Intro Generatepress Theme Library

Over the previous ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was fairly good. But I still had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and work the way I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I was blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Theme Library

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have 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, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that good, or not supported for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Really set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer 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 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, in the event that you ever read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and quick. 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 fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of the customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

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

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

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

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

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has existed long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a couple of seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base 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 motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a lot of big files, but this is not the case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files isn’t as significant. But the dimensions is! Take 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

That is a programmer that cares about performance! And I’ve Seen the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we could expect that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your site. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.

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

Website

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no longer have to use a young child motif . This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very minute rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Theme Library

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

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

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Display Posts plugin too. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works great.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things in terms of design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I am in fact utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress theme I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child theme. All the customizations were created with the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could create a copy of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I’m pleased to let you know that you can now install my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress website with only a click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started using a fantastic blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I 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, as I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a couple plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our organization website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Theme Library

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And as 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’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, 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 quicker.

And The best thing isI now have a thousand more choices to pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option 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 fantastic foundation to make it load fast.

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

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

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

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Site 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 personalize matters. And while the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

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

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient as you will be able to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent 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 region, you may configure detailed settings for your:

Header — you can move your header around and change its styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can utilize a Couple of sidebars
Blog post layout — such as featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to add

Similarly, That the Typography place enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your website, including buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you realize the way the preferences come together, you will have complete control on how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All of its features, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which is about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes 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 mentions.

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

First, I put 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 moments
Had a page size of 243.9 kB
Had 15 asks

That’s Not bad at all! 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% fewer

If You do the exact same test with other themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Generatepress Theme Library

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 that lets you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
Page Header — allows you create a exceptional page header onto a per-page basis.
Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page construction. It permits you to create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.

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

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

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

In The last, you had to build GeneratePress sites 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 new Site Library attribute 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 couple buttons to import a presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Give You Detailed Control Over Every Bit Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a brand 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 altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post 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 elements, you’re in a position to produce the proper baseline for your page builder design, making it effortless to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Theme Library

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly 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 gives you use on unlimited websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t get any more upgrades ).

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

Summary

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

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

However, If you are ready to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you might even have the ability to locate a starter website that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, you shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one second. Generatepress Theme Library