Intro Generatepress Full Width Page

Over the past ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to make it do and operate the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I was blown away and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Full Width Page

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer 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 qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

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

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

Additionally, it 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’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

Tons of filters and hooks which make it good for developers.

Great active support from the programmer. Normally, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the theme has been around long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup process was found inside a few seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box without any 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 for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was quite 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 situation. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files is not as important. But the dimensions is! Take a peek 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 programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same throughout all the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving round the cornerwe can anticipate that to secure smaller too.

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

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

Website

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no longer need to use a young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very minute rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Full Width Page

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that 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 complete width page, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer options is really 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 daily. However, allow me to show you few which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by precisely the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Add custom courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show past modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I am 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 allows you to do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For those Of those who are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice I changed the entire motif that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child motif. Each of the customizations were created with the awesome 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 make a replica of woorkup for the new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup motif in your own GeneratePress site with just a click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal website, 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 whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Full Width Page

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can see 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 locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP without any child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news isI now have a thousand more choices to pick 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 customize and control exactly how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress do 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 fast.

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Want something that will immediately appear perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you know you wish to create a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a market theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

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

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely will need to go in and personalize matters. And though the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

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

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

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

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

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

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

Likewise, That the Typography area lets you control the font to get each and every element on your site, such as buttons:

And You also get a thorough region to control the colour of every single element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you realize the way the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, which will be about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Place That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you a sense, I conducted a small test.

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

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

That is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the same test site 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% less

If You do the exact same test with other topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Full Width Page

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other useful features like:

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

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could pick and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not have to slow your site down 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 construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them right from your WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this Website 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 post and page will use the same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — but you don’t have very much control past 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 site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to create the proper baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Full Width Page

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

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

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite affordable. It costs just $39.95, which gives you use on infinite 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, of course, continue using GeneratePress following the first year without renewing — you won’t get any more updates).

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

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I don’t believe 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 market from day one.

However, If you’re ready to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using 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 website load in under one second. Generatepress Full Width Page