Introduction Top WordPress Website Themes

Over the previous ten years, I have used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I was using MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. But I had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and operate how I wanted it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I had been blown away and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will 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 as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Top WordPress Website Themes

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally 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 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 things on there is not that good, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The theme now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously 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 premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely how I was imagining a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the premium version of the subject, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Features

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you do not need running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

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

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

Additionally, it 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 experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font awesome built in.

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

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their website, the theme has been around long enough that what I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their 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 great deal of what I could 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 lot of big files, but that isn’t the situation. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. But the dimensions is! Have a look at some of the core 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 exactly the same throughout each the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In reality, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the corner, we can expect this to secure smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your site. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin that has a script manager built, I felt right at home for this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

If You are curious, I’m 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 theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact minute and not shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Top WordPress Website Themes

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page between the default to a full width page, in addition to disable elements.

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

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You May Want to Also grab his incredible WP Display Posts plugin also. See my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also have it show last modified/updated posts, recent articles, 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 kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that 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 those who are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the entire motif that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was already pretty fast, but I invested a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In fact, I have gotten a lot of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t have a child theme. All 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 can create a copy of woorkup for the new GeneratePress site library. I’m happy to allow you to know that you can now put in my woorkup theme in your GeneratePress site with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a great blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my personal website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum site, as I don’t use it for much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads 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

I also Moved over our organization website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimal site, as we just use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty fast. Top WordPress Website Themes

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again 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 managed to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page weight 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). Once 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, which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

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 alternative for performance-focused users that want to be able to personalize and control precisely how their site appears.

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

Since Of that, those who assemble WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any kind of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Want something which will instantly appear perfect from the box.

For Example, if you realize you wish to create a fashion blog, you might be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

While GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, as a result of 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 customize matters. And while 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 some of the particular features that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Performance, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

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

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate possibilities, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll have the ability to customize nearly all about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure detailed settings to your:

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

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

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

All In all, GeneratePress will provide you much more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But as soon as you realize how the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All of its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, and it 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 poorly coded topics can even exceed 1 MB!

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

Put That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.

First, I set up a vacant website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (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 requests

That is Not bad in any way! However, GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the same test site without changing anything else. Here’s 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 perform that same test with other topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. Top WordPress Website Themes

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a exceptional feature that lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
Page Header — lets you create a exceptional page header on a per-page basis.
Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” on a webpage, each with their own design and column preferences.

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

That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site 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 had to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Website Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any among those 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 a few buttons to import a demo site.

Page-Level Settings Give You Detailed Control Over Every Bit Of Content

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as changing the sidebar from right to left)
Choose the number of footer widgets to use
Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, post featured picture, article title, or footer
Create a special”container” for your own 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 in a position to create the correct baseline for your page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. Top WordPress Website Themes

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, 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 satisfies your requirements for your niche from day one.

But If you are ready to spend time changing preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you might even be able to locate a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes that you will find. Therefore, if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great decision.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you shouldn’t have any problem making your site load in under one minute. Top WordPress Website Themes