What’s your favorite WordPress theme? Do you use different themes with different projects? What criteria do you use to choose a WordPress theme?
I have sticked with GeneratePress for a while and I have no plans of changing any time soon.
WordPress users love GeneratePress because of the philosophy of the developer behind it.
These are my reasons for using GeneratePress in all of my sites
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GeneratePress: Alternatives
GeneratePress is a theme with more than 400,000+ and beat by few other WordPress theme such as:
| Theme | Active Installations |
| Astra | 1+ million |
| Hello | 1+ million |
| OceanWP | 700,000+ |
Will GeneratePress be able to keep up as other WordPress theme are born?:
| Kadence | 70,000+ |
| Blocksy | 100,000+ |
These are some themes which have been out there for a while and haven’t beat GeneratePress yet
| Neve | 300,000+ |
| Hestia | 100,000+ |
My History of WordPress Themes
I have used several themes during my twelve years as a blogger.
I started using themes available for WordPress.com site and then I bought GeneratePress Premium
Then I found out that Astra had better templates and I bought Astra Pro.
I also bought Eduma which was the worst investment ever since it is not as lightweight as GeneratePress and Astra.
Finally I decided to stick with GeneratePress and that’s the theme I have been using for two years or more.
What Makes a Theme the Best WordPress Theme?
There is no best WordPress theme since all publishers or creators have different needs.
I think that GeneratePress because that’s the theme I am using and I don’t feel like moving other themes like Blocksy or Kadence despite the fact that they offer way more features for free than GeneratePress
Basically these are aspects that I would have to consider if I change my existing to another WordPress Theme.
Lightweight Theme
I like to keep things as lightweight because I monetize my sites with display ads so I have to compensate for the requests that the ads will ads.
I don’t all use all the options available in GeneratePress to keep things as lightweight as possible so ads have time to load
My sites loads only one stylesheet and no scripts so I don’t feel like moving to a theme that loads by default several stylesheets and scripts.
Learning Curve
I have been playing and messing with GeneratePress and I think that I know pretty well what every option does.
If I wanted to move from my existing theme to a theme like Kadence or Blocksy, I would have to start learning what every tiny options does.
I also would have to spend some time trying to optimize it and that takes a lot of testing.
And I don’t want to do that If I don’t need to.
Support
The best support is the support that I don’t need. I don’t ask for support unless I really need it.
What I like about GeneratePress is that you can learn and find answers to your questions by reading support questions made by other users.
Sometimes you need some a snippet code and you find a detailed answer like it was you who asked for it .
Redesign Pages
I don’t mess with the posts design at all so changing themes won’t mess with everything I have written and my main source of ad revenue.
One thing I would have to spend time fixing and rebuilding is the pages.
I don’t build complex shit but rebuilding simple stuff takes hours especially if you need to do the same process for several sites.
My Gutenberg Blocks Plugin
GeneratePress has GenerateBlocks, a Gutenberg Blocks plugins built for WordPress users who love GeneratePress
Other Themes use different plugins to design their pages. Kadence uses Kadence Blocks
Astra uses Spectra, Blocksy uses Stackable and it is currently in their own blocks plugin.
If I changed my WordPress theme, I would have to learn what that plugin does and learn how to optimize it for speed.
I know that I can keep GenerateBlocks but that would prevent me from using templates from their sites libraries.
GeneratePress Premium:
I use GeneratePress for two main reasons:
- Elements to create footers and page headers
- Elements to customize my 404 page
- Elements to merge headers
- Elements to add Author Boxes
- Add CSS to certain conditionally
I use Code Snippets plugins to customize here and there so I don’t need the rest of the options in Premium
If I could find a replacement for the elements section from GeneratePress Premium, I would remove it.
More about Site Speed
These are some posts that will help you make better decisions about your site speed
