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Over the past ten decades, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. But I still had to do a great deal of customization to make it do and work how 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 best WordPress theme I’ve found in 10 years. I was blown away and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I will go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Sidebar Fixed Navigation

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

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

I Really installed the free version of the theme 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 get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the theme, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, if you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of the customizer previously, but Tom does it correctly.

Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser support 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 really are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

A lot of hooks and filters that make it great for programmers.

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their site, the subject has been around long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right from the box without any 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 inventory GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load 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 that isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents is not as significant. However, 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’ve Seen exactly the same during each of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe can anticipate that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to guarantee they do not load on your website. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built-in, I felt right at home with this. Everything should be designed 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 features of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this very minute rather than lose a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Sidebar Fixed Navigation

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post that you have a lot of options. You can change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these options are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. But allow me to show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest 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 add responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin also. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get 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 sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free 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 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 motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here’s 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 have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice today is, just 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 do not have a child motif. All the customizations were created 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 can create a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to let you know that you can now install my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress site with only a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started with a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, since I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under one 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

I also Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum website, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Sidebar Fixed Navigation

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I needed 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 total page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my websites for this (which includes several EDD e-commerce websites ). After I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

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

You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on functionality, the site 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 will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

…you Need something which will immediately look perfect out of the box.

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

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

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and personalize matters. And while the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly 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 explain why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient as you will have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much everything about your website.

For Example, if you go into the Design area, you can 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, such as sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
• Blog post design — like featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

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

And You also get a detailed region to control the colour of every single element on your website.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This amount of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are 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 Quick Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, and it is about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you a sense, I ran a little test.

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

• Had a performance grade of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 moments
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

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

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

• 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 requests, ~40% less

If You perform the exact same test with different topics, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Sidebar Fixed Navigation

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

• Elements — a unique feature that lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
• Sections — that is sort of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own layout and column settings.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could pick and choose exactly which characteristics you want to trigger.

That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a quality which 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 no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

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

You Can import them directly from the 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 Detailed Control Over Each Bit Of Content

With Most themes, every page and post will use the very same settings for the most part. You may have some custom formats or templates — however you do not have very much control past that.

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to create the proper baseline for your page builder design, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Sidebar Fixed Navigation

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress theme is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase 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 will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on infinite sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates following the first year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress following the first year without renewing — you won’t get any more updates).

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

Conclusion

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

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

However, If you are willing to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a good choice.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no problem making your site load in under one second. Generatepress Sidebar Fixed Navigation

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.