Are you looking for a new theme for your WordPress website?
Well, you’ve come to the right place because in this post, I’m going to share a multipurpose theme that you can use no matter what type of website you’re building .
GeneratePress is a popular free WordPress theme, especially among professionals who build WordPress websites for clients.
In this GeneratePress review, I’ll explain when it’s a good idea to use a theme like GeneratePress. Then, I’ll also share some of the specific features that make GeneratePress so popular and well-received.
GeneratePress Review: A Brief Introduction
GeneratePress is a multi-purpose WordPress theme, which means you can adapt it to any website niche.
According to WordPress.org, GeneratePress is active on over 100,000 sites and maintains an incredible 5-star rating with over 692 reviews .
The core GeneratePress theme is 100% free. There is also a GeneratePress Premium version . GeneratePress Premium is technically a plugin that is installed with the free theme. It extends the theme with more features.
What are the benefits of GeneratePress...
GeneratePress is the perfect choice for performance-conscious users who want the ability to customize and control the look and feel of their website.
You can ask GeneratePress to do just about anything. And because GeneratePress is built with performance in mind, the website you build will have a great foundation that loads quickly.
That’s why people who create WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They often pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for any type of website.
For example, GeneratePress looks like this:
Or it might look like this:
Or even something like this:
Yes – all three of these sites use GeneratePress .
But GeneratePress might not be a good fit if…
...you want something that works right out of the box and looks perfect.
For example, if you know you want to start a fashion blog, then you might be happier choosing a niche theme developed specifically for fashion bloggers.
Although GeneratePress has become much easier to use thanks to its library of pre-built sites , GeneratePress still looks very simple when you first install it.
For example, this is what a fresh install from WordPress.org looks like – you’ll notice that it looks completely different than the three GeneratePress examples I provided above:
因此，要让 GeneratePress 看起来符合您的要求，您几乎肯定需要进入并自定义内容。虽然 GeneratePress 的显著优势在于其可自定义性，但有些用户，尤其是临时用户，不喜欢自己进行这些更改。
5 Unique GeneratePress Features
Here are some specific features that explain why GeneratePress is so popular.
1. Optimize performance and fast page load times
Throughout all the features, GeneratePress has always focused on great performance and clean code. The entire theme is less than 30 kB , which is pretty much the smallest WordPress theme you can find. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And some poorly coded themes can even exceed 1 MB!
GeneratePress also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid render-blocking errors often mentioned by Google Pagespeed Insights.
Put this all together and you get a theme that loads super fast. How fast? To give you an idea, I ran a little test.
First, I built an empty website using a random popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance using Pingdom, it:
- Performance rating is 77
- Loading in 1.05 seconds
- Page size is 243.9 kB
- 15 requests received
Not bad! But GeneratePress can do better.
Next, I activated GeneratePress on the same test site without making any other changes . Here’s what GeneratePress looks like:
- Performance rating is 87 , 10 points higher
- Loading time is 666 milliseconds , which is about 37% faster
- The page size is 26.8 kB, about 90% smaller
- There are 9 requests, a reduction of about 40%
If you perform the same test on other themes, you will continue to see that GeneratePress is one of the fastest loading WordPress themes in existence.
2. Lots of customization options in the live WordPress customizer
Besides performance, another area where GeneratePress excels is its customization options.
GeneratePress uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, which is convenient because you can see all the changes you make in real time.
The free version of GeneratePress gives you a decent amount of options, but if you get GeneratePress Premium, you’ll be able to customize almost everything about your site.
For example, if you go into the Layout area, you can configure detailed settings for:
- Title – You can move the title and change its style
- Navigation – GeneratePress offers you two different navigation options including a sticky menu
- Sidebar layout – you can use one or two sidebars
- Blog post layout – such as featured image size, metadata, etc.
- Footer layout - such as how many widgets to include
Similarly, the Typography area lets you control the fonts for every element on your site, including buttons:
You also get a detailed area to control the color of every element on your site.
All in all, GeneratePress will give you more customization options in the WordPress Customizer than most other themes. If you’re a beginner, this level of detail might be a bit overwhelming. However, once you understand how the settings fit together, you’ll have full control over the look and feel of your site.
3. Page-level settings give you detailed control over each section of content
With most themes, every post and page will use the same settings for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats - but beyond that, you don’t have a lot of control.
GeneratePress changes this by providing a new layout meta box for each post and page :
You can use this meta box to:
- Change the number of sidebars your site uses or the direction of the sidebars (e.g. change the sidebar from right to left)
- Select the number of footer widgets to use
- Disable certain elements such as the header, navigation menu, post featured image, post title, or footer
- Create a special "container" for your page builder
These controls will be most useful if you use the WordPress page builder.
By disabling certain elements, you can create a proper baseline for your page builder design, making it easy to create custom content if needed.
4. Pre-made starter sites make your website design easier
In the past, you had to start from a blank canvas to build a GeneratePress site anyway, which made it difficult for the average user to set up a theme.
However, earlier in 2018, the developers added a new Site Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users , which lets you easily import any of over 25 pre-built demo sites .
You can import them directly from your WordPress dashboard:
Once the import process is finished, your site will look exactly like the demo:
Yes – the site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a few buttons to import the demo site .
5. Other useful advanced extensions and modular approaches
In addition to giving you more styling control in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium comes with a host of other useful features, such as:
- Elements – A unique feature that allows you to create custom hooks, headers or layout templates.
- Header — Allows you to create a unique header for each page.
- Sections – This is a bit like lightweight page building. It allows you to create separate “sections” on your page, each with its own layout and column settings.
To keep it lightweight, GeneratePress also provides you with a modular interface where you can choose exactly which features you want to activate:
This way, you don’t need to slow down your site due to features you’ll never use.
GeneratePress Pricing: Affordable and Works for Unlimited Sites
The core GeneratePress theme is available for free at WordPress.org.
That being said, if you really want to use GeneratePress, I think you should buy the GeneratePress Premium plugin because that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version doesn’t offer as many settings in the WordPress Customizer. And you’ll also miss out on the library of pre-made sites.
GeneratePress Premium is also pretty affordable. It costs just $39.95 and lets you use it on an unlimited number of sites . You can also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to continue receiving support and updates after the first year ( of course, you can continue to use GeneratePress after the first year without renewing - you just won’t get any more updates ).
When you consider that a typical premium WordPress theme usually costs around $60, GeneratePress offers tremendous value.
Final Thoughts on GeneratePress Theme
As I said, I don’t think GeneratePress is for everyone.
If you want a theme for a specific niche, you might save time by purchasing a theme that matches the requirements of your niche from day one.
But if you’re willing to spend some time changing the settings, GeneratePress’s styling controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you can even save some time by finding a starter site that fits your needs.
Furthermore, it is one of the fastest loading WordPress themes you can find. So if you are looking for the best performance, using GeneratePress as the basis for your WordPress website is a good decision.
If you combine this with fast loading hosting, your site should have no problem loading in under a second.
First, you can download GeneratePress from WordPress.org , then purchase and install the GeneratePress Premium plugin .
Have you tried the GeneratePress WordPress theme?
Do you like it? Why or why not?
Let us know in the comments below .
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