Intro Cool WordPress Websites
Over the past 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, which was pretty excellent. But I still had to do a lot of customization to make it do and operate the way I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been blown away and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Cool WordPress Websites
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged 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 ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.
I Really installed 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 precisely how I was envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees 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 great across all devices.
Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.
Dramatic integration with the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.
Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser service back to IE8.
It also works great with the popular 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 individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.
Translation ready.
Font wonderful built in.
A lot of filters and hooks which make it great for developers.
Excellent active service from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled during the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds from their own forum.
Going Deep Into GeneratePress
Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how fast the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I could 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 load time. I was quite 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 case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files is not as important. However, the size is! Take a look 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
This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same throughout all the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we can anticipate that to get smaller too.
The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your website. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt right at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.
If You’re interested, I’m using the following add-ons on this site:
Website
Shades
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a young child motif . This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact minute rather than lose a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Cool WordPress Websites
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On every Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can quickly swap a page involving the default to a full width page, in addition to disable elements.
The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. But allow me to show you couple 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 programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns to any page or article. Characteristics include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid thickness
Mobile grid thickness
Insert Customized classes
Add custom inline designs
Equal height columns
Here is An example below:
You might want to Also grab his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display 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 great.
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
Sections Add-on
The Sections add-on in the premium edition 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 just for blogs! I am in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.
Speed Tests
For those Of you that are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the whole motif that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme which I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison under.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My older MyThemeShop motif was pretty fast, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice now is, just get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
With the New GeneratePress motif I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a kid motif. All the customizations were made with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).
Like the WordPress theme I’ve running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could create a replica of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your own GeneratePress website with only a single click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog layout instantly.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as I do not use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to replicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a few 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 was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Cool WordPress Websites
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!
I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.
And The best news isI now have a billion more options to choose from than I did earlier.
What GeneratePress Is Good For…
GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users that want to have the ability 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 site that you build will have a great base to make it load quickly.
Because Of that, people who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of website.
But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…
…you Need something that will immediately appear perfect from the box.
For Example, if you know you want to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.
Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you first install it.
So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And while the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, do not 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.
Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Beyond Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.
GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you’ll be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.
The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly all about your site.
For Example, if you go into the Design region, you can configure detailed settings for yourown:
- Header — you can move your header round and alter its own styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
- Sidebar layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
- Blog post layout — such as featured picture size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — just like how many widgets to add
Likewise, That the Typography area enables you to control the font to get every single element on your site, including buttons:
And You also get a thorough area to control the colour of every single element on your website.
All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you understand how the preferences come together, you’ll have full control on how your site appears.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Around All of its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and clean code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be 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 badly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.
Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.
First, I set up an empty site utilizing a random 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 requests
That is Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can do better.
Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without changing anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:
- 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 perform that same test with other topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Cool WordPress Websites
Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach
Beyond Giving you more design controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other useful features such as:
- Elements — a unique feature that lets you create custom 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” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.
To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you can select and choose what features you would like to trigger.
That Way, you don’t have 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 Website
In The last, you needed to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.
Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demo sites.
You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Yes this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a demo site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Detailed Control Over Each Piece Of Content
With Most topics, every page and post will use the same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — however you do not have very much control past that.
GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a brand new Layout meta box for every single page and post:
You Can utilize this meta box to:
- Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose how many footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
- Create a special”container” to your page builder
Where These controls are the most useful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Cool WordPress Websites
GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress motif is available for free at WordPress.org.
That said, If you are 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 doesn’t give you almost as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium is also still quite reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more updates).
When You consider that the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.
Conclusion
As I mentioned, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everyone.
If You want a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your requirements for your niche out of day one.
However, If you are willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter website that fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great decision.
If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Cool WordPress Websites
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.