Background Word Press Site

Within the previous 10 years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, that was fairly good. But I still had to do a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and work the way I needed it to. A couple weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have found in a decade . I had been dismissed and am moving all my websites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my in-depth GeneratePress review under. And if you’re wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. Word Press Site

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for many years from 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 great deal of things on there isn’t that good, or not encouraged for long. However, in this case, that was a mistake. The theme now has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So obviously Tom is doing something 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 developer was thinking exactly how I was envisioning a theme should get the job done. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the superior version of the theme, since it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you read this and so are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of this customizer previously, but Tom does it right.

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

It also works great with all the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these are a terrific combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have had success.

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

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

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

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I always test a brand new theme right out of the box with no customizations to see how quickly the base is. This tells me a great deal of what I can expect by the time I add everything to it. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress motif on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a lot of big files, but that is not the situation. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on ensuring that every file loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as significant. However, the size is! Take a peek at some 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

This is a developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen the same during all the premium add-ons. They’re as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the biggest file included. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming around the cornerwe could expect that to get smaller also.

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

If You are interested, 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 characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no longer need to use a young child motif . This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress motif this exact minute rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly helps make it possible. It permits you to add custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. Word Press Site

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page involving the default to a complete width page, in addition to disable components.

The WordPress customizer options is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these options are enabled from the superior add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. But let me show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid width

Add custom classes

Insert custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also have it show last 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 Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress lets you do all sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not just for blogs! I’m in reality utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) that is running 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 you who are regular readers, you probably did not even notice I changed the whole 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’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a kid theme. All the customizations were created with the wonderful GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could make a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to allow you to know that now you can put in my woorkup motif in your own GeneratePress website with just a click! It is known as the Marketer theme. Get started using a fantastic blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum website, as I do not use it to get much. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum site, as we just use it to our LLC. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly. Word Press Site

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to again move everything over and get it looking just how I wanted it in under one hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my total page burden 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all my websites to it (which includes several EDD e-commerce sites). After I’ve got my 9 websites all running in GP without any child topics, my life will be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , and that when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

And The best news isI finally have a thousand more choices to choose from than I did earlier.

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 since GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the site that you build will have a great base to make it load fast.

Since Of that, people who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress site builder and use it for literally any kind of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Fit If…

…you Need something that will immediately look perfect out of the box.

For Example, if you realize you wish to create a style blog, you may be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

While GeneratePress is becoming a great deal easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Site Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you first install it.

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

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

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

Lots Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Performance, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

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

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you decent possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly all about your website.

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

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

Similarly, The Typography place enables you to control the font for every single element on your site, including buttons:

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

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This level of detail might be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you realize how the settings come together, you’ll have full control on how your website appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

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

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

Place That collectively, and you obtain a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I set up an empty site using a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance with Pingdom, it

Had a performance tier of 77
Loaded in 1.05 seconds
Had a page size of 243.9 kB
Had 15 asks

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

Next, I activated GeneratePress on the exact same test website without altering anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress failed:

Had a performance grade 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% fewer

If You do that same test with other themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. Word Press Site

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a lot of other useful features like:

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

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could pick and choose exactly which characteristics you would like to trigger.

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

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

In The last, you had to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas no matter what, which left the theme difficult for casual users to install.

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

You Can import them right from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

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

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change the number of sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (such as altering the sidebar from right to left)
Choose how many footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, article featured picture, post title, or footer
Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you are in a position to produce the correct baseline for your page builder design, which makes it effortless to create custom articles as needed. Word Press Site

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

That said, If you’re serious about utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you almost as many settings from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Summary

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

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

But If you are willing to spend some time changing settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to flip it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may even have the ability to locate a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes you will find. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you shouldn’t have any difficulty making your site load in under one minute. Word Press Site