Background Generatepress Learndash

Within the previous ten decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I had to do a great deal of customization to make it perform and operate how I wanted it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been blown away and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Generatepress Learndash

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have really seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency 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 circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really set up the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the features. I will be covering the premium edition of the theme, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees 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 biggest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of the customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

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

Additionally, it works great with all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these really are a great combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

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

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have great documentation on their site, the theme has been around long enough that everything I Googled during the setup process was found inside a few seconds in their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a great deal of what I could expect by the time that I add everything for this. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but that is not the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring that every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as important. However, the size is! Take a peek at a few of the core 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 performance! And I’ve Seen exactly the same during each the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we could expect that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built, I felt at home with this. Everything should be designed this way.

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

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no longer have to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make this possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Learndash

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these options are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. However, allow me to show you few 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 created by precisely the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here 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 Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also have it show past modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works great.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you perform all kinds of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those that are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the entire motif that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, 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

With the New GeneratePress theme I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a child motif. Each of the customizations were made using the awesome 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 new GeneratePress blog library. I’m happy to allow you to know that now you can put in my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress website with only a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a great blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, since I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a couple plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Learndash

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page weight 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my websites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP with no child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has restored 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 pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site looks.

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

Because Of that, people who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any type of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

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

For Example, if you realize you want to create a style blog, you may be happier choosing a niche theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and customize matters. And though the significant advantage 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 features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Design area, you can configure detailed settings for 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 design — you can use one or two sidebars
Blog post design — like featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

Likewise, The Typography place enables you to control the font for every single element on your website, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you realize how the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

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

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

Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you a sense, I ran a little test.

First, I set up a vacant site utilizing a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing its functionality 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 is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can perform.

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

Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
Had 9 asks, ~40% less

If You perform that same test with different topics, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Learndash

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a exceptional feature which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or design templates.
Page Header — allows you create a exceptional page header onto a per-page basis.
Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” on a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.

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

That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a feature that 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 no matter what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a new Website Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Every Bit Of Content

With Most topics, every page and post will use the same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom formats or templates — but you don’t have very much control beyond that.

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a new Design 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 (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your own page builder

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

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

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I feel you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous settings in 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, and that gives you use on infinite websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without beating — you just won’t get any more updates).

When You consider that the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a great price.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, I don’t believe GeneratePress is for everyone.

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

But If you are willing to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good decision.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Generatepress Learndash