Intro Generatepress Post Author Comment

Within the past ten years, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, which was fairly excellent. But I had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and operate how 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’ve discovered in 10 years. I had been blown away and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will 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 heavier multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Post Author Comment

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore 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 case, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you don’t want running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this customizer previously, but Tom does it correctly.

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 popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these really are a great combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

A lot of hooks and filters which make it great for developers.

Excellent active service from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the theme has existed long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup process was found inside a few seconds from their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time that I add everything to it. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as important. However, the dimensions is! Have a look at some of the core 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 functionality! And I’ve Seen the same throughout all of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the corner, we can expect that to secure smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

If You are curious, I am using the following add-ons on this website:

Blog

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very moment rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Post Author Comment

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer options 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, allow me to 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 created by the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? 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 past modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I am 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 concerning design. Consider it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you who are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the entire motif that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I invested a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not 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 running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could make a copy of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to let you know that you can now install my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress site with only a single click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. 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 site, since I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins which weren’t needed because of 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 is a pretty basic minimum site, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Post Author Comment

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under one 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’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my websites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news is, I finally have a thousand more choices to pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who want to be able to customize and control precisely how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And because 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 build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally 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 that will immediately look perfect out of the box.

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

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems 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, some users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are some of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

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

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure comprehensive settings for your:

• Header — you can move your header around and alter its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
• Blog post design — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you understand the way the settings come together, you’ll have complete control on how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, which is about as little as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics 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 render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Put That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a small test.

First, I set up an empty site utilizing a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality with Pingdom, it

• Had a performance tier of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 seconds
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

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

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test website without altering anything else. Here is 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% less

If You do the exact same test with different topics, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Post Author Comment

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a exceptional feature which allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or design templates.
• Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header onto a per-page basis.
• Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create different”sections” onto a page, each with their own design and column settings.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you can pick and choose what features you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not need 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 Website

In The last, you needed to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from your 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 Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content

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

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

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 use
• Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured image, article title, or footer
• Create a special”container” for your own page builder

Where These controls are the most useful is if you are using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain elements, you are in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Post Author Comment

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress motif is available for free at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you are serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on infinite sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the initial year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You believe the typical premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a fantastic value.

Conclusion

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

If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your needs for your niche from day one.

However, If you’re ready to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress themes you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great choice.

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

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.