Background Generatepress Photoshop Document
Within the previous ten years, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to do and operate the way I wanted it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Generatepress Photoshop Document
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.
I Actually installed the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the premium edition of the subject, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.
Features
Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you don’t need running. This is only one of the biggest reasons I adore GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.
Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.
Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover 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 popular 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 had success.
Translation ready.
Font awesome built in.
A lot of hooks and filters that make it great for developers.
Great active support from the programmer. On average, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their website, the theme has existed long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup process was found inside a few seconds in their own forum.
Going Deep Into GeneratePress
Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I could expect by the time that 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 layout was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Take a look at some of the center 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 developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen exactly the same throughout all of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the cornerwe can anticipate this to get smaller also.
The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to ensure they do not load on your website. Since 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 site:
Website
Colors
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no more have to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very minute rather than lose one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Photoshop Document
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On each Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. You can 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 elements.
The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these options are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. However, let me show you few 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 created by the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid thickness
Mobile grid thickness
Add custom classes
Add custom inline styles
Equal height columns
This is An example below:
You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Display Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That is 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 articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m 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 sorts of things concerning design. Think of it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.
Speed Tests
For those Of you that are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice that I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme which I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison below.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice now is, just get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
Together with the New GeneratePress motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child motif. Each of the customizations were created with the wonderful 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 can make a replica of woorkup to your new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now install my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress website with only a single click! It is known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog layout immediately.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, since I don’t use it for much. As 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 as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was 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 website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, as we just use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Photoshop Document
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!
I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my websites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP without any child themes, my 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 quicker.
And The best news isI finally have a thousand more choices to choose from than I did before.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who want to be able to personalize and control exactly 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 quickly.
Because Of that, people who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.
But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…
…you Need something that will instantly look perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you know you wish to produce a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.
While GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first 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 benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.
GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique
Here Are a few of the particular features that explain why GeneratePress is so common.
Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Performance, another area where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.
GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient because you will have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.
The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much everything about your website.
For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure detailed settings to yourown:
- Header — you can move your header around and change its own styling
- Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
- Sidebar design — you can use a Couple of sidebars
- Blog post design — such as featured picture size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — just like the number of widgets to include
Likewise, The Typography area lets you control the font for each and every element on your site, such as buttons:
And You also get a detailed region to control the colour of each and every element on your site.
All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you understand the way the preferences come together, you will have complete control over how your website appears.
Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times
Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and clean code. The whole motif 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 topics are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.
Put That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.
First, I set up an empty site using 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 asks
That is Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can do better.
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 greater
- 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 different topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Generatepress Photoshop Document
Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach
Past Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other useful features like:
- Elements — a unique feature which allows you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
- Page Header — lets you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
- Sections — that is sort of like lightweight page building. It lets you create different”sections” onto a page, each with their own design and column settings.
To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to activate.
That Way, you do not need to slow down your site for a quality that you’ll never use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Site
In The last, you needed to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.
Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of the 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 a couple buttons to import a presentation site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content
With Most themes, each 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 beyond that.
GeneratePress Changes that by giving 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 (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose how many footer widgets to utilize
- Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, article featured image, article title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” for your page builder
Where These controls would be the most useful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the proper baseline for your page builder design, making it easy to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Photoshop Document
GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress theme can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.
That said, If you are serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).
When You believe the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic price.
Summary
As I mentioned, I don’t believe GeneratePress is for everyone.
If You want a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your needs for your niche from day one.
But If you are ready to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will locate. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.
If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one second. Generatepress Photoshop Document
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.