Introduction Most Responsive WordPress Themes

Over the past ten decades, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. However, I still had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to do and operate the way I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Most Responsive WordPress Themes

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve really seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there isn’t that good, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, 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 Really installed 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 developer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth . Actually, Tom, in the event that you read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration with the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of the customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser support back to IE8.

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

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

Excellent active service from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the theme has existed long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup procedure was found inside a few seconds in their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I could expect by the time I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to produce a lot of big files, but that is not the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Take a look 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 functionality! And I have Seen the same during each the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we can expect this to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your website. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which 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’m using the following add-ons on this website:

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no more need to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact moment and not shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Most Responsive WordPress Themes

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. You are able to change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these options are permitted by the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. But let me show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also created by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super easy way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized courses

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated posts, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you perform all kinds of things concerning design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that 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 who are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice that I changed the entire theme that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was pretty quickly, but I spent a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child theme. Each of the customizations were created using the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he could create a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to let you know that now you can put in my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress website with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, as 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 look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a couple plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, as we simply use it for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Most Responsive WordPress Themes

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of 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 to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). After I have my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users that wish to be able to customize and control exactly how their site appears.

You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And since 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 assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Want something which will immediately appear perfect from the box.

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

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you initially install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll almost certainly will need to go in and customize matters. And though the substantial 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 specific characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient because you’ll have the ability to see all the changes that you create in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you may configure comprehensive settings for yourown:

Header — you can move your header round 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 image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

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

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you realize the way the settings come together, you’ll have full control over how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All of its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, which 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 a few poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

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

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

First, I put up an empty website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (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 is Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test website without changing anything else. Here is 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 requests, ~40% fewer

If You perform 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 existence. Most Responsive WordPress Themes

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives 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’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you needed to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.

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

You Can import them right 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 Detailed Control Over Every Piece 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 do not have very much control past that.

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

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 how many footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured image, post title, or footer
Produce a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you are able to produce the proper baseline for your page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. Most Responsive WordPress Themes

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress motif can be obtained for free at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as numerous settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that gives you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without renewing — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You believe the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great value.

Wrap-up

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

If You desire a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your requirements for your niche out of day one.

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

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

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your website load in under one second. Most Responsive WordPress Themes