Intro Faster Theme

Over the previous ten decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was fairly good. But I had to perform a lot of customization to allow it to perform and work 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 a decade . I had been dismissed and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I will enter precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Faster Theme

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that great, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually installed the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased 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 us first look at a number of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the subject, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

Impressive integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of this customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

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

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

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the theme has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds in their 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 see how fast the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time 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 layout was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but that is not the case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as important. But the dimensions is! Have a peek at a few of the core GeneratePress files below:

/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 programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during each of the premium add-ons. They are as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we could expect that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular design. 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 manager built-in, I felt right at home for this. Everything should be made this way.

If You are interested, 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 features of GeneratePress is that I no longer need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact minute rather than lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Faster Theme

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a great deal of options. You can change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, let me show you few which actually 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 the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Insert Customized classes

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also grab his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, 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 edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a child theme. All the customizations were made using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

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

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

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

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even 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

Additionally, I Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Faster Theme

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 see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that 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 ideal option for performance-focused users that want to have the ability to customize 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 great foundation to make it load quickly.

Since Of that, those who assemble 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.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

…you Want something that will immediately appear perfect from the box.

For Example, if you know you want to create a fashion blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and customize 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 themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are some of the particular features that explain why GeneratePress is so 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 can be convenient because you’ll be able to see all of the changes that you create in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly all about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure comprehensive settings to your:

• Header — you can move your header around and alter its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar design — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post layout — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like the number of widgets to include

Likewise, The Typography area enables you to control the font for every single element on your site, including buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you understand how the preferences come together, you’ll have full control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All of its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which will be about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which will help you avoid the leave blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

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

First, I set up a vacant website utilizing a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality with Pingdom, it

• Had a performance grade of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 seconds
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 asks

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

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the exact same test website without altering anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:

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

If You perform the exact same test with different themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Faster Theme

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more design controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other useful features such as:

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you want to activate.

That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a quality that you’re never going to 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 made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a fresh Website 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 the WordPress dashboard.

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

Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

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

Where These controls are the most helpful is if you are using a WordPress page 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. Faster Theme

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap 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 utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

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

When You consider the normal premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic price.

Conclusion

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

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

However, If you’re willing to spend time changing settings, GeneratePress’ style 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 some time.

Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress themes you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your site load in under one second. Faster Theme

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.