GeneratePress

Building My “Standard” Demo Site

Standard is a WordPress website that I’ve set up to demonstrate how I use my favourite theme, GeneratePress, with its Premium plugin.

Please note that this is an affiliate link, as described on my Privacy and Cookie Notice page. I am happy to recommend GeneratePress and you can find out why it’s my favourite theme by reading my blog post “Flexible, Customisable WordPress Themes“.

This is an ongoing exercise and I intended to add to this article as I build the site. I’ll use this as an overview of the project, and will include links to other articles, both on this website and elsewhere, that go into more detail.

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Building My “Boxed” Demo Site – Part 1

Boxed is a WordPress website that I’ve set up to demonstrate how I use my favourite theme, GeneratePress, with its Premium modules.

Please note that this is an affiliate link, as described on my Privacy and Cookie Notice page. I am happy to recommend GeneratePress and you can find out why it’s my favourite theme by reading my blog post “Flexible, Customisable WordPress Themes“.

The Boxed site demonstrates the following:

  • colours and fonts set using GeneratePress Premium’s customiser options
  • the “separate containers” layout
  • different backgrounds for the body and content areas of the site
  • blog posts with a masonry grid layout.

This first article explains how I set up and customised the website. Part two will be about using the FooGallery and Smart Slider 3 plugins to add galleries and a slideshow.

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Flexible, Customisable WordPress Themes

There are a couple of different approaches to choosing a WordPress theme:

  1. Try to find a theme that looks just how you want it straight out of the box (or with a few small tweaks). Then just add your own text and images
  2. Choose a plain looking, but flexible, theme as a starting point and customise it to look just as you want it to.

I favour the 2nd approach, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

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WordPress Website Checklist

Here are the steps I take when setting up a WordPress website. I’ve included links to some of the plugins I use, and to helpful articles with more comprehensive instructions. I’m not claiming this is all necessarily best practice, but it’s what I do.

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Alternatives to WordPress Page Builders

UPDATE: This article was written before the release of the WordPress block editor (a.k.a. Gutenberg). I have written a new blog post using the block editor.

Page Builders have become so popular that sometimes new WordPress users get the impression that they are expected to use one. My own view is that it’s best to keep things simple and use a page builder only if you have a need for it.

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