Intro Best WordPress Themes Design Portfolio

Within the past ten years, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, which was pretty excellent. But I had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and operate how I wanted it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I was dismissed and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Best WordPress Themes Design Portfolio

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there is not that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, this 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 something right here.

I Actually installed the free version of the theme 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 envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the qualities. I will be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with 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. Fantastic browser support back to IE8.

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

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

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

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have great documentation on their site, the subject has been around long enough that what I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their 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 just see how quickly the foundation 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 theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as important. But the size is! Have a look at some 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 each the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe could anticipate that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your website. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script manager built-in, I felt right at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.

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

Website

Colors

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 Child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact moment rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Best WordPress Themes Design Portfolio

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. But let me 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 is also created by the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Display Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show past 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 Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to do all sorts of things concerning design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you who are regular readers, you probably did not 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 motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I invested a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I have gotten a lot 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 remember, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve running on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could create a replica of woorkup for the new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress site with only a click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started with a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, since I do not use it for much. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a couple plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme 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 fast. Best WordPress Themes Design Portfolio

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed 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’m moving over all my websites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best thing is, I now have a thousand more options to pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who want to be able to personalize and control precisely how their site appears.

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

Since Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

…you Want something which will immediately appear perfect out of the box.

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

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a lot easier 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 want it to, you will most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And though the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

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

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient because you will be able to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize pretty much everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure comprehensive settings to yourown:

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

Similarly, That the Typography place lets you control the font to get every single element on your website, such as buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This amount of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you understand how the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All of its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole theme 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 poorly 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 cites.

Put That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I put up a vacant website using a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance 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 is Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the 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 perform that same test with different themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Best WordPress Themes Design Portfolio

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Past Giving you more design controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other helpful features like:

Elements — a exceptional feature that 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 — that is kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.

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

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 last, you needed to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which left the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

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 presentation site.

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

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

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

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

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

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you nearly as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that gives you use on infinite websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to continue receiving support and updates following the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after 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 provides a great value.

Conclusion

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

If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your requirements for your niche out of day one.

But If you are ready to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you may even be able to locate a starter website that fulfills your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation 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 second. Best WordPress Themes Design Portfolio