Introduction Child Themes For Generatepress

Within the past ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. However, I had to do a lot of customization to make it do and operate the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve discovered in 10 years. I was dismissed and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Child Themes For Generatepress

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that great, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually 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 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’s first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the subject, since it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan 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 all the favorite 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 people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

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

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have great documentation on their site, the theme has been around long enough that everything I wholeheartedly during the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a great deal 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 generate a lot of big files, but that isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. But the size is! Take a look at a few 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

This is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same during each of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we could expect this to secure smaller also.

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

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

Blog

Shades

Copyright

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

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer choices is really 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 all day. But let me show you couple 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 created by precisely the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Add custom courses

Add custom inline designs

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’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium edition of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those who are regular readers, you probably did not even notice I changed the entire theme that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I invested a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were made with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he can create a replica of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress website with only a single click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal website, as I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Child Themes For Generatepress

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

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

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

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

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the website that you build will have a great foundation to make it load quickly.

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Want something that will instantly look perfect from the box.

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

While GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of 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 almost certainly will need to go in and customize things. And while the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient as you will be able to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much all about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you can configure detailed settings to yourown:

• Header — you can move your header around and change its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can use one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

Similarly, The Typography area enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your site, including buttons:

And You also receive a thorough region to control the color of every single element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This amount of detail may be a little overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But once you understand how the preferences come together, you will have complete control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, which will be about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded topics can even surpass 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 collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.

First, I put up an empty website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing 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 requests

That’s Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on the 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% quicker
• Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
• Had 9 requests, ~40% less

If You do that same test with different topics, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Child Themes For Generatepress

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you can pick and choose exactly which features you want 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 Website

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

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

You Can import them right from your WordPress dashboard.

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

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

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain elements, you are in a position to create the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Child Themes For Generatepress

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in using 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 numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited websites . 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, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without beating — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).

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

Conclusion

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

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

But If you are willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you may even be able to find a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one minute. Child Themes For Generatepress

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.