Introduction Free Website Themes

Within the past ten decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. But I had to perform a lot of customization to allow it to do and operate the way I wanted it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Free Website Themes

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually installed the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking precisely how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks great 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 fan of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser support 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 had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

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

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I wholeheartedly during the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds from their own 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 see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time I add everything for this. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load 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 this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as important. But the dimensions is! Have a look 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

This is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during each of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving round the cornerwe can expect that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to guarantee they don’t load on your site. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.

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

Blog

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no longer need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact minute 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 site. Free Website Themes

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these choices are permitted by the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. But let me 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 made by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert Customized courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

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

Speed Tests

For those Of you that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the whole theme that powers woorkup.com. It just 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 invested a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child motif. Each of 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 for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m happy to let you 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 with a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a couple plugins which weren’t needed due to 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 motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Free Website Themes

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my websites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

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 who want to have the ability to personalize and control precisely how their site appears.

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

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

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Need something that will instantly appear perfect out of the box.

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

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

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely will need to go in and customize things. And though the significant advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are some of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is so common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Performance, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization choices.

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

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

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you can configure comprehensive settings for your:

Header — you can move your header round and alter its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
Sidebar design — you can utilize one or two sidebars
Blog post layout — such as featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

Similarly, The Typography area lets you control the font for every single element on your website, including buttons:

And You also receive a detailed region to control the color of every single element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you understand how the preferences come together, you will have complete control on how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire motif 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 badly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the leave blocking 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 ran a little test.

First, I set up an empty site using a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its performance with Pingdom, it:

Had a performance tier of 77
Loaded in 1.05 moments
Had a page size of 243.9 kB
Had 15 asks

That is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.

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

Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
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 themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Free Website Themes

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

Elements — a unique feature which allows you create custom 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 different”sections” on a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you can select and choose what characteristics you would like to activate.

That Way, you don’t have to slow your site down for a feature that you’ll never use.

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

In The past, you had to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

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

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

Where These controls are the most useful is if you are using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to create the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Free Website Themes

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, 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 flexible. The free version does not give you almost as numerous settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without beating — you won’t get any more updates).

When You consider the typical premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides 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 fits your requirements for your market from day one.

But If you are ready to spend some time altering 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 a little time.

Additionally, It is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good decision.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no problem making your site load in under one minute. Free Website Themes