Introduction WordPress Template Builder

Within the past 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, which was pretty good. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to make it do and operate the way I needed it to. A few of weeks ago I decided to give GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it’s by far the finest WordPress theme I have discovered in 10 years. I had been dismissed and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. WordPress Template Builder

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Review

GeneratePress is a totally free WordPress theme made by Tom Usborne, a programmer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years from the WordPress repository. Most of you realize that I am pretty picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of things on there isn’t that great, or not supported for long. Nonetheless, in this case, this was a mistake. The theme now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing some thing right here.

I Actually set up the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the premium version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking precisely how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I will go into that more below, but let’s first look at a number of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. Actually, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and so 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 adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater results in SERPs.

Impressive integration using all the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.

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

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

Resumes prepared.

Font wonderful built-in.

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

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

The Documentation is also incredible. Besides have great documentation on their website, the theme has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup process was found inside a couple of seconds in their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a brand new theme right out of the box with no customizations to see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time 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 very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but that isn’t the case. You may tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files isn’t as important. But 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

That is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen the same during each the premium add-ons. They are as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. With Font Awesome 5 arriving around the cornerwe can anticipate that to get smaller also.

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

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

Blog

Shades

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is that I no more have to use a young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this exact moment rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on definitely can help make it possible. It allows you to add custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. WordPress Template Builder

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

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

You Can easily swap a page involving the default to a full 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 by the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we would be here all day. However, allow me to show you couple which really 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 precisely the same programmer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Add Customized classes

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example under:

You might want to Also grab his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured posts on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You might also have it show last modified/updated articles, recent articles, etc.. I am 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 version of GeneratePress allows you to do all kinds of things in terms of design. Think of it like a page builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in reality using GeneratePress to 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 site.

Speed Tests

For those Of those that are regular readers, you probably did not even notice I changed the whole motif that powers woorkup.com. It only took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop motif that I had spent a year customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I do not have a child motif. All the customizations were made using 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 can make a copy of woorkup to your brand new GeneratePress blog library. I’m happy to allow you to know that now you can put in my woorkup motif in your GeneratePress website with only a single click! It’s called the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal website, since I do not use it for much. Since you can see it already loaded pretty quickly.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to duplicate the whole appearance 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can view it loads even 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

I also Moved over our organization site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a fairly basic minimum website, as we just use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty quickly. WordPress Template Builder

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

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

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites to it (which includes some EDD e-commerce websites ). Once I have my 9 sites all running in GP with no 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 right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI now have a thousand more choices to pick 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 customize and control precisely how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress perform 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 fast.

Because Of that, those who build WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They will typically pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

But GeneratePress Might Not Be A Fantastic Combination If…

…you Want something which will immediately look perfect out of the box.

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

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still looks very barebones if you initially 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 substantial advantage of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are some of the specific features that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

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

The Free version of GeneratePress provides you decent options, but should you have GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize pretty much all about your site.

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

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 utilize one or two sidebars
Blog post layout — such as featured image size, metadata, etc..
Footer layout — like how many widgets to add

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

And You also get a thorough region to control the colour of every single element on your website.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you much more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But once you realize how the settings come together, you will have full control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All its attributes, GeneratePress consistently has a focus on excellent 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 topics are still 200+ kB. And a few poorly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

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

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

First, I set up an empty site utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (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 asks

That is Not bad at all! However, GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on the 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 asks, ~40% less

If You do the exact same test with other themes, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is one of those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. WordPress Template Builder

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Past Giving you more style controls in 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 design templates.
Page Header — allows you create a exceptional page header onto a per-page basis.
Sections — this is kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own design and column preferences.

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

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

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

In The past, you had to build GeneratePress websites from a blank canvas regardless of what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, however, the programmer added a fresh Site Library attribute for GeneratePress Premium users that allows you easily import any one of the 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 couple buttons to import a presentation site.

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

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

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

You Can utilize this meta box to:

Change how many sidebars your website 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, post featured image, article title, or footer
Produce a special”container” for your own page builder

Where These controls are the most helpful is if you’re using a WordPress site builder.

By Disabling certain components, you are in a position to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, which makes it easy to create custom content as needed. WordPress Template Builder

GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable And Works On Unlimited Sites

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

Nevertheless, If you’re seriously interested in utilizing GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you nearly as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium can be still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited sites. You’ll also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, of course, keep using GeneratePress following the initial year without beating — you just won’t receive any more upgrades ).

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

Wrap-up

As I mentioned, I don’t believe GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

However, If you’re ready to spend time altering preferences, then GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress website. Or, you might even be able to find a starter site that fulfills your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It is one of the 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 base is a good choice.

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