Background Generatepress Tng Marcus

Over the past 10 years, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and work how I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I was dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Generatepress Tng Marcus

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there is not that good, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really installed 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 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 us first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the premium version of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, in the event that you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks fantastic 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 popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser service back to IE8.

Additionally, it works great with all the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

A lot of filters and hooks which make it good for developers.

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the theme has existed long enough that everything I Googled during the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds in their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I always test a new theme right out of the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a great deal 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 loading time. I was quite 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 can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file packed 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 some of the center GeneratePress files under:

/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 developer that cares about performance! And I’ve Seen the same during each the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we can anticipate this to secure smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular design. You can activate/deactivate whatever you are not using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script manager built, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be made this way.

If You are curious, I am using the following add-ons on this site:

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this very moment rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Tng Marcus

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are enabled by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. But let me show you couple which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by precisely the same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You May Want to Also grab his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also have it show past 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. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running 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 those Of you that are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the entire theme that powers 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 below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a child motif. 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 for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m pleased to allow you to know that now you can put in my woorkup motif on your own GeneratePress website with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal site, since I do not use it to get much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins which 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 theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal site, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Tng Marcus

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can see it loads 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 locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my sites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP with no child themes, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

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

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 appears.

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 sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any type of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

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

For Example, if you know you want to create a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a market theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely need to go in and personalize matters. And while the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly everything about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you can configure detailed settings for your:

Header — you can move your header around and alter its styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can use one or two sidebars
Blog post layout — such as featured image dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography area enables you to control the font for every single element on your website, such as buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This amount of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you understand how the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All its attributes, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, which will be 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 will help you avoid the leave blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Put That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a small test.

First, I put up a vacant site using a random popular WordPress.org theme (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 at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.

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

If You do the exact same test with different topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Generatepress Tng Marcus

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you can pick and choose what features you would like to activate.

That Way, you do not have to slow your site down for a quality which you’ll never 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 regardless of what, which left the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users which 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 a few buttons to import a presentation site.

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

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

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

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 components, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, article title, or footer
Produce a special”container” to your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Tng Marcus

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without beating — you just won’t receive any more updates).

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

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I do not 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 niche from day one.

But If you are willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no problem making your site load in under one minute. Generatepress Tng Marcus