Intro Create Child Theme Generatepress

Over the previous ten decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. However, I had to perform a great deal of customization to make it perform and work the way I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I was blown away and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Create Child Theme Generatepress

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally 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, so I tend to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, that was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining 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 will be covering the premium version of the theme, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you do not need running. This is one of the biggest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration with 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.

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

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

Tons of filters and hooks which make it good 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 existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds from their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time that I add everything to it. Running the inventory 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 lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as significant. However, the dimensions is! Take a look at some 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 developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen exactly the same during all of the premium add-ons. They are as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe can expect this to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to ensure they do not load on your site. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home for this. Everything ought to be made this way.

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

Website

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a Child theme. This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally update my GeneratePress motif this very minute rather than lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Create Child Theme Generatepress

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these options are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. However, allow me to show you couple 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 made by the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. 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 can also get 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 version of GeneratePress lets you perform all sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you that are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice I changed the whole theme that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress theme I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid motif. Each of the customizations were created using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he can make a copy of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to allow you to know that you can now install my woorkup motif in your own GeneratePress website with just a single click! It is called the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as I do not use it for much. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Create Child Theme Generatepress

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites to it (which includes several EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got 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, which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news is, I finally have a thousand more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users that want 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 fantastic base to make it load fast.

Since Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites 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 that will immediately look perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you realize you wish to create a fashion blog, you may be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely need to go in and customize things. And though the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, don’t 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 so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure comprehensive settings for yourown:

Header — you can move your header round and change its 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 dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

Likewise, That the Typography place lets you control the font to get each and every element on your website, including buttons:

And You also receive a detailed region to control the colour of each and every element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you realize how the preferences come together, you will have full control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be 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 exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you a sense, I conducted a little test.

First, I set up a vacant website using a haphazard 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 asks

That’s Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test site 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 asks, ~40% less

If You perform that same test with other topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Create Child Theme Generatepress

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a exceptional 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 — that is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” on a page, each with their own design and column preferences.

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

That Way, you don’t need to slow your site down for a quality 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 left the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any among the 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 on 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 may have some custom formats or templates — but you don’t have very much control past that.

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a new Design meta 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 (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to use
Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, article title, or footer
Create a special”container” to your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Create Child Theme Generatepress

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I feel you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that gives you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the initial year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more updates).

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

Conclusion

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

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

But If you’re willing to spend time altering settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to find a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress topics you will find. So 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 problem making your website load in under one second. Create Child Theme Generatepress