Introduction Unique WordPress Themes

Over the previous 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. But I had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to do and operate how I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have found in 10 years. I was dismissed and am now moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I will enter precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to several other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Unique WordPress Themes

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a 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 know that I’m 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 things on there isn’t that great, or not encouraged for long. However, in this circumstance, this was a mistake. The theme now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy 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 motif and in a matter of 15 minutes purchased the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the theme, because it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, java on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all of the devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it right.

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

Additionally, it works great with all the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these really are a great combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

A lot of filters and hooks which make it great for developers.

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their site, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled during the setup process was found within a few seconds from their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how quickly the base 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 theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but that isn’t the situation. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on making sure that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as significant. But the size is! Have a look at a few of the core 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

That is a programmer that cares about functionality! And I’ve Seen the same during each of the premium add-ons. They are as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe can expect that to get smaller also.

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

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

Website

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a Child theme. This makes my life much simpler. No more editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this very moment rather than lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress site. Unique WordPress Themes

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post that you have a lot of options. You can alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

You Can easily swap a page involving 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 enabled by the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But allow me to show you couple which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You might want to Also grab his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those who are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice I changed the whole theme that forces woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not 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 are in luck. Tom asked if he can create a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am pleased to let you know that you can now install my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress site with only a click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started using a fantastic blog layout instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

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

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the entire look 100% in GeneratePress in under one hour. And since you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to eliminate a few plugins that weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum site, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it already loaded pretty fast. Unique WordPress Themes

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under an hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page weight 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all my websites for this (which comprises several EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no child themes, my life will be a breeze! The developer has revived my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users that want to be able to personalize and control exactly how their site looks.

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

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

…you Want something that will immediately look perfect from the box.

For Example, if you realize you wish to produce a style blog, you might be happier choosing 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 Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first install it.

So To make GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you will most likely need to go in and customize things. And while 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 a few of the particular features that explain why GeneratePress is so common.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this is convenient because you will be able to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much everything about your website.

For Example, if you go in the Layout area, you may configure comprehensive settings for your:

Header — you can move your header round and change its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can use a Couple of sidebars
Blog post layout — like featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like the number of widgets to include

Likewise, The Typography place lets you control the font for every single element on your site, including buttons:

And You also get a detailed area to control the colour 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 themes. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you understand how 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 attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as little as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded themes can even surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also does not have any code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often cites.

Place That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I ran a small 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 tier of 77
Loaded in 1.05 moments
Had a page size of 243.9 kB
Had 15 asks

That’s Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.

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

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

If You perform the exact same test with different themes, you’ll continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress topics in existence. Unique WordPress Themes

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you could pick and choose exactly which features you want to activate.

That Way, you do not need to slow down your site for a feature which you’ll never use.

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

In The last, you had to construct GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a fresh Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that lets you easily import any one of those 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

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

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change the number of sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Create 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 components, you are able to create the proper baseline for your own page builder design, which makes it easy to create custom articles as needed. Unique WordPress 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 using GeneratePress, I feel you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite websites . You’ll also get a 40% discount if you would like to renew to keep on receiving support and updates after the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you won’t receive any more upgrades ).

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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