Introduction Free Full WordPress Themes
Over the past ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I still had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and operate how I wanted it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I was blown away and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Free Full WordPress Themes
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.
I Actually installed the free version of the theme 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 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 features. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.
Characteristics
Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not need running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.
Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.
Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.
Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser support back to IE8.
It also works great with all the popular 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 had success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built-in.
A lot of filters and hooks that make it great for developers.
Excellent active service from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled during the setup process was found inside a few seconds from their forum.
Diving Into GeneratePress
Now it is Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I can expect by the time that 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 quite impressed.
One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Take a peek at a few of the center 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 performance! And I’ve Seen exactly the same during each the premium add-ons. They are 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 round the corner, we can expect 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 don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script manager built-in, I felt at home for this. Everything should be made this way.
If You are interested, I am using the next add-ons on this site:
Blog
Shades
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no more need to use a Child theme. This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact moment and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Free Full WordPress Themes
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On every Page/post that you have a lot of alternatives. You can change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can quickly swap a page involving the default option to a complete width page, as well as disable components.
The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these options are permitted by the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. However, let me show you few 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 made by precisely the same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or article. Features include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid thickness
Mobile grid width
Add Customized classes
Add custom inline styles
Equal height columns
Here is An example below:
You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works terrific.
To Get started, 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 page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.
Speed Tests
For those Of you who are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the entire theme that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
With the New GeneratePress motif I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t have a child motif. All the customizations were made with 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 brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to let you know that now you can install my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with only a click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog layout immediately.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum site, as I don’t use it to get much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to duplicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins that weren’t needed due to GP.
forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Free Full WordPress Themes
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!
I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 sites 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 subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.
And The best news isI now have a billion more choices to choose from than I did before.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users who wish to be able to customize and control exactly how their site appears.
You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the site that you build will have a great base to make it load fast.
Since Of that, those 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 Fantastic Fit If…
…you Want something which will instantly appear perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you realize you wish to create a fashion blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.
Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you initially install it.
So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And though the significant 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 some of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed common.
Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.
GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient as you will be able to see all of the changes that you make in real time.
The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much all about your website.
For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you can 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 layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
- Blog post layout — like featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — just like how many widgets to add
Likewise, The Typography area enables you to control the font to get every single element on your website, such as buttons:
And You also receive a detailed area to control the colour of every single element on your website.
All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But once you realize the way the preferences come together, you will have full control on how your website appears.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Across All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, which will be about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render blocking 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 small test.
First, I put up a vacant website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (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’s Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can perform.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on the same test site without changing anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:
- Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points greater
- Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
- Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
- Had 9 requests, ~40% less
If You perform the exact same test with other topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Free Full WordPress Themes
Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach
Past Giving you more design controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other helpful features such as:
- Elements — a exceptional feature which allows 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 permits you to create different”sections” on a page, each with their own design and column preferences.
To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you can select and choose exactly which features you want to trigger.
That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a quality that you’ll never use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Website
In The past, you had to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to install.
Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any among the 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 a few buttons to import a demo site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content
With Most topics, every page and post will use the very same settings for the most part. You may have some custom templates or formats — however you don’t have very much control past that.
GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a new Layout meta name box for each and every page and post:
You Can use this meta box to:
- Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose the number of footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” for your page builder
Where These controls would be the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain components, you’re able to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Free Full WordPress Themes
GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress motif is available at no cost at WordPress.org.
That said, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as numerous configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium can be still quite affordable. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates following the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without beating — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).
When You believe that the typical premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic price.
Conclusion
As I mentioned, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everybody.
If You desire a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by buying a theme that fits your requirements for your market from day one.
However, If you are willing to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to locate a starter site that fulfills your needs to save a little time.
Additionally, It’s one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will locate. 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, you shouldn’t have any problem making your website load in under one minute. Free Full WordPress Themes
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.