Intro Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden

Over the past 10 years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was fairly excellent. However, I had to perform a great deal of customization to make it perform and operate the way I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the best WordPress theme I have discovered in a decade . I had been dismissed and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Really set up the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the qualities. I will be covering the superior edition of the theme, because it’s worth . Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of this customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser service back to IE8.

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

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built in.

Tons of filters and hooks that make it good for programmers.

Great active support from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup process was found inside a few seconds from their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box without any customizations to just see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time 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 whole lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files is not as significant. However, the size is! Have a peek 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

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They’re 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 anticipate that to secure smaller too.

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

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

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. You can change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

You Can easily swap a page between the default option to a complete width page, as well as disable elements.

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, lots of these choices are permitted from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. However, allow me to show you couple 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 allows you a super easy way to add responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I am 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 in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was pretty quickly, but I invested a lot of time scrutinizing 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

With the New GeneratePress theme I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t 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’ve running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could make a copy of woorkup for the new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to allow you to know that now you can install my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with only a single click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

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 minimal site, since I don’t use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites to it (which comprises several EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news isI now have a billion more options to pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who wish to be able to customize and control exactly how their site looks.

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

Because Of that, people who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

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

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

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And though 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 a few of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Utilizes 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 decent possibilities, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Layout area, you can configure comprehensive settings to yourown:

Header — you can move your header around and change its styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar design — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
Blog post design — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

Likewise, That the Typography place lets you control the font for every single element on your site, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But as soon as you realize how the preferences come together, you will have full control on how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole theme 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 topics are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded topics 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.

Put That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I ran a small test.

First, I put up an empty website utilizing a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its performance with Pingdom, it:

Had a performance tier of 77
Loaded in 1.05 moments
Had a page size of 243.9 kB
Had 15 asks

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

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

Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points better
Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
Had 9 requests, ~40% less

If You perform that same test with other themes, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden

Other Useful 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 such as:

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you can pick and choose exactly which features you want to trigger.

That Way, you do not have 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 past, you needed to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which left the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a new 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 a couple buttons to import a presentation site.

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

With Most themes, each page and post will use the very same settings 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 providing you a new Layout meta box for each and every post and page:

You Can use this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
Produce a special”container” to 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 are in a position to create the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs just $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 upgrades following the initial year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress after the initial year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more updates).

When You believe the typical 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 want a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your requirements for your niche out of day one.

However, If you are ready to spend time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style 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 website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is among 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 base is a good choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Generatepress Single Post Featured Image Hidden