Background Generatepress Install

Within the previous ten years, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. However, I had to do a lot of customization to allow it to do and work the way I wanted it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I was dismissed and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Generatepress Install

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have actually seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really set up 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 exactly 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 qualities. I will be covering the premium edition of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of the 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.

Additionally, it works great with all 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 people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built in.

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

Excellent active service from the programmer. On average, 3 updates per month.

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

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for 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 that I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress motif 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 layout was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring that every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Take a look at some 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 developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe can anticipate this 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 website. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be made this way.

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

Blog

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no longer have to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very minute and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Install

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can quickly swap a page involving the default option to a complete width page, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. However, let me show you couple which really 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 the same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Insert Customized courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? 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 posts, recent posts, etc.. I’m 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 lets you perform all kinds of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of those who are regular readers, you probably did not even notice I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress theme I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could create a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with just a single click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal site, as I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the whole look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a couple 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 was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as we simply use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Install

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all 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 revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news is, I finally have a billion more options to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to customize and control precisely how their site appears.

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

Since Of that, those who assemble 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 website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

…you Want something which will instantly look perfect from the box.

For Example, if you realize you want to create a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a market theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

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

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and customize things. And while the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

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

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you can configure comprehensive settings to your:

Header — you can move your header around and change its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar design — you can use one or two sidebars
Blog post layout — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography area enables you to control the font for every single element on your site, including buttons:

And You also get a thorough area to control the colour of each and every element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you realize how the settings come together, you will have full control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Place That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.

First, I put up a vacant site using a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing 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 requests

That is Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the exact same test website without altering anything else. Here’s 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 do the exact same test with different themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Install

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a unique feature which allows you create custom 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” on a page, each with their own design and column settings.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could select and choose what characteristics you want to trigger.

That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a feature which 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, however, the developer added a new Website Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this Website 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 topics, every post and page will use the same configurations for the most part. You might 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 box for every single page and post:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Install

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs just $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to continue receiving support and updates following the initial year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You consider the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic value.

Wrap-up

As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everyone.

If You desire a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by buying a theme that satisfies your needs for your market out of day one.

But If you’re ready to spend time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you may even be able to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will locate. Therefore, 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, you should have no problem making your site load in under one minute. Generatepress Install