Introduction Mobile Menu Generatepress

Within the previous ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, which was pretty excellent. However, I still had to do a great deal of customization to make it perform and operate how I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the finest WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I was dismissed and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Mobile Menu Generatepress

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. However, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Actually 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 imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of the 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.

Additionally, it works great with all the popular 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 individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built in.

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

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that what I wholeheartedly throughout the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time to the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box with no customizations to see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time I add everything to it. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as significant. But the size is! Take 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

This is a programmer that cares about performance! And I’ve Seen the same throughout all of the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we could anticipate this to secure smaller too.

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

If You’re curious, I’m using the next add-ons on this site:

Website

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a Child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact minute rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. Mobile Menu Generatepress

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a great deal 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 options is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these options are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. However, allow me to show you couple which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be made by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, 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 version of GeneratePress allows you to perform all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those that are regular readers, you probably did not even notice that I changed the whole theme that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice now is, just 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 don’t have a child motif. Each of the customizations were made using the wonderful 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 create a replica of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am 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 is known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, since I do not use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to replicate the entire appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was 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 had been using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as we simply use it to our LLC. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Mobile Menu Generatepress

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under an hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate 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 my websites to it (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The programmer 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 billion more choices to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that wish to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site looks.

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

Since Of that, those who build 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 site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

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

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

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website 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 will need to go in and customize matters. And though 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 That Make It Unique

Here Are some of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

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

For Example, if you go into the Layout region, you may configure comprehensive settings to yourown:

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

Likewise, The Typography area lets you control the font to get every single element on your website, including buttons:

And You also get a detailed area to control the colour of every single element on your site.

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you realize the way the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your site looks.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

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

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

Put That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I ran a little test.

First, I set up a vacant site utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its performance 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 is Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.

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

Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points greater
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 topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Mobile Menu Generatepress

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Past 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 that allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header on a per-page basis.
Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you 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 could select and choose what features you would like to trigger.

That Way, you don’t have 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 past, you had to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them right from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a few buttons to import a presentation site.

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

With Most topics, every post and page will use the same settings for the most part. You may 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 every single post and page:

You Can use this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your website uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Mobile Menu Generatepress

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress motif is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. 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 is also still fairly reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the initial year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress after the first year without renewing — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You consider the normal premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic price.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, I do not think GeneratePress is for everyone.

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

However, If you are willing to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.

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