Introduction Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom

Over the previous ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, that was fairly excellent. However, I had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and work the way I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the best WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I have really seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that great, or not supported for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif currently has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually set up the free version of the theme and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the qualities. I will be covering the premium version of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Impressive integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of this customizer previously, but Tom does it correctly.

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

It also works great with the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built-in.

Tons of filters and hooks that make it great for developers.

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have good documentation on their website, the theme has been around long enough that everything I wholeheartedly during the setup process 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 new theme right out of the box with no customizations to just 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 inventory 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 design was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every record packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as significant. But the size is! Take a peek at some 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

That is a developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same during all the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file included. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the corner, we could anticipate that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular design. You can activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your website. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

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

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no longer have to use a young child motif . This makes my life so much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact minute and not lose a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are enabled from the premium add-ons. I can’t 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 suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be created by precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to incorporate responsive columns to any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Add custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his incredible WP Display Posts plugin too. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s 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 articles, recent articles, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all sorts of things in terms of design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact using 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 didn’t even notice I changed the entire theme that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, but I invested a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I’ve 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

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a child motif. All the customizations were made using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could make a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress website with only a single click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum site, since I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire appearance 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can’t express my Excitement about finding GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life will be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

And The best thing isI finally have a billion more options to pick from than I did earlier.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who 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 site that you build will have a great foundation to make it load quickly.

Because Of that, people who assemble WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any type of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

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

While GeneratePress is becoming a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Site 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 things. And though the significant 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 some of the specific characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Performance, another place where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient because you will have the ability to see all of the changes that you create in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you adequate possibilities, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Layout region, you can configure comprehensive settings to your:

Header — you can move your header around and change its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
Blog post design — like featured picture size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — just like how many widgets to add

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This amount of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you realize the way the settings come together, you’ll have complete control on how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Around All its features, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which 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 a few poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which will help you avoid the leave blocking error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you a sense, I ran a little test.

First, I put up an empty site utilizing 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 asks

That’s Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on the exact same test website without altering 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 do that same test with other themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Past Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other helpful features such as:

Elements — a exceptional feature that lets you create custom hooks, page headers, or design templates.
Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header onto a per-page basis.
Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page building. It lets you create different”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column settings.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could select and choose what features you would like to trigger.

That Way, you don’t need to slow down your site for a quality which you’re never going to use.

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

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

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among the 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 presentation site.

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

With Most topics, each post and page will use the same settings 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 new Layout meta box for every single post and page:

You Can use this meta box to:

Change the number of 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 components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re able to create the proper baseline for your page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress motif can be obtained at no cost at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you won’t get any more upgrades ).

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

Conclusion

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

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

But If you’re ready to spend time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even be able to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will locate. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one second. Social Icons Generatepress Long Wait Time Pingdom