Introduction Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

Over the previous ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. But I had to perform a lot of customization to make it perform and operate 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 finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I was blown away and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made 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 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 supported for long. Nonetheless, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, 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 bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer 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 features. I will be covering the superior edition of the theme, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, if you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you don’t want running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

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

Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great 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 great combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

Excellent active service from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that what I Googled during the setup process was found within a few seconds in their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how fast the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I could expect by the time that I add everything to it. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme 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 generate a whole lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. But the size is! Have a peek at some of the center 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 of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe can anticipate this to get smaller too.

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

If You are curious, I’m using the following add-ons on this site:

Blog

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a Child theme. This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact minute and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post that you have a lot of alternatives. You can change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

You Can quickly swap a page involving the default to a full width page, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. However, allow me to show you few 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 created by the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert Customized classes

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You May Want to Also grab his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show past modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I am 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 lets you perform all kinds of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I am in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (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 those Of those who are regular readers, you likely 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 which I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I invested a lot of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal 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 managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a kid motif. Each of the customizations were made with 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 make a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress site with only a single click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started with a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as I don’t use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole look 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a couple 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 theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of 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 of my sites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news is, I now have a billion more choices to choose from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that wish to be able to customize and control precisely how their site appears.

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

Because Of that, those who build 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 site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

…you Want something which will instantly look perfect out of the box.

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

While GeneratePress is becoming a lot easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you initially install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll almost certainly will need to go in and customize matters. And while the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not 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.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

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

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Design region, you may configure comprehensive settings for your:

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

Similarly, That the Typography place lets you control the font for every single element on your website, including buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you realize how the settings come together, you will have full control over how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its attributes, GeneratePress always includes 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 themes are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

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

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

That is Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.

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

• Had a performance grade 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% less

If You do the exact same test with different themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

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 helpful features like:

• Elements — a unique feature which lets you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a exceptional page header on 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 preferences.

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

That Way, you do not have 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 construct GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

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

You Can import them right from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a presentation site.

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

With Most themes, every post and page will use the same configurations 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 providing you a new Layout meta name box for every single page and post:

You Can use this meta box to:

• Change the number of sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose the number of footer widgets to utilize
• Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured image, post title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” to your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you nearly as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose 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 sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you won’t get any more updates).

When You believe that the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic value.

Conclusion

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

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

However, If you’re ready to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type 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 those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good decision.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your website load in under one minute. Best WordPress Themes With Visual Composer

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.