Introduction New Free WordPress Themes 2016

Over the past ten decades, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. However, I still had to perform a lot of customization to make it perform and work how I needed it to. A few weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been dismissed and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. New Free WordPress Themes 2016

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

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

I Really 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 envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the superior edition of the subject, because it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this 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 all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built in.

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

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

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds in their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a new theme right out of the box without any customizations to just see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I can expect by the time I add everything to it. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was quite 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 making sure every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as important. But the size is! Have a peek at a few of the core GeneratePress files below:

/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 the same during each the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe could expect that to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I’d call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you are not using to ensure they do not load on your site. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script manager built, I felt right at home with this. Everything should be designed this way.

If You are curious, I am using the following add-ons on this site:

Blog

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a Child motif . This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact minute rather than lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make this possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. New Free WordPress Themes 2016

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post that you have a lot of options. You can change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, allow me to show you couple which really 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 precisely the exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to add responsive columns to any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m 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 sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For those Of those who are regular readers, you likely did not even notice 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 below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop theme was pretty fast, but I invested 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, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I managed 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’re in luck. Tom asked if he could make a replica of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with only a click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum website, 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 appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even 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 organization website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum site, as we simply use it for our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. New Free WordPress Themes 2016

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under one hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I am moving over all my sites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best thing isI finally have a billion more choices to choose from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who wish to have the ability to personalize and control precisely how their site looks.

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

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 website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

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

For Example, if you realize you wish to produce a fashion blog, you may be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you first install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and personalize matters. And though the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Performance, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you’ll have the ability to see all the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize nearly all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Layout region, you may configure detailed 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 utilize one or two sidebars
• Blog post design — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — just like the number of widgets to include

Likewise, That the Typography area enables you to control the font to get every single element on your site, including buttons:

And You also get a detailed region to control the colour of each and every element on your site.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But once you understand how the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress always has a focus on excellent performance and tidy 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 some badly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

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

Put That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I set up a vacant site using a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing 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 requests

That is Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test website 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 requests, ~40% fewer

If You perform the exact same test with different themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. New Free WordPress Themes 2016

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more design controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other helpful features such as:

• Elements — a exceptional feature that lets you create custom hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
• Sections — this is kind of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create separate”sections” onto a page, each with their own layout and column settings.

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you can select and choose exactly which features you would like to trigger.

That Way, you don’t have to slow your site down for a quality that you’ll never 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 motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that lets 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 a few buttons to import a demo site.

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

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

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

You Can use 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, such as your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your page builder design, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. New Free WordPress Themes 2016

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs just $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited websites . 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, obviously, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you just won’t receive any more updates).

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

Summary

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

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

However, If you are willing to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

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

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one second. New Free WordPress Themes 2016

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.