Intro Generatepress Yoast

Over the previous ten decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, which was fairly excellent. However, I had to do a lot of customization to allow it to perform and operate how I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve found in 10 years. I was blown away and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Yoast

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there is not that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually set up 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of the 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.

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

Translation ready.

Font awesome built in.

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

Great active support from the programmer. On average, 3 updates per month.

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

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box without any customizations to just see how fast 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 load time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was worried 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 actually worked hard on ensuring that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of files is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Have a peek at some 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 programmer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving round the cornerwe could anticipate that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they do not 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 ought to be made this way.

If You are curious, I am using the next 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 need to use a young child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this very minute and not lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Generatepress Yoast

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a lot of options. You can alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these choices are permitted by the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d 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 can be made by precisely the same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also have it show last modified/updated articles, 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 Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things in terms of design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For those Of those who are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the entire theme that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all my customizations. My advice today 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 kid theme. Each of the customizations were made 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 can create a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to let you know that now you can install my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress website with just a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started with 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 was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as I do not use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a few plugins that 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 had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum site, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Yoast

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can see 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 finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all my sites for this (which includes several EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my life will be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that wish to be able to personalize 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 assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any type of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Need something that will instantly appear perfect from the box.

For Example, if you know you wish to create a fashion blog, you might be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first 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 while the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

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

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate possibilities, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Design region, you can configure comprehensive settings to your:

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

Likewise, The Typography place enables you to 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 every single element on your website.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you understand how the preferences come together, you’ll have full control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, and it is about as small as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I set 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 seconds
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 changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points greater
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 different themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Generatepress Yoast

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more style controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other useful features like:

Elements — a unique feature that allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or design templates.
Page Header — lets you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
Sections — that 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 gives you a modular interface where you could select and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not need to slow down your site for a feature that you’ll never use.

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

In The past, you needed to construct 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 programmer added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Yes — this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a demo site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Every Bit Of Content

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

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a brand new Design meta box for each and every page and post:

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change the number of sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you are able to create the correct baseline for your page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Generatepress Yoast

GeneratePress Pricing: 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 should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite affordable. It costs just $39.95, which gives you use on unlimited sites. 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, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t get any more updates).

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

Conclusion

As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everyone.

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

However, If you are ready to spend time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to find a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

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

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