Introduction Theme WordPress
Within the previous ten decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. However, I had to do a lot of customization to make it perform and operate how I wanted it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been blown away and am now moving all of my websites to GeneratePress. I will go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and heavier multi-purpose themes. Theme WordPress
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 have really seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I have a tendency to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So clearly Tom is doing some thing right here.
I Really 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 envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the qualities. I will be covering the superior version of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, in the event that you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.
Characteristics
Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you don’t want running. This is one of the biggest reasons I adore GeneratePress.
Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.
Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.
Dramatic integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a lover of the customizer previously, but Tom does it right.
Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser support 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 really are a terrific combo. I have also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.
Resumes prepared.
Font awesome built in.
Tons of filters and hooks that make it great for developers.
Excellent active service from the developer. Normally, 3 updates per month.
The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that what I wholeheartedly during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their forum.
Diving Into GeneratePress
Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a brand 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 that 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 concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but this isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. However, the dimensions is! Have a peek 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 developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same throughout all of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we could expect this to get smaller too.
The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your website. Since the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which 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 next add-ons on this site:
Website
Colors
Copyright
Hooks
Page Header
Spacing
Typography
No Child Theme Needed
One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no longer need to use a Child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I can literally update my GeneratePress theme this very minute rather than lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make it possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Theme WordPress
Other Things I Love About GeneratePress
On each Page/post you have a great deal of options. You can alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.
You Can easily 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! Remember, a lot of these choices are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, 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 made by the same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to add responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:
Desktop grid thickness
Tablet grid width
Mobile grid thickness
Add Customized classes
Insert custom inline styles
Equal height columns
This is An example under:
You May Want to Also catch his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works great.
To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.
Sections Add-on
The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress lets you do all kinds of things in terms of design. Think of it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I am in reality utilizing GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.
Speed Tests
For those Of you that are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice that I changed the whole theme that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison under.
woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme
My older MyThemeShop motif was pretty fast, but I invested a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, simply get GeneratePress!
woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme
Together with the New GeneratePress theme I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created using the awesome 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 copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m happy to let you know that you can now install my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress website with just a click! It’s called the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog design immediately.
brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved over my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum website, as I don’t use it for much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.
brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme
I had been Able to duplicate the whole look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.
forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme
I also Moved over our organization website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal site, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Theme WordPress
forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme
I was Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!
I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my sites to it (which includes several EDD e-commerce websites ). After I have my 9 websites all running in GP with no child topics, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.
And The best thing is, I now have a billion more choices to choose from than I did before.
What GeneratePress Is Great For…
GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users that wish to have the ability to personalize and control precisely how their site looks.
You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the site that you build will have a fantastic base to make it load quickly.
Because Of that, people who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of website.
However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…
…you Want something that will instantly appear perfect from the box.
For Example, if you realize you wish to create a style blog, you might be happier choosing a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.
Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones when you initially install it.
So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will most likely will need to go in and personalize things. And while the substantial benefit 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 some of the specific characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.
Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer
Beyond Functionality, another place where GeneratePress does well is its customization options.
GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient as you will be able to see all the changes that you make in real time.
The Free variant of GeneratePress gives you decent 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 Design region, you can configure detailed settings to yourown:
- 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 utilize one or two sidebars
- Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
- Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include
Similarly, The Typography area lets you control the font to get each and every element on your site, such as buttons:
And You also receive a detailed region to control the colour of each and every element on your site.
All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you realize the way the preferences come together, you’ll have complete control on how your website looks.
Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times
Across All of its features, GeneratePress always has a focus on exceptional performance and clean code. The entire theme 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 themes are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the leave obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.
Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you an idea, I conducted a little test.
First, I put up a vacant site using a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing 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 requests
That’s Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.
Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test site without altering anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:
- Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points greater
- Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
- Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
- Had 9 asks, ~40% fewer
If You perform the exact same test with other themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Theme WordPress
Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach
Beyond 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 that allows you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
- Page Header — lets you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
- Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page building. It lets you create separate”sections” on a page, each with their own layout and column settings.
To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could pick and choose exactly which characteristics you want to trigger.
That Way, you do not have to slow down your site for a quality that you’ll never use.
Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Site
In The past, you needed to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made 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 one of the 25+ pre-built demo sites.
You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.
Yes — this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click on a few buttons to import a presentation site.
Page-Level Settings Give You Comprehensive Control Over Each Piece Of Content
With Most topics, every page and post 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 new Design meta name box for each and every page and post:
You Can utilize 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 how many footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, article title, or footer
- Produce a special”container” to your page builder
Where These controls are the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress site builder.
By Disabling certain elements, you are able to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Theme WordPress
GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites
The Heart GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.
That said, If you are serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I feel you need to buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t 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 quite reasonably priced. It costs just $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without beating — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).
When You believe the normal premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a great price.
Summary
As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everybody.
If You want a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that fits your requirements for your niche out of day one.
However, If you’re willing to spend time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style 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 fulfills your needs to save some time.
Additionally, It’s among the fastest-loading WordPress themes you will locate. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a good choice.
If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one minute. Theme WordPress
To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.