Background Generatepress Shadow Text

Over the past ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. However, I had to perform a lot of customization to allow it to perform and operate the way I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been dismissed and am now moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Shadow Text

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’ve really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that good, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The theme currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Really installed the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the superior 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 some of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not need running. This is one of the biggest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan 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 service back to IE8.

It also works great with the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

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

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

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

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

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

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but that isn’t the situation. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files is not as important. But the dimensions is! Have 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

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen the same throughout each the premium add-ons. They are 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 arriving round the cornerwe could expect that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to guarantee they don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built-in, I felt at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.

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

Blog

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no more need to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very moment and not lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Shadow Text

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But let me show you couple which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be created by precisely the same developer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show past modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I am in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress theme I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a child theme. Each of the customizations were made with the wonderful 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 could create a replica of woorkup to your new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress site with just 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 within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum website, as I do not use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins which 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 was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal site, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Shadow Text

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my websites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users that want to be able to customize and control exactly how their site appears.

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

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

…you Want something which will instantly look perfect from the box.

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

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, thanks to 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 will most likely need to go in and customize matters. And while the substantial 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 a few of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Lots 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, and this can be convenient because you will have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much all about your site.

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

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

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

And You also get a detailed area to control the color of every single element on your site.

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail may be a little overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you understand the way the preferences come together, you will have full control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The entire 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 some poorly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

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

Put That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a little 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 tier 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 perform.

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

• Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
• Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
• 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 topics in life. Generatepress Shadow Text

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could select and choose what characteristics you would like to activate.

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 Site

In The last, you needed to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any one of those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a demo site.

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

With Most themes, each post and page will use the very same settings for the most part. You may 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 name box for each and every page and post:

You Can utilize 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 elements, like your header, navigation menu, article featured image, article title, or footer
• Create a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Shadow Text

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress theme can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I feel you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you nearly as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that gives you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you won’t receive any more updates).

When You believe that the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.

Conclusion

As I said, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everybody.

If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your requirements for your market 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 have the ability to find a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. Therefore, if you’re looking for 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 site load in under one second. Generatepress Shadow Text

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.