Background Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
Within the previous ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. However, I had to perform a lot of customization to make it perform and work how I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I was dismissed and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
GeneratePress Review
GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there is not 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 matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.
I Really set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly 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 some of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, 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 things you don’t want running. This is one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks great across all devices.
Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.
Dramatic integration using the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.
Compatible with all 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 want to dive into even more customizations, these really are a terrific combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.
Resumes prepared.
Font wonderful built in.
A lot of filters and hooks that make it great for programmers.
Excellent active support from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has existed long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their forum.
Diving Into GeneratePress
Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I could 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 very impressed.
One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a lot of big files, but this isn’t the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every record packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of files is not as important. However, the dimensions is! Have a peek at a few of the core 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 functionality! And I’ve Seen exactly the same during all of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe can anticipate this to get smaller too.
The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular design. You can activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be designed this way.
If You’re interested, I am using the following 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 simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On each Page/post you have a lot of options. You are able to change the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can quickly swap a page involving the default option to a full width page, as well as disable components.
The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But allow me to show you few which actually come in handy.
Responsive Columns
Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be made by the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid width
Insert custom classes
Add custom inline designs
Equal height columns
This is An example under:
You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated articles, 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 edition of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things concerning design. Think of it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely 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. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.
Speed Tests
For those Of you that are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the entire motif that forces woorkup.com. It just 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 fast, but I spent a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice now is, just get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
Together with the New GeneratePress theme I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a child motif. Each of the customizations were made with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).
Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he can make a replica of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now install my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress site with only a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a great blog design immediately.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, since I don’t use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.
forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
Additionally, I Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under one hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page weight 2x!
I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my sites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.
And The best thing is, I finally have a thousand more choices to pick from than I did earlier.
What GeneratePress Is Good For…
GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that want to be able to customize and control exactly 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 foundation 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 Fantastic Fit If…
…you Need something which will instantly appear perfect out of the box.
For Example, if you know you wish to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.
While GeneratePress is becoming a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you initially install it.
So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and personalize matters. And while the significant advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.
GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique
Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.
Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Past Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.
GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient because you will be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.
The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize nearly all about your website.
For Example, if you go in the Layout region, 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 use a Couple of sidebars
- Blog post layout — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include
Similarly, The Typography area lets you control the font to get every single element on your site, such as buttons:
And You also get a thorough region to control the color of every single element on your site.
All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you understand the way the settings come together, you will have full control over how your website appears.
Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times
Across All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, and it 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 poorly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.
Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.
First, I set up an empty website utilizing a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing 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 asks
That’s Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on the exact same test site 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% fewer
If You perform that same test with other themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
Other Helpful 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 which lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
- Page Header — lets you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
- Sections — this is kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create different”sections” on a webpage, each with their own layout and column settings.
To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you can pick and choose what features you want to trigger.
That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a feature which you’re never going to use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Website
In The past, you had to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to set up.
Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .
You Can import them right from your WordPress dashboard.
Yes this Website still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a demo site.
Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Each Bit Of Content
With Most themes, each page and post will use the same settings 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 giving you a new Layout meta name box for each and every post and page:
You Can utilize this meta box to:
- Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as changing the sidebar from right to left)
- Choose the number of footer widgets to utilize
- Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” to your own page builder
Where These controls would be the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress page builder.
By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your page builder design, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Core GeneratePress theme can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.
Nevertheless, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as numerous configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.
GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly affordable. It costs just $39.95, which gives you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to continue receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without renewing — you won’t get any more upgrades ).
When You believe that the typical premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic value.
Conclusion
As I mentioned, I do not think GeneratePress is for everyone.
If You want a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by buying a theme that fits your needs for your market out of day one.
But If you are ready to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter website that fits your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great choice.
If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Generatepress Vs Beaver Builder Theme
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.