Background Best WordPress Themes Beauty

Within the previous 10 decades, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. However, I had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and work how 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 best WordPress theme I’ve found in 10 years. I was dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Best WordPress Themes Beauty

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have 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, so I have a tendency to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that good, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this case, that was a mistake. The motif now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should get the job done. 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 edition of the subject, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that 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 do not need running. This is one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser support 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 individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

A lot of filters and hooks that make it good for developers.

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that what I wholeheartedly throughout the setup process was found within a few seconds from their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box with no customizations to see how fast the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I could 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 situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as important. However, the dimensions is! Take a peek at some of the center 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 exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we could expect 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 aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home with this. Everything should be made this way.

If You’re curious, I’m using the following 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 longer have to use a Child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact moment and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best WordPress Themes Beauty

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page between the default to a full width page, in addition to disable elements.

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these options are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can’t 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 your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Insert custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t have a child theme. Each of the customizations were created using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could make a replica of woorkup for the new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress website with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started with a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal site, since I don’t use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole 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 which 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 was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Best WordPress Themes Beauty

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which comprises several EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

And The best thing isI now have a billion more choices 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 exactly how their site appears.

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 fast.

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 Fantastic Fit If…

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

For Example, if you know you want to create a style blog, you might be happier picking out a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you first install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely will need to go in and personalize matters. And while the significant benefit 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 some of the particular features that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Performance, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient as you’ll be able to see all of the changes that you create in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much everything about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Layout area, you may configure detailed settings to yourown:

Header — you can move your header round and alter its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
Blog post design — like featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

Similarly, The Typography area enables you to control the font for every single element on your website, including buttons:

And You also receive a thorough region to control the colour of each and every element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But as soon as you understand the way the settings come together, you will have full control on how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which is about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

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

Place That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.

First, I put up a vacant site using a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality 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! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

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% fewer

If You do the exact same test with other topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Best WordPress Themes Beauty

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

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

That Way, you do not need to slow your site down for a feature which you’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you needed to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any one of those 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

With Most themes, each post and page will use the same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — but you do not have very much control past that.

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to use
Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured image, article title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Best WordPress Themes Beauty

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress motif is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs just $39.95, which gives you use on unlimited websites . You’ll 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, continue using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

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

Summary

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

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

But If you’re willing to spend time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you might even be able to find a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. So 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 shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one minute. Best WordPress Themes Beauty