Background Generatepress Mobile Menu

Within the previous 10 years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. But I had to do a lot of customization to make it do and operate the way I wanted it to. A few 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 discovered in 10 years. I was blown away and am now moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Generatepress Mobile Menu

To Get started, 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 many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there isn’t that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

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

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better 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 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 are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

Excellent active support from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the theme has been around long enough that everything I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a couple of seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I always test a new theme right from the box without any customizations to just see how fast the base is. This tells me a great deal 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 loading time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a lot of big files, but this is not the case. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as significant. However, the size is! Take a peek at some 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

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during each of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe can anticipate that to get smaller too.

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

If You are curious, I am using the next add-ons on this site:

Website

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no more need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact minute rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Mobile Menu

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a great deal of options. You can change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. But let me show you couple which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show last modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running 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 those Of those that are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the whole motif that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid motif. All the customizations were made with the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could create a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m pleased to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress website with only a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, since 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% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins that weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Mobile Menu

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under an hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page weight 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI finally have a billion more choices to pick 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 looks.

You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the website that you build will have a fantastic base to make it load quickly.

Since Of that, people who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

For Example, if you realize you wish to produce a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a market theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely will need to go in and personalize things. 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 themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular features that explain why GeneratePress is so popular.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly all about your site.

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

• Header — you can move your header around and alter its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post design — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

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

And You also receive a detailed area to control the color of each and every element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you realize how the preferences come together, you will have complete control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire 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 a few poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Put That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I conducted a little test.

First, I put up a vacant site using a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance with Pingdom, it

• Had a performance tier 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 activated GeneratePress on exactly the same test site without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

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

If You perform the exact same test with other topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Generatepress Mobile Menu

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a unique feature which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
• Page Header — lets you create a exceptional 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 Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can select and choose what characteristics you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not need to slow down your site for a quality which you’ll never use.

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

In The past, you needed to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demo sites.

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 Each Piece Of Content

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

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

Where These controls are the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain components, you are able to create the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Mobile Menu

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as numerous settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Summary

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

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

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

Additionally, It’s one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes you will locate. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your website load in under one second. Generatepress Mobile Menu

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.