Intro Generatepress Font Awesome
Within the past 10 years, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I still had to perform a lot of customization to make it do and operate the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I was dismissed and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I will enter precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Generatepress Font Awesome
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 actually seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there isn’t that good, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. 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 developer 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 some of the features. I will be covering the superior edition of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.
Features
Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you don’t need running. This is one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.
Schema built-in, for better outcomes 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 all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser service 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 have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built in.
A lot of filters and hooks that make it great for programmers.
Great active support from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the theme has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds in their own forum.
Going Deep Into GeneratePress
Now it is Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time I add everything for this. 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 lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as significant. But the dimensions 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
This is a programmer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same during all the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we could anticipate that to secure smaller also.
The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your website. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be designed this way.
If You are interested, I’m using the next add-ons on this website:
Website
Shades
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no more need to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact moment and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make this possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Font Awesome
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On every Page/post that you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can easily swap a page between the default to a complete width page, in addition to disable components.
The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted by the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, 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 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 thickness
Tablet grid thickness
Mobile grid thickness
Insert Customized classes
Add custom inline designs
Equal height columns
This is An example below:
You May Want to Also grab his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show past modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
Sections Add-on
The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in fact using 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 site.
Speed Tests
For those Of you who are regular readers, you probably did not even notice I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme which I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison under.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish 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 achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid theme. All the customizations were made using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).
Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could make a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress site with only a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started with a fantastic blog design immediately.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved within my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to replicate the whole look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins which weren’t needed due to GP.
forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Font Awesome
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed 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 weight 2x!
I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites for this (which comprises several EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.
And The best news isI finally have a billion more choices to pick from than I did earlier.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who wish to have the ability to personalize and control precisely 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 fantastic base to make it load quickly.
Since Of that, those who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.
But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…
…you Want something which will immediately appear perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you know you wish to produce a style blog, you may be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.
While GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you first install it.
So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely will need to go in and customize matters. And while the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .
GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique
Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.
Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Beyond Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.
GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you will have the ability to see all of the changes that you create in real time.
The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly everything about your site.
For Example, if you go into the Design region, you may configure detailed settings to yourown:
- Header — you can move your header round and change its own styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
- Sidebar layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
- Blog post design — such as featured image size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include
Likewise, That the Typography area lets you control the font for every single element on your website, such as buttons:
And You also receive a detailed area to control the color of every single element on your website.
All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you realize how the settings come together, you’ll have complete control over how your site appears.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Around All of its features, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, which is about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.
Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you a sense, I conducted a small test.
First, I put up an empty website using a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing 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 asks
That’s Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:
- Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
- Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
- Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
- Had 9 asks, ~40% fewer
If You perform the exact same test with different themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Generatepress Font Awesome
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 such as:
- Elements — a exceptional feature that allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
- Page Header — lets you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
- Sections — this is kind of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column preferences.
To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to activate.
That Way, you don’t need to slow your site down for a quality that you’ll never use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Site
In The last, you needed to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which left the motif difficult for casual users to set up.
Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of those 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 a couple buttons to import a demo site.
Page-Level Settings Provide You Detailed Control Over Each Piece Of Content
With Most topics, every page and post will use the very same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — however you do not have very much control past that.
GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a brand new Design meta name box for every single post and page:
You Can utilize this meta box to:
- Change the number of sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose the number of footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, post title, or footer
- Create a special”container” to your own page builder
Where These controls are the most useful is if you are using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to create the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Font Awesome
GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.
That said, If you’re serious about using GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many configurations from 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 provides you use on unlimited websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates following the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).
When You consider the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a great value.
Conclusion
As I mentioned, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.
If You want a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your requirements for your market from day one.
But If you’re willing to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able 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. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good choice.
If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one minute. Generatepress Font Awesome
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.