Background Generatepress Blog Full Width

Within the past ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was pretty excellent. But I had to perform a great deal of customization to make it perform and work how I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I was dismissed and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Blog Full Width

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that great, or not supported for long. However, in this case, that was a mistake. The theme currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Really installed the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly 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 some of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium version of the subject, because it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of this customizer previously, but Tom does it correctly.

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

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

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built-in.

A lot of hooks and filters that make it great for programmers.

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

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the theme has existed long enough that everything I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a couple of seconds from their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how fast 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 load time. I was very 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 can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as important. But the size is! Have a peek 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 performance! And I’ve Seen exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we can expect this to get smaller too.

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

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

Website

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no more need to use a young child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very minute and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Blog Full Width

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every 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 between the default option to a full width page, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can’t 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 your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be created by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured posts 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 last modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I am 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 version of GeneratePress lets you do all sorts of things concerning design. Think of it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in reality utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is operating 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 didn’t even notice I changed the whole theme that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was pretty quickly, but I invested a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I have 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 theme I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a child motif. All the customizations were created with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could make a replica of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I’m pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress site with only a single click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, since I do not use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the entire look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even 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’s a fairly basic minimal site, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Blog Full Width

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 whole page burden 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my sites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI now have a billion more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who wish to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site looks.

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

Because Of that, people who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any kind of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

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

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

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

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and personalize matters. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific features that explain why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Performance, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

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

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you adequate options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you can configure comprehensive settings to yourown:

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

Likewise, The Typography area enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your website, including buttons:

And You also get a detailed area to control the color of each and every element on your site.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you realize the way the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All of its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, which is 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 some poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Place That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you a sense, I conducted a little test.

First, I put up a vacant website utilizing 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 asks

That’s Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:

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 requests, ~40% less

If You perform the exact same test with different topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Generatepress Blog Full Width

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

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

That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a quality which you’re never going to use.

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

In The past, you needed to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from your 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 Give You Detailed Control Over Each Piece Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a 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 (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to use
Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” to your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you are able to produce the correct baseline for your page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Blog Full Width

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Conclusion

As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.

If You desire a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by buying a theme that satisfies your requirements for your niche from day one.

However, If you’re ready to spend time altering settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to find a starter website that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will locate. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no problem making your site load in under one second. Generatepress Blog Full Width