Intro Top Theme WordPress

Over the previous 10 decades, I’ve used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was fairly good. However, I had to perform a great deal of customization to make it perform and work the way I needed it to. A few 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 discovered in a decade . I had been dismissed and am moving all of my sites 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 theme, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Top Theme WordPress

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve really 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 dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that great, or not supported for long. However, in this case, that was a mistake. The motif now has over 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 installed 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 envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the subject, because it’s worth . In fact, Tom, if you read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

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

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

It also works great with 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 awesome built in.

A lot of hooks and filters that make it good for developers.

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that everything I wholeheartedly throughout the setup procedure was found inside a couple of seconds from their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box without any customizations to see how quickly the foundation is. This tells me a great deal of what I could expect by the time that I add everything to it. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. But the size 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 programmer that cares about performance! And I’ve Seen exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the biggest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe can expect that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you are not using to guarantee they don’t load on your website. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin that has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home for this. Everything should be designed this way.

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

Blog

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no longer need to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress motif this very moment and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Top Theme WordPress

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page between the default to a complete width page, as well as disable elements.

The WordPress customizer options is really where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these options are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can not 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 recommend grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this can be made by precisely the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super easy way to add responsive columns to any page or post. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m 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 version of GeneratePress allows you to perform all kinds of things concerning design. Think of it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that 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 those Of you that are regular readers, you likely did not even notice that I changed the whole motif that powers woorkup.com. It only 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 old MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In fact, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice now is, just 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 remember, I don’t have a child motif. All the customizations were created with 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 could make a copy of woorkup to your new GeneratePress blog library. I’m happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme in your own GeneratePress website with only a click! It is called the Marketer motif. Get started with a fantastic blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimal website, as I do not use it to get much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum website, as we simply use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Top Theme WordPress

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted it in under one hour. And as you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was able 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 am moving over all my sites to it (which includes several EDD e-commerce websites ). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option 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 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 typically pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any kind of site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

…you Need 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 choosing a market theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a lot simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones when you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will most likely will need to go in and customize matters. And though the substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, especially casual users, don’t like having to make those changes themselves.

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the specific features that explain why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize pretty much everything about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you can configure comprehensive settings for your:

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

Similarly, That the Typography place enables you to control the font to get each and every element on your website, including buttons:

And You also get a thorough area to control the color of every single element on your website.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you understand the way the preferences come together, you’ll have complete control over how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

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

GeneratePress Also has no 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 put up an empty site utilizing a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing 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 is Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.

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

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 requests, ~40% less

If You do the exact same test with different topics, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Top Theme WordPress

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

Elements — a unique feature that allows you create custom hooks, page headers, or design templates.
Page Header — lets you create a unique page header onto a per-page basis.
Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page building. It permits you to create different”sections” on a webpage, each with their own design and column preferences.

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

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

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

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

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from your 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 themes, every post and page will use the same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom formats or templates — however you don’t have very much control beyond that.

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a brand new Layout meta box for each and every 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 how many footer widgets to use
Disable certain components, such as your header, navigation menu, article featured image, article title, or footer
Create a special”container” to your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain components, you’re in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder design, making it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Top Theme WordPress

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I believe you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what produces the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you almost as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which gives you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, of course, continue using GeneratePress following the initial year without renewing — you just won’t get any more updates).

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

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I do not think GeneratePress is for everyone.

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

But If you are willing to spend time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you might even have the ability to locate a starter site that fits your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no problem making your site load in under one minute. Top Theme WordPress