Intro Generatepress Footer Shadow

Over the previous ten years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, which was fairly good. However, I still had to perform 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 give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the finest WordPress theme I have discovered in a decade . I was dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Footer Shadow

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’ve actually seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that good, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, 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 something right here.

I Really installed the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the premium edition of the theme, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, if you read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this customizer previously, but Tom does it correctly.

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

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

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

A lot of filters and hooks which make it good for programmers.

Great active service from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time that I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as important. However, the dimensions is! Take a peek at a few of the center 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

That is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the corner, we could anticipate this to secure smaller also.

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

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

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a young child motif . This makes my life so much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact moment and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Footer Shadow

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each 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 involving the default to a complete width page, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these choices are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. But allow me to show you few which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be made by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Insert custom classes

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also have it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I am 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 allows you to perform all sorts of things in terms of design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in reality utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For those Of those that are regular readers, you probably didn’t 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 motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of 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 do not have a child motif. Each of the customizations were created using 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 for the new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to allow you to know that now you can put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with only a single click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, since I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a couple plugins that 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 was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Footer Shadow

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my sites for this (which includes several EDD e-commerce sites). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child topics, my life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI finally have a billion more choices to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

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

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

Because 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 kind of site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit 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 picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you initially install it.

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

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are some of the specific characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient as you will have the ability to see all the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent possibilities, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability 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 utilize one or two sidebars
Blog post design — such as featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include

Similarly, The Typography area lets you control the font for each and every element on your site, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But once you understand how the settings come together, you’ll have full control on how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its attributes, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole 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 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 collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you a sense, I ran a little test.

First, I put up an empty site using a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its performance with Pingdom, it

Had a performance grade of 77
Loaded in 1.05 seconds
Had a page size of 243.9 kB
Had 15 asks

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

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test website without changing anything else. Here is 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% fewer

If You perform the exact same test with other themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Generatepress Footer Shadow

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Past Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other useful features such as:

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

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

That Way, you do not have to slow down your site for a quality which you’ll never use.

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

In The last, you had to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among 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 presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content

With Most topics, each page and post will use the same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — but you do not 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 use this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, article 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 elements, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Footer Shadow

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about using GeneratePress, I feel you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, which gives you use on infinite websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress after the first year without beating — you just won’t get any more updates).

When You believe the normal premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great price.

Wrap-up

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

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

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

Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your site load in under one second. Generatepress Footer Shadow