Background Generatepress Documentation

Within the past ten years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. However, I had to perform a great deal of customization to make it do 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 finest WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I was dismissed and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Generatepress Documentation

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 many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really installed the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased 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’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of the 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.

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

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

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

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup process was found within a couple of seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I always test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I can expect by the time that 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 worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a lot of big files, but that is not the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as significant. But the size is! Take a look at a few 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

That is a developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen exactly the same during each 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 included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we can expect this to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built, I felt right at home for this. Everything ought to be made this way.

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

Blog

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a Child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Documentation

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. However, allow me to 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 made by the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to add responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Show 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 display posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, 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 edition of GeneratePress lets you do all sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of you who are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the whole theme that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal 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 theme I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid 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 could create a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to let you know that you can now install my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress site with just a single click! It’s called the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal site, as I do not use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins that weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Documentation

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 faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI now have a thousand more choices to choose from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who wish to be able to customize and control precisely how their site appears.

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the website that you build will have a great foundation to make it load fast.

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

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

For Example, if you know you wish to create a fashion blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

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

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

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be 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 possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may 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 one or two sidebars
Blog post layout — such as featured image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography area enables you to control the font to get every single element on your website, such as buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you understand the way the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, which is about as small as you’ll ever 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 does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? 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 testing its functionality with Pingdom, it:

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

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

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

Had a performance tier 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% less

If You do the exact same test with different themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Generatepress Documentation

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

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

That Way, you do not have to slow your site down for a feature that you’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you needed to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of the 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 Provide You Detailed Control Over Every Bit Of Content

With Most themes, each page and post will use the same settings for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — however you don’t 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 use 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, post featured image, post title, or footer
Produce a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Documentation

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite affordable. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more updates).

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

Summary

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

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

But If you are ready to spend time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.

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