Background WordPress Professional

Over the previous ten years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress topics and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty good. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to do and work how I needed it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve found in a decade . I had been 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’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. WordPress Professional

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve 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, so I tend to ignore everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of things on there is not that good, or not encouraged 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 clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Really installed the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the features. I will be covering the premium edition of the subject, because it’s worth . In fact, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and so are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

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

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better results in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a fan of the 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.

Additionally, it works great with all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want to dive into even more customizations, these are a great combo. I have also read that people using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have great documentation on their website, the subject has existed long enough that what I wholeheartedly during the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I always test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just 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 stock 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 is not the situation. You may tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every file loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. With HTTP/2, the number of files is not as important. But the dimensions 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

This is a developer that cares about performance! And I have Seen exactly the same throughout each the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the cornerwe can expect this to get smaller too.

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

If You’re interested, I am using the next add-ons on this site:

Website

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no longer 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 theme this exact 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. WordPress Professional

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post that you have a great deal of options. You can change the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, a lot of these options are enabled from the premium add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we would be here daily. However, let me show you few which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Insert Customized classes

Add custom inline styles

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You May Want to Also grab his incredible WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I’m using the free version and it works great.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I am in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For those Of you who are regular readers, you likely didn’t even notice I changed the whole motif that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour to get GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif which I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My old MyThemeShop motif was pretty quickly, but I spent a great deal of time customizing it. In reality, I have gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all my customizations. My advice today is, just 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 keep in mind, I don’t have a child theme. All the customizations were created with the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I have running on woorkup? You are in luck. Tom asked if he can create a replica of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to let you know that now you can install my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress site with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

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

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimum website, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. WordPress Professional

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed 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 weight 2x!

I can not express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I am moving over all of my sites to it (which comprises several EDD e-commerce sites). Once I have my 9 websites all running in GP without any child themes, my entire life is going to be a breeze! The programmer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the correct way, can actually perform quicker.

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

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect alternative for performance-focused users who wish to be able to customize and control precisely 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 fantastic foundation to make it load fast.

Because Of that, people who build WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They will normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of website.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Fit If…

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

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

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

So To make GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and customize matters. 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 some of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress gives you adequate options, but should you own GeneratePress Premium, you will have the ability to customize nearly all about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design area, you can configure comprehensive 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 use a Couple of sidebars
Blog post design — such as featured image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — just like how many widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography place lets you control the font for every single element on your website, such as buttons:

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

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer compared to most other themes. This level of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you realize the way the settings come together, you will have complete control on how your website looks.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress always includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

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

Put That collectively, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How fast? To give you a sense, I ran a small test.

First, I put up a vacant website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its functionality 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’s Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.

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% faster
Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
Had 9 asks, ~40% less

If You perform the exact same test with other topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. WordPress Professional

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

Elements — a exceptional feature which allows 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 different”sections” on a page, each with their own design and column preferences.

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could select and choose what characteristics you would like to trigger.

That Way, you do not need to slow down your site for a quality which you’re never going to use.

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

In The last, you needed to construct GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the motif difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a fresh Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that 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 a few buttons to import a presentation site.

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

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

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

You Can utilize 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 how many footer widgets to utilize
Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article 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 page builder.

By Disabling certain elements, you’re able to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, making it easy to create custom articles as needed. WordPress Professional

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you are 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 in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Summary

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 market from day one.

However, If you’re ready to spend some time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress website. Or, you may 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 locate. So if you’re looking for the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s foundation is a great decision.

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no difficulty making your site load in under one second. WordPress Professional