Background WordPress Theme Code

Within the previous 10 years, I have used a great deal of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up until recently, I was utilizing MyThemeShop, that 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 couple weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is by far the finest WordPress theme I’ve discovered in 10 years. I was dismissed and am moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I’ll go into precisely why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have attempted Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X motif, Divi in addition to many other lightweight and heavier multicolored themes. WordPress Theme Code

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

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

I Actually 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 programmer was thinking exactly how I was envisioning a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at some of the qualities. I will be covering the superior version of the subject, since it’s worth . In fact, 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 need running. This is only one of the greatest reasons I love GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks great across all devices.

Schema built-in, for greater outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with the WordPress Customizer. I have not been a lover of the customizer in the past, 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 all the favorite fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you want 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 awesome built in.

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

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

The Documentation can be unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their site, the subject has existed long enough that what I Googled during the setup process was found inside a few seconds from their forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a brand new theme right from the box without any customizations to just see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I can expect by the time that I add everything for this. Running the inventory GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms load time. I was very impressed.

One Thing I was concerned about with GeneratePress was that the modular design was going to generate a whole lot of big files, but that is not the situation. You can tell that Tom actually worked hard on ensuring every file packed in GeneratePress is as small as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the amount of documents is not as significant. However, the dimensions is! Take a peek 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 functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same during each the premium add-ons. They’re literally as small as possible get them. In reality, Font Awesome is probably the largest file included. And that is not even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving round the corner, we could anticipate that to get smaller too.

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

If You are interested, I’m using the next add-ons on this website:

Website

Shades

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best features of GeneratePress is I no longer have to use a young child motif . This makes my life so much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally update my GeneratePress theme this very 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 everywhere throughout your WordPress site. WordPress Theme Code

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. 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, as well as disable elements.

The WordPress customizer options is really 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’d be here all day. But allow me to show you few which really come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly recommend grabbing is your free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by precisely the exact same developer as GeneratePress. It allows you a super simple way to add responsive columns into any page or article. Characteristics include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add custom classes

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

This is An example below:

You might want to Also grab his incredible WP Display Posts plugin also. See 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 might also have it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Segments add-in in the premium version of GeneratePress allows you to perform all kinds of things in terms of design. Consider it like a webpage builder without the bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress to our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) which is running Easy Digital Downloads. Don’t hesitate to look it over. But as you can see below, it looks like a blog.

Speed Tests

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

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

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

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress theme I managed to achieve faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And keep in mind, I do not have a kid motif. All the customizations were created with the awesome 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 for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I am happy to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your GeneratePress site with just a single click! It is called the Marketer theme. Get started with a great blog layout immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

I also Moved over my private site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I was using a motif from Array Themes. It is a pretty basic minimum site, since I don’t 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 percent in GeneratePress in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to get rid of a couple plugins which weren’t needed due to GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

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

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking exactly how I wanted 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 whole page burden 2x!

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

And The best thing isI now have a billion more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the perfect option for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to personalize and control exactly how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress perform 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 quickly.

Since Of that, those who assemble 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 produce a fashion blog, you might be happier choosing a market theme that’s developed exclusively for trend bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a lot easier to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you initially install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you want it to, you will almost certainly will need to go in and customize matters. And while the significant benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, many users, particularly casual users, do not like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are some of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is indeed popular.

Lots Of Customization Options In The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

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

GeneratePress Utilizes the WordPress Customizer for customization, which can be convenient as you’ll be able to see all of the changes that you create in real time.

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

For Example, if you go into the Design region, you can configure detailed settings to your:

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

Similarly, The Typography place lets you control the font to get each and every element on your site, such as 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 a lot more customization choices in the WordPress Customizer compared to most other topics. This level of detail may be a little overwhelming if you are a beginner. But as soon as you realize the way the settings come together, you will have complete control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Quick Page Load Times

Across All of its attributes, GeneratePress always has a focus on excellent performance and clean code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it 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 surpass 1 MB!

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

Put That together, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I conducted a small test.

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

• Had a performance tier of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 moments
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

That’s Not bad at all! But GeneratePress can perform.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on exactly the exact same test website without changing anything else. Here is how GeneratePress failed:

• Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
• 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 other themes, you are going to continue to find that GeneratePress is among those fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. WordPress Theme Code

Other Useful Premium Extensions, Plus A Modular Approach

Beyond Giving you more style controls from the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other helpful 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 on a per-page basis.
• Sections — that is kind of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create separate”sections” onto a webpage, each with their own layout and column preferences.

To Stay lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you a modular interface where you could select and choose exactly which features you want to activate.

That Way, you do not have to slow your site down for a feature which you’ll never 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 left the theme difficult for casual users to set up.

Earlier In 2018, however, the developer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users that lets 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 on a few buttons to import a presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Detailed 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 past that.

GeneratePress Changes that by giving you a brand 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 (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose how many footer widgets to use
• Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, article title, or footer
• Produce a special”container” for your page builder

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

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

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Heart GeneratePress motif is available for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are serious about using GeneratePress, I believe you need to purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that is what produces the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t give you almost as numerous configurations from the WordPress Customizer. And you will also miss out on the premade Site Library.

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

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

Wrap-up

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

If You desire a niche-specific motif, you can probably save time by buying a theme that fits your requirements for your market from day one.

However, If you’re ready to spend some time altering settings, GeneratePress’ style controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you may even have the ability to find a starter website that fits your needs to save a little time.

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

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, so you should have no problem making your site load in under one second. WordPress Theme Code

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.