Intro Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

Over the past 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to make it perform and work how I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the best WordPress theme I have discovered in a decade . I was dismissed and am now moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the qualities. I will be covering the premium version of the subject, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of this customizer in the past, 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 favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these really are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

Tons of filters and hooks which make it great for programmers.

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their site, the theme has been around long enough that what I wholeheartedly during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I always test a new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how fast the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I could expect by the time 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 concerned 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 actually worked hard on making sure that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Have a look at some of the core 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 developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen exactly the same during each the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we can anticipate this to get smaller too.

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

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

Blog

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a young child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very minute and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a great deal of options. 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, a lot of these choices are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, allow me to show you couple which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”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 Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to perform all kinds of things in terms of design. Think of it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For those Of you who are regular readers, you probably did not 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 that I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I invested a great deal of time customizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot 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 keep in mind, I do not have a kid motif. All the customizations were created with 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 make a replica of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to allow you to know that you can now install my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress website with just a single click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started with a fantastic blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal website, as I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a few plugins which weren’t needed because of 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’s a fairly basic minimum site, as we just use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of 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 websites for this (which includes several EDD e-commerce websites ). After I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news is, I finally have a thousand more options to pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

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

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

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 website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

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

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will almost certainly need to go in and personalize things. And while the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

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

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you can configure detailed settings to your:

• Header — you can move your header round and change its styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like how many widgets to add

Similarly, The Typography place lets you control the font to get every single element on your site, including buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you understand the way the settings come together, you’ll have complete control over how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole motif 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 some poorly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I set up a vacant website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (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 requests

That is Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.

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

• 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 requests, ~40% less

If You do that same test with other themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you want to activate.

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

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

In The last, you needed to construct GeneratePress websites 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 attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Yes this Website still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a few buttons to import a presentation site.

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

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

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

You Can use 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 utilize
• Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
• Create a special”container” to your own page builder

Where These controls would be the most helpful 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 design, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Wrap-up

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

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

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

Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will find. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your website load in under one second. Generatepress How To Do A Full Bleed Hero Image

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.