Intro Best WordPress Themes Grid

Over the past ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. But I still had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to do and work how I wanted it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been dismissed and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter 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 several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Best WordPress Themes Grid

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 years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Really set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely 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. In fact, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees 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 adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.

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

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

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built-in.

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

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 everything I Googled during the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I can 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 loading time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a lot of big files, but that is not the situation. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring that every record packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. 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

This is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during all the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe can expect this to secure smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation 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 the perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built, I felt right at home with this. Everything should be made this way.

If You’re interested, I am using the next add-ons on this site:

Website

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best WordPress Themes Grid

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to alter the sidebar layout 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! Remember, lots of these choices are enabled by the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. However, let me show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You May Want to Also grab his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show past 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 Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (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 those that are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice that I changed the entire theme that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was pretty quickly, but I invested a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice now is, simply 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 do not have a kid theme. All 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 copy of woorkup to your new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup motif in your own GeneratePress website with just a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a couple plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Best WordPress Themes Grid

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

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my entire life will be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best thing isI now have a billion more choices to choose 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 customize and control exactly how their site looks.

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

Because Of that, people who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Need something that will instantly appear perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you realize you want to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

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

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and personalize things. And while the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be convenient because you will be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly everything about your website.

For Example, if you go into the Layout area, you can configure comprehensive settings to your:

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

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But once you realize how the preferences come together, you will have complete control over how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All of its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which is about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes 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 render blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.

First, I put up an empty website utilizing 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 seconds
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

That is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the exact same test site without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:

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

If You do the exact same test with different topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Best WordPress Themes Grid

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a unique feature that lets you create custom 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 lets you create different”sections” onto a page, each with their own design and column preferences.

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can pick and choose what features you would like to trigger.

That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a feature that you’ll never use.

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

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

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a fresh Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this site 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 topics, each page and post will use the very same configurations for the most part. You may have some custom templates or formats — but you don’t have very much control beyond that.

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

• Change the number of 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 components, like your header, navigation menu, article featured image, article title, or footer
• Create a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to produce the correct baseline for your page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Best WordPress Themes Grid

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly 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 just $39.95, which gives you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates following the initial year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You consider the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

However, If you are 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 may even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics you will find. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.

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

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.