I am using the GeneratePress theme, pretty happy with it so far
A few months ago, I decided to give the GeneratePress theme a spin and opted to pay for the premium version as the licensing terms are generous in my opinion.
I have been playing with it on my new MMO website and it is coming along nicely.
I discovered three "buts" in the last few days:
1. I was not using the right hand sidebar and decided I wanted to. It turned out that the default background was a "horrible orange" in my opinion. I went through the options in WordPress customiser to change. I thought I changed the right things, but they just did not take effect. In the end I ended up changing some CSS code inside of the customizer and it did the trick for me. Yipeee, happy days.
2. I wrote over time a page of over 9,000 words for my main offer. I wrote it as a page, and this theme has sections so I used sections to help me manage the process. As a page, I was not going to use comments and then had a change of heart. I enabled comments for the page. And it did not take. I thought it was because it was a page. But not so. I discovered today that if sections are used when writing pages or posts, that comments can not be used.
3. When using sections for posts or pages, the right hand side sidebar can not be displayed.
I looked around in the developers website. The developer in those discussions indicated that it was not possible for them to add that functionally to sections (they do not know which section to apply the comments to. I saw a potential solution. But no matter what I did, the potential solution did not work for me.
I have asked the developer's help desk / forum to supply more detailed "step by step" instructions as I am pretty sure that I must have missed something.
Anyway I submitted my request to their help desk / forum earlier today and we see over the next while how that plays out. They do have a major update coming out soon, so I guess that they will be tied up with that. The documentation for which does not mention this and the developer said in the forum that a fix for it would not be forthcoming.
For the moment, I will not be using sections when writing new posts or pages. I may have to redo the pages I done already that use sections so that they no longer do.
The other problem I noticed is that when using sections, that the right hand sidebar can not be used either.
Something to bear in mind if the theme you use uses sections. They may or may not have these problems. If they have these problems, and you know up front, at least then you know.
Apart from these "buts" I am overall pretty happy with the theme.
Recent Comments
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Hi David,
Thx for this review 0 more specifically the issues you had with using sections. Good to keep them in mind .
Thx.
Missed to ask, do you have any idea how to have a blog roll with icons images instead of those gigantic features images? This is something I would love to change.
In the premium version, it looks like the following would do this:
WordPress Dashboard
Appearance
Customize
Layout
Blog
Displays Content
-> go down to "featured image"
3 options -> archive, posts and pages
Go into each one and change what needs to be changed
When done with changes, update.
Hopefully all of this functionally is available in the free version as well.
Peace,
David
I stopped using GP for that reason, and moved to Thrive, which has given me no more frustrations ; )
I will be sticking with GP for the moment anyway. I just will not be writing new pages/posts using their "sections" functionally.
I use generatepress. I have not had the issues u have mentioned BUT I don’t think I know as much as you do. And I use Elementor with this theme.
Laura
The right hand sidebar background color being a "horrible orange" was changed with a bit of CSS. And the other issues are because I generated those pages using "sections" functionally. Live and learn.
I am unlikely to use "sections" functionally in the future. I like to have flexibility where I decide things on the fly and which I can also change on the fly.
I have never used Elementor myself although I heard it mentioned a few times. How to do find elementor?
Peace,
David
You can search for Elementor n Google. It has a basic and pro version. I do have the pro but the basic offers many options that most basic plugins do not.
check it out. I love it. It works well with GeneratePress.
Laura
This is a popular theme and gets good reviews. Is the Premium so much better than the Free version Dave?
Up to a few months ago, I was using free themes and was thinking about changing the one I was on at the time called "ShootingStar".
It hadn't been updated for ages and I felt that it may have been lacking some of the more recent advances. So changing the theme was a job on the "to do" list with a low priority for some time.
Then Jay during one of his live trainings opted to use the "GeneratePress" theme and he went for the premium version. I liked what I saw and did some research and went for it. I opted straight away for the premium version, after exploring that option on their website.
I am pretty happy with it so far. I like it.
Apart from this minor bump in the road with "sections" not having comments in place (I have now implemented a workaround) and the right hand sidebar not being displayed in "sections".
I did not use the free version of the theme for long before getting the premium version, so I can't say how the free version compares against the premium version.
Here's where you find details relating to the premium version:
https://generatepress.com/premium/
For me, it is worth it. The licensing terms are generous. I can use it on all of my websites, not just one.
1. I use this theme in one site and the right sidebar is just like in any other. Not sure what you mean by orange. See the screesnhot.
2 and 3. Not sure what you mean by sections. If this means some H2 or H3 sub-headings, I am using them and have no issues with the sidebar at all.
There are several steps/options to enable comments. I have a comment box, did not do anything special to get it there. See the screenshot.
I use the free version.
Be wary of free themes, I was a an absolute raver on Free themes, then encountered difficulties and ran into problems, so switched to premium and bang... Happy days and more benefits, including better support
The problem is with the "sections" functionally. This is functionally built into the theme (paid version anyway) that allows you to build up a page or post into a number of logical sections. This is different to the H2 or H3 thing you thought I might have meant.
Each section can have its own background (image or color), and display attributes (display links in one color in one section and another color in another section for instance). You might do this because it is hard to see text on certain backgrounds.
With sections you can move them about. You might have an introduction section, concept 1 section, concept 2 section, concept 3 section, and a wrap up section.
You might decide to re-organise to introduction section, concept 3 section, concept 1 section, concept 2 section and a wrap up section.
With sections this is achieved in seconds.
With a traditional post/page, you would be using "copy and paste", and "delete" and hoping that you did not delete the wrong stuff.
Time consuming.
Anyway, if you go to Jay's eyewear website you see "sections" on his home page:
https://colorblindeyewear.com/
The welcome text and background is in one "section". It has an image as a background and text in the image.
When you page down you see another "section" - the top selling area.
Behind the scenes, he built that page up as two sections. I think.
If you go to his "blog" page, you see the "horrible orange background" thing I mentioned.
https://colorblindeyewear.com/blog/
In my case, the first and only thing in my sidebar is quite long and looked horrible with the orange background.
With the paid for version of the theme, you have access to a number of pre-build looks built with the theme. I am using the same pre-build look as Jay called Marketer. It has that color "issue" (for me) with the sidebar. I corrected that in my case, by changing some CSS.
The developer of the theme answered my question yesterday (less than 3 hours after I asked the question and very early in the morning his time, so fair play to him) and I was able to add comments to my page built using sections. It was a tiny bit of "black magic" regarding some PHP code and specifying the correct way to use that PHP code in the "bottom" section of my post which did the trick. I did everything correctly except specifying the correct way to use that PHP code.
Live and learn.
For future posts and pages, it is very possible that I will not use sections. As it is, I have the "long over 9,000 word page" with comments working now, but I can not have a sidebar on it. And my current thinking is that I want to use a sidebar on that article. I do more thinking on that one.
OK, now I understand this about sections, have not been aware of the feature. It looks cool must say.
This orange I have noticed in several sites around, so it comes with the pro version. The free version is without it.
Now I know whom to ask if I decide to buy the pro version, so far the free one is fine, I am using it on a new site.
Thank you for the detailed explanation.
It sounds like you had a really bad experience with at least one free theme. Not good.
I changed from the free theme I was using earlier to GP Premium. The free theme I was using was goodish but had not been updated for a while and I felt that it was not taking advantage of the latest advances (hardware, software, WordPress 5, etc). Because it was free, the developer was not motivated to update it.
I do expect premium versions of themes to have something that justifies their cost otherwise why would you bother.
There is a place for both free and premium versions of themes for sure.
Yes, the orange thing is with the "Marketer" layout included with the premium version. There are other layouts that you can use with the premium version, they may or may not have this orange thing.
Thrilled to hear that you are finding the free one fine.
Yes I did have a bad experience with a free theme, but switched to Thrive Membership and not had a problem since
Premium themes come with more benefits and allows you to do more, in fact I have and am documenting this in my own WP training centre which a long held ambition of mine
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Someone else mentioned GeneratePress so I put it on a small site of mine now hosted elsewhere that I am planning to move here when I get it ready. My site speed went way up!
Then I went looking for info about the Pro version and found this. I can live with all that and will go get it soon.
Thanks!
Thrilled to hear that. Hope it all goes well for you. I like that they are not greedy and that the licence covers all of your websites (if you opt to use it on all) for no additional fee.
Jay the WA chief trainer used this theme when he was doing some live training earlier in 2019.