Introduction Generatepress Latest Version
Within the past 10 decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. But I had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to do and operate how I wanted it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give 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 moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Generatepress Latest Version
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The theme currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing some thing 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the premium version of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you 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 want running. This is one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.
Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.
Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.
Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser service 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 are a great combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built-in.
A lot of filters and hooks that make it good for programmers.
Excellent active service from the programmer. On average, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have great documentation on their site, the theme has existed long enough that what I wholeheartedly during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their forum.
Diving Into GeneratePress
Now it’s Time for 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 I add everything to it. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was very impressed.
One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but that is not the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Have 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
This is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same during all of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we can expect that to get smaller too.
The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. As the co-developer of this 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 curious, I’m using the next add-ons on this site:
Website
Colors
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact moment rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Latest Version
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On each Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can quickly swap a page involving the default to a complete width page, in addition to disable components.
The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are enabled by the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. 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 can be made by the same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid width
Insert Customized courses
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 articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s 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 articles, etc.. I’m 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 version of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which 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 all those Of those that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice I changed the entire 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’s a comparison below.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, but I invested a lot of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
Together with the New GeneratePress theme I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a child theme. All the customizations were created using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).
Like the WordPress theme I’ve 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’m happy to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress site with only a click! It is known as the Marketer theme. Get started using 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’s a fairly basic minimal website, since I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to duplicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of 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’s a pretty basic minimum site, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Latest Version
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under one hour. And since 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 finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.
And The best thing is, I finally have a billion more choices to pick from than I did before.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who wish to have the ability 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 site that you build will have a fantastic foundation to make it load quickly.
Since Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of site.
However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…
…you Want something that will instantly appear perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you know you wish to produce a style blog, you may be happier choosing a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.
While GeneratePress is becoming a lot easier to use, as a result of 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 most likely will need to go in and customize things. And while the significant advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.
GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique
Here Are some of the specific features that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.
Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Performance, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.
GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient because you will be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.
The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize nearly all about your website.
For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you can configure comprehensive settings to yourown:
- Header — you can move your header round and change its own styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
- Sidebar layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
- Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include
Similarly, That the Typography area enables you to control the font for each and every element on your website, including buttons:
And You also get a detailed area to control the colour of every single element on your website.
All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But as soon as you realize how the settings come together, you’ll have full control over how your website looks.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Across All its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and clean code. The whole theme 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 some poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the leave obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.
Place That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.
First, I set up an empty site utilizing a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing 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 activated GeneratePress on the exact same test website without changing anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:
- 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 do that same test with other themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Latest Version
Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach
Beyond Giving you more design controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other helpful features like:
- Elements — a exceptional feature which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
- Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header on a per-page basis.
- Sections — that is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” on a page, each with their own design and column settings.
To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could pick and choose what features you would like to activate.
That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a quality which you’re never going to use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Website
In The last, you needed to construct GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to set up.
Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .
You Can import them right from your WordPress dashboard.
Yes this Website still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a couple buttons to import a demo site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Every Piece Of Content
With Most topics, each page and post will use the same settings for the most part. You might have some custom formats or templates — however you don’t have very much control past that.
GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a brand new Layout meta name box for every single page and post:
You Can use 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 the number of footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” to your own page builder
Where These controls would be the most useful is if you are using a WordPress site builder.
By Disabling certain elements, you are in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder design, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Latest Version
GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.
Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you nearly as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium is also still quite reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates following the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without renewing — you won’t get any more upgrades ).
When You consider the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic value.
Conclusion
As I said, I do not think GeneratePress is for everybody.
If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your requirements for your niche out of day one.
However, If you’re ready to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter site that fulfills your needs to save a little time.
Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will find. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.
If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no problem making your website load in under one second. Generatepress Latest Version
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.