Introduction Best WordPress Template For A Blog

Within the previous 10 years, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, which was fairly excellent. But I had to perform a lot of customization to make it perform and operate the way I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have discovered in a decade . I was dismissed and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Best WordPress Template For A Blog

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 years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The theme currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the subject, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not want running. This is one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of this customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

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

Additionally, it 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.

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

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

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

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I always test a new theme right out of the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal 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 load time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a lot of big files, but this is not the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files is not as important. However, the dimensions is! Take 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

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during each of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe can anticipate that 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 are not using to ensure they don’t load on your website. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt right at home for this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

If You are curious, I’m 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 that I no longer have to use a Child motif . This makes my life so much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact minute and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best WordPress Template For A Blog

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You can change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these options are enabled from the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. However, let me show you couple which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, 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 concerning design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those who are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice I changed the entire motif that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that 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 lot of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a child theme. Each of the customizations were created using the wonderful 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 create a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m happy to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup motif on your own GeneratePress website with only a single click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, since I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum site, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best WordPress Template For A Blog

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 as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my sites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 websites 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 correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI finally have a thousand more choices to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

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

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

Because Of that, those who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Need something which will immediately appear perfect from the box.

For Example, if you realize you want to produce a fashion blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

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

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and customize things. And while the significant advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Performance, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient because you’ll have the ability to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your website.

For Example, if you go into the Design area, you can configure comprehensive settings for your:

Header — you can move your header around and alter its styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
Blog post design — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

Likewise, That the Typography area enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your site, such as buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you realize how the settings come together, you’ll have full control over how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All its attributes, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, which 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 some badly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the leave obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That together, 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 site using a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing its functionality with Pingdom, it:

Had a performance tier 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 do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without changing 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% less

If You do that same test with different themes, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Best WordPress Template For A Blog

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Beyond 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 allows 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 kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” on 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 exactly which characteristics you would like to activate.

That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a quality which you’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you had to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer 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 Website still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a few buttons to import a presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Detailed Control Over Every Piece Of Content

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Best WordPress Template For A Blog

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous settings 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 only $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want 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 updates).

When You consider the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a great price.

Summary

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

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

But If you’re willing to spend some 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 locate a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will find. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great decision.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, you shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one minute. Best WordPress Template For A Blog