Introduction Best WordPress Article Theme

Within the past ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. However, I still had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to do and operate how I needed it to. A few weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve found in 10 years. I was dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Best WordPress Article Theme

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years in 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 dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there isn’t that good, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Really installed 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you don’t need running. This is one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using 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 support back to IE8.

Additionally, it works great with all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

Tons of filters and hooks that make it great for programmers.

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I Googled during the setup process was found within a few seconds from their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I always test a new theme right out of the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a great deal 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 concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as important. However, the dimensions is! Have a look at a few 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 have Seen exactly the same during all the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we could expect this to secure smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular design. You can activate/deactivate anything you are not using to guarantee they do not load on your site. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt right at home with this. Everything should be made this way.

If You are curious, I am using the next add-ons on this website:

Website

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact minute and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best WordPress Article Theme

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page involving the default to a complete width page, as well as disable elements.

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, 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 few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be created by precisely the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add Customized courses

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I’m 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 sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was pretty fast, but I spent a great deal 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 theme I managed to achieve 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 with 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 could make a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with just a click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, 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 appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one 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 due to 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 motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best WordPress Article Theme

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under one 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 locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

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

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

Because Of that, those who assemble WordPress websites 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 Fantastic Fit If…

…you Want something which will instantly appear perfect from the box.

For Example, if you know you wish to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will almost certainly need to go in and personalize things. And though the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some 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 features that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, 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 have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you adequate options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Design region, you may configure comprehensive settings for 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 one or two sidebars
Blog post design — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to add

Similarly, The Typography area enables you to control the font to get every single element on your website, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you understand the way the settings come together, you’ll have full control on how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, which is 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 exceed 1 MB!

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

Put That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a small test.

First, I put up a vacant website using a random 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 in any way! However, GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test site without altering anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress failed:

Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points better
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 themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Best WordPress Article Theme

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a unique feature which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
Page Header — allows you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page building. It lets you create different”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own layout and column settings.

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

That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a quality that you’re never going to 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 made the theme difficult for casual users to install.

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

You Can import them right from your WordPress dashboard.

Yes this site 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 Piece Of Content

With Most topics, every page and post will use the same configurations for the most part. You may have some custom templates or formats — however you do not have very much control beyond that.

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a brand new Design meta name box for every single page and post:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change how many 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 picture, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Best WordPress Article Theme

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

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

Conclusion

As I said, I do not think GeneratePress is for everybody.

If You want a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your needs for your market from day one.

But If you’re ready to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you might even have the ability to find a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will find. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your website load in under one second. Best WordPress Article Theme