Intro WordPress Template Design

Within the past 10 years, I’ve used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been really disappointed. Up until recently, I had been using MyThemeShop, which was pretty excellent. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and operate the way I wanted it to. A couple of weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I was blown away and am now moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my in-depth GeneratePress review below. And if you are wondering, yes I’ve attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multicolored themes. WordPress Template Design

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I have actually seen it for many years from the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m pretty picky when it comes to web performance, so I tend to ignore everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there is not that good, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this case, that was a mistake. The motif now has more than half a million downloads, 80,000+ active matches, with over 500 5-star evaluations. So obviously Tom is doing something right here.

I Really installed the free version of the theme 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 work. And I will go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the qualities. I’m going to be covering the premium edition of the theme, because it’s worth . In fact, Tom, if you ever read this and are seeing Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Characteristics

Super lightweight and quick. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable items you don’t need 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 the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of this customizer previously, 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 the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want 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 hooks and filters which make it great for programmers.

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

The Documentation can be incredible. Besides have great documentation on their website, the theme has existed long enough that what I wholeheartedly throughout the setup process was found inside a few seconds in their own forum.

Diving Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time to the fun part! I test a 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 could expect by the time that 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 design was going to generate a lot of big files, but this is not the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring that every file packed in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of files is not as important. But the size is! Take a peek at some of the center 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’ve Seen exactly the same throughout each of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as possible get them. In fact, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 coming round the corner, we could anticipate this to get smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are installation in what I would call a modular layout. It is possible to activate/deactivate anything you aren’t using to ensure they don’t load on your site. Since the co-developer of this perfmatters plugin which has a script supervisor built-in, I felt at home with this. Everything ought to be made this way.

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

Blog

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is that I no more have to use a Child motif . This makes my life much easier. No more editing my functions.php or header.php files. I can literally update my GeneratePress motif this exact minute rather than shed one customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make this possible. It allows you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress site. WordPress Template Design

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On each Page/post you have a lot of alternatives. You are able to alter the sidebar design and the footer widgets.

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

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Remember, a lot of these options are permitted from the superior add-ons. I can’t show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here daily. But let me 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 exact same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or article. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid width

Mobile grid width

Insert custom courses

Insert custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example below:

You might want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin also. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this site? That is using the WP Show Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a specific”featured” category. You might also get it show last modified/updated articles, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to perform all sorts of things concerning design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is definitely not only for blogs! I’m in fact utilizing GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. However, as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those that are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that 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 annually customizing. Here is a comparison below.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice now is, simply get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

Together with the New GeneratePress motif I was able to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created with 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 site library. I am happy to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your own GeneratePress site with only a single click! It is known as the Marketer motif. Get started with a great blog design instantly.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my private website, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimal website, since I do not use it for much. As you can see it loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I was Able to duplicate the whole look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business site, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum site, as we simply use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. WordPress Template Design

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to again move everything over and get it looking exactly how I needed it in under an hour. And as you can view it loads faster! Amazing. I managed to get rid of a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

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

And The best thing is, I finally have a billion more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal alternative for performance-focused users who wish to have the ability to personalize and control exactly 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 fantastic foundation to make it load quickly.

Because Of that, those who assemble WordPress sites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

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

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

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

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and customize things. And while the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, especially casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

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

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient as 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 have the ability to customize nearly everything about your site.

For Example, if you go into the Design area, you can configure detailed settings for yourown:

• 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 layout — you can use one or two sidebars
• Blog post layout — such as featured picture dimensions, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like how many widgets to include

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

And You also receive a detailed region to control the colour of each and every element on your site.

All Whatsoever, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization options from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming if you’re a beginner. But as soon as you understand the way the preferences come together, you will have full control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All its features, GeneratePress always has a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The entire motif is less than 30 kB, which will be about as little as you are ever going to find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few badly 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 cites.

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

First, I set up an empty site using a random popular WordPress.org motif (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! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I activated GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test site without altering anything else. Here is how GeneratePress did:

• 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 perform that same test with different topics, you are going to continue to see that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress topics in life. WordPress Template Design

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

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

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

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular interface where you can select and choose what features you want to trigger.

That Way, you don’t have to slow down your site for a feature that you’ll never use.

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

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

Earlier In 2018, though, the developer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which allows you easily import any among the 25+ pre-built demonstration websites .

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

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

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

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

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

You Can use this meta box to:

• Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose how many footer widgets to use
• Disable certain elements, like your header, navigation menu, article featured image, post title, or footer
• Create a special”container” for your page builder

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

By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to produce the proper baseline for your own page builder layout, making it effortless to create custom content as needed. WordPress Template Design

GeneratePress Replies: Cheap 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 purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so elastic. The free version does not give you nearly as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still quite affordable. It costs only $39.95, and that provides you use on infinite websites . You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades following the first year (you can, obviously, keep using GeneratePress after the initial year without beating — you won’t receive any more updates).

When You believe the typical premium WordPress theme will often cost around $60, GeneratePress offers a great price.

Summary

As I mentioned, I do not think GeneratePress is for everybody.

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

However, If you are ready to spend time altering settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any sort of WordPress site. Or, you might even have the ability to find a starter website that fulfills your needs to save a little time.

Additionally, It’s among those fastest-loading WordPress topics you will locate. Therefore, if you’re seeking the best performance possible, utilizing GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great choice.

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

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.