Question: What is GeneratePress?
Answer: It’s a WordPress theme that a small business owner can customize in almost any way they need.
Is GeneratePress a theme or a plugin?
- GeneratePress is a free theme
- you can buy a plugin that adds more options and settings to that theme
- and GenerateBlocks page layout plugin integrates seamlessly with GeneratePress
First you install the GeneratePress free theme
It’s a clean and fast loading WordPress theme. You can make a great looking website using the free theme.
The GeneratePress premium plugin
Adding the GeneratePress premium plugin, to the GeneratePress free theme, makes it easy for you to customize your website layout and styling. After buying and installing the premium plugin you also get access to the site library. But if you prefer, you can build and customize your site yourself from scratch. You’re not forced to start with one of the ready made layouts in the site library.
The GenerateBlocks free plugin
The developer who built and maintains GeneratePress theme has built a page layout plugin that makes it easy to customize the content area of your posts and pages.
If you’re happy with a good, clean and simple WordPress theme. Use the GeneratePress free theme on it’s own.
If you want to customize the header, footer and sidebars of your site, use GeneratePress premium add-on.
To customize the content area of your web pages, use the free GenerateBlocks plugin.
What is GeneratePress: a recap
It’s a theme that you can download from the WordPress.org site, the theme is free.
Styling the header, footer and sidebars
If you want more control, you can buy a premium plugin that adds a lot of styling and layout settings and options to that free theme. This lets you customize the header, footer and sidebars of your site.
The page content area
You can also install a free page layout plugin called GenerateBlocks. GenerateBlocks styles the content area of your pages and posts. It’s made by the same developer, and works seamlessly with the free theme. If you have the GeneratePress premium plugin installed on your website, GenerateBlocks works seamlessly with that plugin too.
So that’s three things…
- A free theme that you install via your WordPress dashboard.
- A premium plugin that you buy (optional).
- And a free page builder plugin called GenerateBlocks.
Why is GeneratePress so highly regarded?
The lead developer is Tom Usborne. He takes security, stability, SEO, page load speed, and customer support seriously.
Some theme developers add every bell and whistle they can find in an attempt to be all things to all customers. Tom takes a different approach. He’s built the theme around best practices, the code and the functions the theme performs have both been well thought out and carefully planned.
For instance, expert designers rarely recommend sliders, and you’ll rarely see sliders in Tom’s themes or plugins. If you want a slider on your site, you would add it via a third party plugin. Which is exactly how it should be.
If you find a feature in Tom’s themes or plugins, you can be sure that feature is well coded. And, if included in your small business website. You can be sure that feature will help you win customers, not scare customers away.
GeneratePress includes the features your small business website needs, without the bloat and excess you’ll find in some less well thought out themes.
This theme is highly regarded because it is high quality. In my opinion, it’s worth much more than it costs.