Intro Hide Site Title Generatepress

Over the past 10 decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I still had to do a lot of customization to make it do and work how I wanted it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have discovered in a decade . I had been dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Hide Site Title Generatepress

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a 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 know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to ignore everything from 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 theme currently 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 Actually installed the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should get the job done. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at some of the qualities. I will be covering the superior edition of the subject, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, in the event that you read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not need running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

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

Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser service 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 really are a great combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

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

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have good 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 own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right from the box without any customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. However, 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 developer that cares about performance! And I’ve Seen exactly the same throughout each the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe can anticipate this to get smaller too.

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

If You are curious, I am using the next add-ons on this website:

Website

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no longer need to use a Child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact moment and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make this possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Hide Site Title Generatepress

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a great deal of options. You are able to alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted by the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. But let me 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 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 width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom courses

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you perform all kinds of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. However, as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he can make a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup theme on your own GeneratePress site with just a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

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

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even 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 business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Hide Site Title Generatepress

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 one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites for this (which comprises several EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my life will be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news is, I finally have a thousand more options to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site appears.

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

Since Of that, people who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

…you Want something that will instantly appear perfect out of the box.

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

While GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and customize things. And though the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

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

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient because you’ll be able to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize nearly all about your website.

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

Header — you can move your header round and change its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can use one or two sidebars
Blog post design — such as featured picture size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This level of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you realize how the settings come together, you’ll have complete control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress always has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, which is about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

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

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

First, I set up an empty site using a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its performance 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 perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without changing anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress failed:

Had a performance tier 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 that same test with different themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Hide Site Title Generatepress

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Beyond 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 — allows you create a exceptional page header on a per-page basis.
Sections — this is kind of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” on a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.

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

That Way, you don’t need 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 past, you had to construct GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any one of those 25+ pre-built demo sites.

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 themes, each post and page will use the same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — but you do not have very much control beyond that.

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change the number of sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering 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, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” to your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Hide Site Title Generatepress

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress theme is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and updates following the initial year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress after the initial year without renewing — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You believe that the normal premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a great price.

Summary

As I mentioned, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

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

Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress themes that 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. Hide Site Title Generatepress