Introduction WordPress Store Theme

Over the past ten decades, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been utilizing MyThemeShop, that was pretty excellent. However, I still had to do a great deal of customization to make it perform and work 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 was dismissed and am now moving all my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. WordPress Store Theme

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I have a tendency to dismiss everything in the repository. Typically because a lot of stuff on there is not that good, or not supported for long. However, in this circumstance, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ busy installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. 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 premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the programmer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should get the job done. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the qualities. I will be covering the premium edition of the subject, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, if you 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 don’t want running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration using the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan 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 are a great combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have experienced success.

Resumes prepared.

Font awesome built-in.

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

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

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have great documentation on their site, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds in their forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it is Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right out of the box with no customizations to see how fast the foundation is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time that I add everything to it. 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 concerned 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 literally worked hard on making sure every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents isn’t as important. But the size is! Take a look at a few of the center 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

That is a programmer that cares about performance! And I’ve Seen the same throughout all the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that is not even his. With Font Awesome 5 coming around the corner, we can anticipate that to get smaller too.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I’d call a modular layout. You can activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to ensure they do not load on your website. As the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built, I felt at home for this. Everything ought to be designed this way.

If You are interested, I am using the following add-ons on this site:

Website

Colors

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more need to use a young child theme. This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php documents. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this exact minute rather than shed a single customization. The hooks add-on definitely helps make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP anywhere throughout your WordPress website. WordPress Store Theme

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to alter the sidebar layout 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 choices is really where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these choices are permitted by the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. However, allow me to show you couple which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

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

Desktop grid thickness

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. See my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That is using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to display posts from a specific”featured” category. You can also get it show last modified/updated articles, 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 allows you to do all sorts of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not just for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress to our ecommerce site (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a blog.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those that are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice I changed the entire theme that forces woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent annually customizing. Here is a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I managed to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid 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 are in luck. Tom asked if he could make a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress blog library. I am happy to allow you to know that you can now install my woorkup theme on your own GeneratePress website with only a single click! It is called the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum site, since I do not use it to get much. As you can see it loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the entire look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can see it loads faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins which 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 is a pretty basic minimum website, as we just use it to our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. WordPress Store Theme

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites for this (which includes some EDD e-commerce sites). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child themes, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose themes, which when done the right way, can actually perform faster.

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

What GeneratePress Is Good For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users that want to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site appears.

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

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

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Need something which 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 niche theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal easier to use, thanks to 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’ll almost certainly need to go in and customize matters. And though the significant 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 specific characteristics that explain why GeneratePress is so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Beyond Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization options.

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

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you adequate options, but if you own GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize nearly all about your site.

For Example, if you go in the Design region, you may configure comprehensive settings to yourown:

Header — you can move your header around and alter its own styling
Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, such as sticky menus
Sidebar layout — you can utilize one or two sidebars
Blog post layout — like featured image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — just like the number of widgets to include

Similarly, That the Typography place lets you control the font to get every single element on your site, such as buttons:

And You also get a detailed area to control the colour of each and every element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a newcomer. But once you realize the way the preferences come together, you’ll have full control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on exceptional performance and tidy code. The whole motif is less than 30 kB, which is about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress topics are still 200+ kB. And some badly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!

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

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading motif. How quickly? To give you an idea, I ran a small test.

First, I put up an empty website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org motif (Envo Magazine). After analyzing its performance 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’s Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the exact same test site without altering anything else. Here is 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 do that same test with other themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is among the fastest-loading WordPress themes in life. WordPress Store Theme

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

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

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

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular port where you could select and choose what characteristics you want to activate.

That Way, you do not have 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 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 developer added a fresh Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any among those 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

With Most themes, each page and post will use the very same configurations 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 Design meta name box for each and every post and page:

You Can use this meta box to:

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

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to create the correct baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it effortless to create custom content as needed. WordPress Store Theme

GeneratePress Replies: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress theme is available at no cost at WordPress.org.

Nevertheless, If you’re serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as many configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still fairly affordable. It costs only $39.95, which gives you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and updates following the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the first year without beating — you just won’t get any more upgrades ).

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

Wrap-up

As I said, I don’t believe GeneratePress is for everyone.

If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by purchasing a theme that satisfies your needs for your niche from day one.

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

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

If You blend it with fast-loading hosting, you shouldn’t have any problem making your website load in under one minute. WordPress Store Theme