Background Create A Generatepress Child Theme

Over the previous ten years, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I was using MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. However, I still had to perform a lot of customization to make it do and work the way I wanted it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I’ve found in a decade . I had been blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Create A Generatepress Child Theme

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly 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 isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. 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 bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining 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 qualities. I’m going to be covering the premium version of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

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

Additionally, it works great with all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like 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.

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

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

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the theme has been around long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a few seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right out of the box without any customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time 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 worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every record packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files isn’t as important. But the dimensions is! Take a peek 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 programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during all of 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 arriving around the cornerwe could expect this to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of this 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 curious, I am using the following add-ons on this website:

Blog

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no more have to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this very moment rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Create A Generatepress Child Theme

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are enabled 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 actually 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 developer 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 width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works terrific.

To Begin, 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 concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in fact utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you who are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the entire motif that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent annually customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid theme. All the customizations were created using 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 create a copy of woorkup to your new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, since I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the whole appearance 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 that 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 motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Create A Generatepress Child Theme

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole 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 ). After I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP with no child topics, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

And The best thing isI finally 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 have the ability to personalize and control exactly how their site appears.

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 base to make it load quickly.

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

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Need something which will immediately appear perfect from the box.

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

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

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will most likely will need to go in and personalize 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 .

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

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

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure comprehensive settings for your:

Header — you can move your header around and alter 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 — such as featured image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include

Likewise, That the Typography area lets you control the font for every single element on your site, including buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you understand how the settings come together, you’ll have complete control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All of its attributes, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The entire motif 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 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 random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing 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 is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points better
Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
Had 9 asks, ~40% fewer

If You do the exact same test with other topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Create A Generatepress Child Theme

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you could select and choose exactly which features you want to activate.

That Way, you do not need to slow your site down for a quality which you’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you had 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, however, the programmer 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 directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive 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 past that.

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

Where These controls would be the most useful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to create the proper baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Create A Generatepress Child Theme

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as numerous settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without renewing — you won’t get any more updates).

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

Conclusion

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

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

But If you are willing to spend time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will find. 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, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your website load in under one minute. Create A Generatepress Child Theme