Intro Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

Within the past ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. But I still had to perform a lot of customization to make it do and operate how I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I’ve found in 10 years. I had been blown away and am moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have actually seen it for many years in the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there is not that good, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Really set up 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining 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, since it’s worth . Actually, Tom, if you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

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

Compatible with all popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Fantastic browser service back to IE8.

Additionally, it works great with all the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

Tons of hooks and filters that make it good for programmers.

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup procedure was found within a couple of seconds from their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box without any customizations to see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time that I add everything to it. 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 generate a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every record packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as significant. But the size is! Take a peek at a few of the center 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 developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same during all of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we can anticipate that to secure smaller too.

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

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

Blog

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer need to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much simpler. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact moment rather than lose one customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these options are enabled by the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. However, let me show you couple 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 the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert Customized courses

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated posts, 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 in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I am in fact utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you 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 theme that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I spent a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice today is, just 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 remember, I don’t have a kid theme. All the customizations were made using the wonderful 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 make a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I’m pleased to let you know that now you can install my woorkup theme on your GeneratePress website with only a single click! It is known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, since I don’t use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a few plugins that 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 motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, as we simply use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under an hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I managed 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’m moving over all of my websites for this (which comprises some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

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

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

Because Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will 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 Need something which will instantly look perfect out of the box.

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

Even though GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, thanks to its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and personalize matters. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are some of the specific characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which 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 options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Layout area, you may configure detailed settings to yourown:

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

Similarly, The Typography place lets you control the font to get each and every element on your site, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But once you understand how the preferences come together, you will have full control on how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

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

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which will help you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Put That together, and you obtain a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a small test.

First, I set up an empty website using a random popular WordPress.org theme (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 requests

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

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

• Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points greater
• Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
• Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
• Had 9 asks, ~40% less

If You perform that same test with different topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

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

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could select and choose exactly which features you want to activate.

That Way, you do not have to slow your site down 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 no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

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

You Can import them right 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 Give You Detailed Control Over Each Piece Of Content

With Most topics, each post and page will use the same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — but you don’t have very much control beyond that.

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a brand 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 the number of footer widgets to utilize
• Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, post title, or footer
• Create a special”container” to your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder design, making it easy to create custom content as needed. Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you are seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I feel you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you nearly as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, which gives you use on infinite websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

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

Wrap-up

As I said, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

However, If you’re willing to spend some time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even have the ability to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

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

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your website load in under one second. Simple Responsive WordPress Themes

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.