Background Generatepress 2.0

Within the past 10 years, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. However, I still had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and operate the way I wanted it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Generatepress 2.0

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 really seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that good, or not supported for long. However, in this case, that was a mistake. The theme now 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 bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking precisely 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 edition of the subject, because it’s worth . Actually, Tom, in the event that you read this and are seeing 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 only one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

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

Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser support back to IE8.

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

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

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

Excellent active service from the programmer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the theme has been around long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is 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 can expect by the time I add everything to it. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was very 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 that is not the case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as significant. But the size is! Take a peek at some of the core 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

This 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 you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe could anticipate this to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to ensure they don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt right at home with this. Everything should be made this way.

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

Blog

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very minute rather than lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress 2.0

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a lot of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

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

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show 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 lets you perform all kinds of things concerning design. Think of it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice I changed the entire motif that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I invested a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together 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 motif. Each of the customizations were created using 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 to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with just a click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started with 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 motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as I don’t use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few 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 just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress 2.0

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under one hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best thing is, I finally have a billion more choices to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who wish to be able to personalize and control exactly how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the site that you build will have a fantastic base to make it load fast.

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

For Example, if you know you want to create a fashion blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and personalize things. And while 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 Which Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be convenient as you’ll have the ability to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you adequate possibilities, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much all about your website.

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

• Header — you can move your header around and alter its styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
• Sidebar design — you can use a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post layout — such as featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography area lets you control the font to get every single element on your website, including buttons:

And You also receive a detailed region to control the colour of each and every element on your website.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you understand the way the preferences come together, you will have complete control over how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it is about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

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

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

First, I put up an empty website utilizing a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing its functionality 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 is Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can do better.

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% quicker
• Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
• Had 9 asks, ~40% less

If You do that same test with different topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Generatepress 2.0

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a exceptional feature which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header on a per-page basis.
• Sections — this is kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create different”sections” on a page, each with their own layout and column settings.

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

That Way, you do not 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 Site

In The past, you needed to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the motif 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 those 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 a couple buttons to import a demo site.

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

With Most themes, each page and post 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 providing you a brand new Design meta name box for each and every post and page:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re able to create the proper baseline for your page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Generatepress 2.0

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

Additionally, It is 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 blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one minute. Generatepress 2.0

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.