Introduction Generatepress Background Slider

Over the previous 10 decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. However, I had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and work how I wanted it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I was blown away and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Generatepress Background Slider

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something 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 imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the features. I will 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 seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using all 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. Fantastic browser support back to IE8.

It also works great with the popular 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 people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

Tons of hooks and filters that make it good for programmers.

Great active support from the developer. 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 process was found within a couple of seconds from their forum.

Diving 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 inventory GeneratePress WordPress theme 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 produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as significant. However, the size is! Take a look at some 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

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during each the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe 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 anything you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be made this way.

If You are interested, I am using the following add-ons on this site:

Blog

Shades

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 motif . This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very minute and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Background Slider

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are enabled 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 can be made by the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to add responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, 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 in terms of design. Think of it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But 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 I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was pretty fast, but I invested a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all my customizations. My advice today is, simply 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 remember, I do not have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were made with the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he can create a replica of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to let you know that now you can install my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress website with just a single click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

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

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the whole look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see 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 organization website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal website, as we just use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Background Slider

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 since you can see 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’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best thing is, I finally have a thousand more options to choose from than I did earlier.

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 performance, the website that you build will have a great foundation to make it load quickly.

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

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

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

For Example, if you know you wish to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

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

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely 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 .

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are some of the specific characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Performance, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient because you’ll have the ability to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure detailed settings for yourown:

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

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

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you realize the way the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All of its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole theme 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 some badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

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

Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.

First, I put up a vacant website utilizing a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing 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 in any way! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on 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 asks, ~40% fewer

If You perform that same test with different topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Generatepress Background Slider

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can pick and choose what features you would like to activate.

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

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

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

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that 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 presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Give You Detailed Control Over Every Piece Of Content

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

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re able to create the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Background Slider

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. 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 reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which gives you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates following the initial year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress after the initial year without renewing — you won’t get any more upgrades ).

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

Conclusion

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

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

However, If you are willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is one of those 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 good decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one second. Generatepress Background Slider