Intro Free WordPress Themes Templates

Within the past ten years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. However, I still had to perform a great deal of customization to make it do 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 by far the finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Free WordPress Themes Templates

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have really seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not supported for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really 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 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 us 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. In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not want running. This is one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using 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. Great browser support 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 terrific combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built-in.

A lot of hooks and filters that make it good for developers.

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

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have great 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 in their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right out of the box with no customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time I add everything to it. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme 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 layout was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but that is not the situation. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as important. However, the dimensions is! Take 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

That is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen the same during all of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we can expect that to get smaller also.

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

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

Website

Colors

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 so much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very minute and not lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Free WordPress Themes Templates

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a lot of options. You can alter the sidebar design 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 choices are enabled by the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But let me 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 can be made by precisely the same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom courses

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

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

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of those that are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice I changed the entire motif that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was pretty fast, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all 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 remember, I don’t have a kid theme. All the customizations were created with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could create a copy of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with only a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over 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 already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our organization website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Free WordPress Themes 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 total page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who wish to be able to personalize and control exactly 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 fantastic base to make it load quickly.

Because Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

…you Need something that will immediately look perfect from the box.

For Example, if you realize you want to produce a style blog, you may be happier picking out a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

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

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll almost certainly will need to go in and customize matters. And though the substantial advantage 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 specific characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient as you’ll be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you adequate options, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much everything about your website.

For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you may configure detailed settings to yourown:

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 layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
Blog post design — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you understand how the settings come together, you’ll have complete control over how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

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

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

Place That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I conducted a small test.

First, I put up an empty site using a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality with Pingdom, it

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

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

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without changing anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress failed:

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% fewer

If You do the exact same test with other themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Free WordPress Themes Templates

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can select and choose what characteristics you want to activate.

That Way, you do not need to slow your site down for a feature which you’ll never use.

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

In The past, you needed to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any among 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 couple buttons to import a demo site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Every Piece Of Content

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the proper baseline for your page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Free WordPress Themes Templates

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress motif can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

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

When You consider that the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic price.

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I don’t believe GeneratePress is for everyone.

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

However, If you are willing to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you might even be able to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress topics you will find. So if you’re seeking 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 should have no difficulty making your site load in under one second. Free WordPress Themes Templates