One of the best things about the WordPress CMS is the availability of a range of themes and templates. Both free and premium WordPress themes enable individuals and business owners to create their dream websites with ease. Be it a professional business website or a catalog website or a portfolio site, the right theme can make your website stand out from the crowd as well as boost website performance.
Below we will look at one of the fastest, most lightweight, and most popular WordPress themes – GeneratePress. This theme can be downloaded for free and comes with an impressive array of features. There is also an option to include additional features by purchasing the premium plan. So, let’s start with this comprehensive GeneratePress review and learn more about its features, pricing, and premium modules.
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What Is GeneratePress?
GeneratePress is a freemium WordPress theme built with a focus on usability, stability, accessibility, and speed. It has a 5-star rating on WordPress.org and has 500,000+ active installations to date. The free version of GeneratePress offers basic blogging features, which can be extended with the premium version that comes in the form of a plugin.
This WordPress theme is fully-responsive, well-coded, and compatible with page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder. It is compatible with the WooCommerce plugin and can help build an online store. It can be translated into 40 languages.
Furthermore, by using the free GenerateBlocks plugin with the premium version, you can have a complete theme-building experience without having to worry about codes. In the next part of this GeneratePress review, we will look at the key premium features.
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GeneratePress Review: Key Features
As a multipurpose theme, the free version of GeneratePress offers clean & uncluttered boxed layouts, which is ideal for blogging. Design-wise, the theme offers a lot of flexibility and is mobile, SEO, and social media friendly. It also offers multiple page and blog layouts, unlimited colors, advanced typography, custom CSS, live WordPress customizer, and more.
In this GeneratePress review, we have listed the key features of the premium GP WordPress theme. This will provide an overview of the many customization options that it offers.
Theme Builder
With the theme’s Dynamic Block Elements, users can create anything and everything they need. They can create page heroes, single post templates, site footers, 404 pages, post meta, author boxes, and more. In short, it offers complete design freedom, and the combination of premium GP plugin along with GenerateBlocks allows you to visually build every aspect of your site without fretting about code.
Site Library
The premium module of the GeneratePress theme offers an extensive site library of 100+ professionally designed websites. It provides full access to the entire site library, so you can pick and choose from the many options available and edit it to suit your needs. To build a site quickly, import a demo site, add content, and go live at the click-of-a-button. These demo sites are created using the default WordPress Editor, Beaver Builder, and Elementor.
Mobile Header, Sticky Navigation, and Secondary Nav
While the free GP theme offers different header layouts, the premium version offers a mobile header module that allows you to set a different mobile header. It also offers more design options like secondary and sticky navigation. Here, the sticky navigation module can help improve user experience, whereas the secondary nav allows you to add an extra menu, all with a different layout, color, and typography.
Masonry, Infinite Scroll, and Archive Columns
With this theme, you can display your archive blog posts in a masonry layout and use a column layout to display your blog posts. It also offers an infinite scroll option for blog archives via Vanilla JavaScript.
Advanced Layout and Hook System
For advanced theme customization, you can use the layout and hook features. With the layout system, you can change the theme layout based on advanced Display Rules. It helps you control the layout of the entire site, including pages, posts, archives, and categories. Likewise, with the advanced hook system, you can add anything you need anywhere in the theme.
More Styling Controls
This includes more typography, colors, spacing, and background images. The theme provides 100+ Google fonts that you can choose from. You can add different colors in the footer section, header, navigation, widgets, and more. The spacing module allows you to add custom white space between elements and manage margin & padding. You can also add background images to headers, pages, and the footer via the Customizer.
WooCommerce Support
The WooCommerce feature in the GeneratePress theme allows you to customize the product pages, categories, checkout pages, and more. It allows you to display a site-wide store notice and customize product display images. It also offers product display options, including product sorting and pagination (number of products shown per page).
Read: List Of Free WooCommerce Themes 2023
Why Is GeneratePress The Fastest WordPress Theme?
Being a lightweight theme, GeneratePress has an install size (Gzipped) of less than 10 KB. The free theme has a page size of 7.5KB with 2 HTTP requests and zero dependencies. The premium (plugin) version when activated can load the page in 1.2 seconds, which is ideal as speed is considered as one of the ranking factors by Google.
For example, the site Woorkup.com uses the GeneratePress theme. We tested this website on Google PageSpeed Insights, and here is the result for the same.
This is just one example of how fast and powerful this theme is. This WordPress theme has always focused on clean code and website performance optimization. Plus, as stated by the developer Tom Usborne, GeneratePress 3.0 has made this theme even more lightweight by combining 3 CSS into a single min.CSS and reducing 2 HTTP requests to one.
Read: Fastest WordPress Themes in 2023
GeneratePress Review: Pricing Plans
While the core GP theme is free to download, for more features, upgrade to the premium version that starts at $44. There are two premium plans – Yearly and Lifetime.
The yearly GeneratePress WordPress plan includes all premium features and access to the entire site library. It can be used on up to 500 websites. You get 1 year of updates and premium support. Plus, it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The lifetime GeneratePress WordPress plan offers the same – access to the entire site library, premium features, 30-day money-back guarantee, and can be used on up to 500 websites. The only difference is you get a lifetime of premium support and updates.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for the fastest WordPress theme, you can’t go wrong with GeneratePress. It is lightweight, multi-purpose, and responsive. It offers a vast selection of features in the free version, which can be further extended with the premium plan. As seen in this GeneratePress review, it also offers a range of customization, right from colors and typography to spacing, layout, navigation, and more. In addition, it offers pre-made templates and supports WordPress page builders like Elementor, Breezy Builder, and Beaver Builder.
GeneratePress WordPress theme is compatible with most WordPress plugins, including the WooCommerce plugin. It follows WCAG 2.0 standards, making it the most accessible WordPress theme. It also supports over 40+ languages, both LTR and RTL.
If you want to build a fast-loading and visually-striking website, contact us today!
FAQs
Is The GeneratePress WordPress Theme Free?
Yes, it is! The core theme is free and can be downloaded at WordPress.org. However, for premium features, you need to opt for the GeneratePress Premium plugin.
Is GeneratePress a Theme Or Plugin?
GeneratePress is a WordPress theme that also offers a premium plugin that helps add more features and functionality to the theme.
What Is The Latest Version Of GeneratePress?
The latest version of the free GeneratePress theme is 3.3.0. Whereas, the latest version of the premium GP plugin is 2.3.1.
Does GeneratePress Have a Refund Policy?
Yes, they do! GeneratePress has a no-questions-asked, 30-day refund policy.
