Intro Generatepress Genesis

Over the past 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. But I had to perform a lot of customization to make it do and work how I wanted it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I had been blown away and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I will enter precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Generatepress Genesis

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there is not that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually 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 developer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the subject, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using the WordPress Customizer. I have not 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 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 individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

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

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a couple of seconds in their forum.

Going Deep 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 could expect by the time that 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 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 that isn’t the situation. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. However, the size 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 are as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe could expect this to secure smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would 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 that has a script manager built, I felt at home for this. Everything should be made this way.

If You are curious, I am using the following add-ons on this website:

Website

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no more have to use a Child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this very minute and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Genesis

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page involving the default to a full width page, in addition to disable components.

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are enabled from the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. But allow me to show you couple which actually 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 precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also grab his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That is 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 terrific.

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. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of you who are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the entire theme that powers woorkup.com. It only 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 pretty fast, but I invested a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice now is, simply 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 keep in mind, I do not have a child theme. All the customizations were created using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he can make a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with just a single click! It’s called the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal site, as I do not 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 look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal website, as we just use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Genesis

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 as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!

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

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that wish to be able to customize and control exactly 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 quickly.

Since Of that, people who assemble WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Need something which will immediately look perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you know you want to create a style blog, you may be happier choosing a market theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you initially install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely will need to go in and customize things. And while the substantial advantage 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 popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Performance, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be convenient because you’ll be able to see all of the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, 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 can configure detailed settings for your:

• Header — you can move your header round and alter its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar design — you can utilize one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

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

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you understand how the preferences come together, you’ll have full control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All of its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, which will be about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Put That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you a sense, 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 grade 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 perform.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test site without changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

• Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
• Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
• Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
• Had 9 requests, ~40% fewer

If You perform that same test with different themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Genesis

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a exceptional feature that lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — lets you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
• Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page building. It lets you create different”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column preferences.

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

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

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

In The last, you had to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of 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 which lets 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 Detailed Control Over Each Bit Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Layout meta name box for each and every page and post:

You Can use this meta box to:

• Change how many sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose how many footer widgets to utilize
• Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Genesis

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that gives you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress after the initial year without renewing — you just won’t get any more updates).

When You believe that the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic price.

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.