Introduction Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

Within the past ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. But I still had to do a lot of customization to allow it to perform and work how I wanted it to. A few of 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 blown away and am now moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a 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 am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there is not that good, or not supported for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The theme now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing some thing 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 precisely how I was imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the qualities. I will be covering the superior version of the theme, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you do not need running. This is only one of the biggest 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 lover 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.

It also works great with the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these really are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built in.

A lot of filters and hooks which make it great for developers.

Excellent active support from the programmer. Normally, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup process was found within a couple of seconds from their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right out of the box with no customizations to just see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time that I add everything for this. 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 layout 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 every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. However, the dimensions is! Take a peek 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 developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen exactly the same throughout all of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe could expect that to get smaller also.

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

If You are interested, I am using the following add-ons on this website:

Website

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact minute and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a great deal of options. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, allow me to show you couple which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom courses

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? 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 last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress lets you perform 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 fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a kid theme. All the customizations were made using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he can make a copy of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to allow you to know that now you can put in my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with just a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal site, as I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins that weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our organization 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 to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page weight 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites for this (which comprises several EDD e-commerce sites). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI now have a billion more options to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to personalize and control precisely how their site appears.

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the site 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 typically pair it with a WordPress site 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 know you wish to produce a fashion blog, you might be happier picking out a market theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely will need to go in and personalize things. And though the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

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

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient as you’ll have the ability to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you may configure detailed 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 design — you can use a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post layout — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

Likewise, That the Typography place enables you to control the font for 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 options in the WordPress Customizer compared to 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 complete control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif 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 topics are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Put That together, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I conducted a little test.

First, I put up a vacant site using a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance 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! But GeneratePress can perform.

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

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

If You perform that same test with other topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

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 useful features like:

• Elements — a unique feature which allows you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a exceptional page header onto a per-page basis.
• Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own layout and column settings.

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you can select and choose what features you want to activate.

That Way, you don’t have to slow your site down for a feature that you’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you had to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a few buttons to import a demo site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Detailed Control Over Each Bit Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Design meta box for every single 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 how many footer widgets to utilize
• Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, article featured image, post title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

Where These controls are the most useful is if you are using a WordPress site builder.

By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates following the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress after the first year without renewing — you won’t get any more updates).

When You consider the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic value.

Summary

As I mentioned, 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 requirements for your market from day one.

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

Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Best WordPress Theme With Elementor

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.