Background Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates

Within 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 using MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. However, I had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and operate how I wanted it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now 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 Really set up 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 exactly 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 a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium version of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you ever 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 one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t 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 service back to IE8.

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

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

Tons of hooks and filters that make it good for developers.

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found inside a few seconds from their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right out of 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 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 situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of files isn’t as significant. But the dimensions 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

That is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we could anticipate that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

If You are interested, I am using the next add-ons on this site:

Website

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no longer have 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 theme this very minute and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make this possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. But allow me to show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also created by precisely the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert Customized courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also grab his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also have it show past modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For those Of those who are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, but I spent a great deal of time customizing 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 motif I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a child motif. Each of 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 can make a replica of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress website with only a 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 private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, as I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins which weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again 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 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 to it (which comprises 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 developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI now have a billion more options to choose from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users that wish to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the website that you build will have a fantastic base to make it load quickly.

Since Of that, those who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Need something which will immediately look perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you know you want to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

While GeneratePress is becoming a great deal simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you first install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely need to go in and personalize things. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

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

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you will have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Design area, you may configure comprehensive settings to your:

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 image dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — just like the number of widgets to add

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But as soon as you realize how the preferences come together, you’ll have full control on how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which is about as little 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 surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Put That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you a sense, I ran a little test.

First, I set up an empty site using a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality 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 at all! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test site without changing anything else. Here is 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 topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could pick and choose what characteristics you want to activate.

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 past, you needed 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 new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them right from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

With Most topics, every post and page will use the very same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — but you don’t have very much control past that.

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change the number of sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, post title, or footer
Produce 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 are able to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress motif is available for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite affordable. It costs just $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates following the initial year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you won’t get any more upgrades ).

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

Conclusion

As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

But If you’re willing to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will find. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Do You Need Generatepress Pro For Templates