
The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be made this way.
If You’re curious, I am using the following add-ons on this website:
Website
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 young child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally update my GeneratePress theme this very moment and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Best Word Themes
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On every Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.
You Can quickly swap a page involving the default option to a complete width page, as well as disable elements.
The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But allow me to 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 precisely the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to add responsive columns to any page or article. Features include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid thickness
Insert custom classes
Insert custom inline designs
Equal height columns
This is An example under:
You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show last modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I’m 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 version of GeneratePress allows you to do all sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks like a site.
Speed Tests
For those Of you who are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the whole theme that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme which I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison under.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a great deal 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 motif I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a kid theme. All 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 could make a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to let you know that now you can install my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress website with only a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as I don’t use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to duplicate the entire look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed due to 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’s a fairly basic minimum site, as we just use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best Word Themes
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to 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 managed to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page weight 2x!
I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.
And The best thing is, I now have a billion more options to choose from than I did before.
What GeneratePress Is Good For…
GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users that want to be able to customize and control exactly how their site appears.
You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the website that you build will have a great base to make it load quickly.
Because Of that, those who assemble WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any type of website.
But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…
…you Need something which will instantly appear perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you know you wish to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.
Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you first install it.
So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will most likely will need to go in and personalize matters. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .
GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique
Here Are some of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed common.
Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.
GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you’ll be able to see all of the changes that you create in real time.
The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much everything about your site.
For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure detailed settings for yourown:
- Header — you can move your header round and alter its styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
- Sidebar layout — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
- Blog post layout — like featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — like how many widgets to add
Similarly, The Typography area lets you control the font to get every single element on your website, such as buttons:
And You also receive a thorough region to control the colour of every single element on your site.
All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you understand the way the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your website appears.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Across All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.
Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.
First, I set 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 moments
- Had a page size of 243.9 kB
- Had 15 asks
That’s Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.
Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without changing anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:
- Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points greater
- Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
- Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
- Had 9 requests, ~40% less
If You do that same test with other themes, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Best Word Themes
Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach
Beyond Giving you more style controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other helpful features such as:
- Elements — a exceptional feature that allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or design templates.
- Page Header — lets you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
- Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” onto a page, each with their own design and column preferences.
To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can pick and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to trigger.
That Way, you do not have to slow your site down for a quality which you’re never going to use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Site
In The past, you had to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.
Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that lets 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 few buttons to import a presentation site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content
With Most themes, every post and page will use the very same settings for the most part. You may have some custom templates or formats — however you do not have very much control past that.
GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Design meta box for each and every post and page:
You Can use 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 utilize
- Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” for 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 able to create the proper baseline for your page builder design, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Best Word Themes
GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress motif can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.
That said, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium can be still quite reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you just won’t get any more upgrades ).
When You believe that the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.
Summary
As I said, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everybody.
If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by buying a theme that fits your needs for your market out of day one.
But If you are ready to spend time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will find. Therefore, 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, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your website load in under one second. Best Word Themes
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.