Intro Super Fast WordPress Theme

Within the past 10 decades, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was fairly excellent. But I still had to do a lot of customization to allow it to do and operate the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I will enter precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. Super Fast WordPress Theme

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

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

I Actually set up 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 programmer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the superior version of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, if you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you do not need running. This is only one of the biggest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration with the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of this customizer previously, but Tom does it correctly.

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 people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup process was found within a few seconds in their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right from the box without any customizations to see how fast the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time that I add everything for this. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress motif 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 that isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as significant. However, the size is! Have a look at some of the center 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

This is a programmer that cares about performance! And I have Seen exactly the same throughout all the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving round the cornerwe can expect that to get smaller too.

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 website. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built, I felt at home for this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

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

Blog

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no longer need to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally update my GeneratePress theme this very moment rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Super Fast WordPress Theme

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a lot of options. 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, in addition to disable elements.

The WordPress customizer choices is really 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 allow me to show you few which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May 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 Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also have it show last modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to do all sorts of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in fact utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.

Speed Tests

For all those Of you that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the entire theme that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop motif was already pretty quickly, but I invested a lot of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to print all of my customizations. My advice today is, simply 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 remember, I don’t have a kid motif. 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’re in luck. Tom asked if he could make a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress website with only a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I 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 website, as I don’t use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the entire look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a couple plugins which 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 was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal website, as we just use it for our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Super Fast WordPress Theme

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under an hour. And as you can view 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 locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once I’ve got my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life will be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

And The best thing isI now have a thousand more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

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

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

Because Of that, those who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

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

For Example, if you realize you want to create a fashion blog, you may be happier choosing a market theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress is becoming a lot simpler to use, thanks to its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll almost certainly need to go in and personalize things. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features Which Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed common.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much all about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Layout area, you can configure detailed settings to your:

Header — you can move your header round and alter its styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
Sidebar design — you can use one or two sidebars
Blog post design — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to add

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

And You also receive a detailed region to control the color of every single element on your site.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But as soon as you understand how the preferences come together, you’ll have complete control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, which will be 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 a few badly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

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

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

First, I set up an empty website using a random popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality 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 in any way! But GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test website without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:

Had a performance grade of 87, 10 points greater
Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% faster
Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
Had 9 requests, ~40% fewer

If You perform that same test with different topics, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Super Fast WordPress Theme

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a unique feature that lets you create customized 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” on a webpage, each with their own layout and column settings.

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you can select and choose exactly which characteristics you want to activate.

That Way, you don’t have to slow your site down for a quality which you’ll never use.

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

In The past, you had to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard.

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

Page-Level Settings Provide You Comprehensive Control Over Every Piece Of Content

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

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

You Can use 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 elements, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, article title, or footer
Create a special”container” to your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the proper baseline for your page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Super Fast WordPress Theme

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are seriously interested in utilizing 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 many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited 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 initial year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).

When You consider that the normal premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic value.

Wrap-up

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

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

But If you are ready to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you might even have the ability to locate a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.

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

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no problem making your website load in under one second. Super Fast WordPress Theme