Intro Generatepress Post Format

Over the previous ten years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was fairly good. However, I had to perform a lot of customization to make it do and work the way I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter precisely 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 Post Format

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually set up 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 developer 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 a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you ever 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 only one of the biggest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser support 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 terrific combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

Great active service from the programmer. On average, 3 updates per month.

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

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a brand 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 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 quite impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to generate a lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files is not as important. But the size is! Take a peek at a few 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

This is a developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same throughout all the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe could expect this to secure smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your website. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home for this. Everything should be made this way.

If You’re interested, I’m using the next add-ons on this website:

Blog

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics 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 files. I will literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact moment and not lose a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Post Format

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a great deal of options. 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, as well as disable components.

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these options are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But allow me to show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is the 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 easy way to add responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

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

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things in terms of design. Think of it like a webpage builder without the 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 look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you who are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice that I changed the whole motif that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme which I had spent annually customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a kid theme. All the customizations were created using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he can make a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with only a click! It is called 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 had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as I do not 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 look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple 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 motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal website, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Post Format

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news is, I finally have a billion more options to choose from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users that wish to have the ability to personalize and control precisely how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress perform pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the website that you build will have a great foundation to make it load fast.

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

For Example, if you realize you wish to create a fashion blog, you might be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and personalize things. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you may configure comprehensive settings to yourown:

• Header — you can move your header round and change its styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can use one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

Likewise, That the Typography place enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your site, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you realize the way the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All of its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as little as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you a sense, I ran a small test.

First, I put up an empty site using 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 requests

That is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without altering anything else. Here’s 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 requests, ~40% less

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

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a exceptional feature that allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout 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 different”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column preferences.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not need to slow your site down for a quality that you’re never going to use.

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

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

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which 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 presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content

With Most topics, each page and post will use the very same settings for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — but you do not have very much control past that.

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Design meta box for each and every post and page:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Post Format

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as numerous settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

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

When You consider that the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic price.

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

However, If you’re willing to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

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

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

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.