Generatepress vs Astra - Which WordPress Theme is Better?

so generate press or extra which is better which is faster which provides more functionality which is more user-friendly so many questions and we'll be discussing them in this video now this is totally objective and in no way biased because i love both teams and i'm a customer and a flip for both of them i use generate press for most of my blog sites and astra for most of my e-commerce sites hopefully after watching this video you'll be able to make an informed decision as to which premium wordpress theme is better for your site and if you want to buy either of the themes hopefully you can use the links in the description those are my affiliate links and if you use them thank you so much i truly appreciate your support for this channel and as a way to say thank you i will be sharing with you my free personal brand website video series created entirely with generatepress and i'll be doing more training on extra as well so if you'd like to get the video series and more free training from me you can send me an email at this address also do stick with me to the end of the video because i'm sure you'll be interested in learning how to speed up your wordpress website i have nine tips for you and i'll share them with you towards the end of the video now to make a fair comparison and show you why one is better than the other in certain aspects i'll be building up two websites from scratch the one on the left will be with generate press and the one on the right will be built with astra and i will make them look like this and to make it fair both websites will be completely new and they'll be hosted on the same server both will not use any caching and they will install the same plugins and they will use the same images and will not be built with any page builders everything is the same just the themes are different so the first thing is i want to show you that they are both hosted on the same server so i'll go to this website who is hostingthis.com and as you can see both sides have the same ip address and they are both hosted on siteground i've installed wordpress on both of them and they look exactly the same so this is our starting point and i will fast forward this so you won't be wasting an hour watching me build these sites if you are interested in knowing how i built this site from scratch using generatepress and got a 95 rating on google page speed insights you can check out this video right here i've left the link in the description as well but don't watch that now watch it after this video okay so let's go [Music] now let me pause right here to show you there are only two plugins installed the pro plugin for the theme and sg optimizer which is the default plugin installed by siteground i have not met it with the settings so both sides should have the same default settings so let me open up the settings for the pro plugins i'll activate all the features for both sides and let's go [Music] now one more plugin that i've installed is the ultimate add-ons for gutenberg this is a free plugin that will allow you to create blocks just like the one you use in page builders but this will not slow down your side and this makes a whole lot of difference so let's go again [Music] okay moment of truth let's answer the first and most important question which team is faster you saw that i built both sides up with nothing else added and all the conditions are the same let's test them in google page speed insights so as we can see here generate press is showing better results than astra in terms of speed the default file size for a blank extra theme is 50 kilobytes and for a generate press it is only 10 kilobytes so if speed is your main concern then we have a winner here now let's be objective here don't generate press wins and speed it doesn't mean that astra is inferior in fact if you compare the functionality and user friendliness i think astra wins hands down let me give you two examples let's say that i want to add menu button like this let me first show you how it is done with generate press so in the wordpress dashboard under appearance you need to select menus and at the top right corner under screen options you want to expand this and make sure that this css clusters over here is checked so once this is checked if you go down to your menu item and expand it you will see this css classes you'll want to give this menu item a name now this name needs to be used in a css code later on and if you don't understand css and codes you will have a hard time using generatepress but anyway to change the menu item into a button we need to click on customize under appearance and take note over here we want this to be a button so what we need to do is to click on additional css and we need to paste a code like this in there and immediately you will see this changed and this menu button over here this is the name we assigned for the menu item just now if you want to change the color of this button this is the color code for the border and this is the color code for the text as i said it is not user friendly or beginner friendly now let me show you how the same is done with astra so from the wordpress dashboard you need to click on customize and under header primary menu and last item in menu you want to change this to button and you'll see a separate button appearing here you can remove this get started menu item here and then you can add the button link and if you want to customize the color and style of the button you can change this button style to header button and you will see all these button options here you can click on this edit buttons is relatively easy to edit and all the changes will be reflected immediately like for example if you want to change the color you just need to click on this and change the color and you will see over here the color of the button changes so it is that simple with astra now let me give you another example let's say you want to add a page header right after the menu like this with astra all you need to do is to hover to appearance and click on page haters and then you want to add a new page header give this page header a name select the layout select the background color and play around with all the settings here and then you select display rules and i'll display this post header on all the posts so i'll select all posts and then i'll publish this and if you visit a post you'll see the page editor over here so it's relatively easy for you to customize the page header with extra now let us see how it works on generatepress with generator press they use something called elements so you need to hover to appearance and you need to select elements then you need to click on add new element then you need to select header create give this element a name i'll put in this post title here change the background color the text color to white change the padding and then select the display rules and then i will choose all the posts and then i will publish this so if i visit the site and i visit one of the blogs you'll see this page header here and then if you want to customize the phone and stuff you got to understand some css encoding otherwise it is nearly impossible for you to customize the page header easily you will need to contact the support team for help so in terms of user friendliness and features i would say astra beats generate press now the reason why generate prayers do not have this function built in their premium plug-in is because they do not want to compromise their speed being lightweight and speedy is the main focus of generate press so you really have to weigh what is more important to you is it a speed or user friendliness leave a comment down below let me know your preference for me if you are a total beginner and do not understand css coding and stuff then astra would be a better choice but if speed is your main concern then generate press is definitely better if you need help with certain things to be customized on your site you can contact generatepress their support is [Music] awesome now in terms of support depending on how complicated your questions are both astra and generate press will usually reply within 24 hours both do not have live support and both have documentations where you can refer to for astroid this is the link and for generate press this is the link now astra support uses the ticket system while generated press uses the forum style support personally i prefer the forum style because usually i do not need to contact the support after all they have probably answered the same question on the forum this way i can solve my problems much quicker that's the advantage of having an open style support system but of course due to the lack of functionality of generated prayers sometimes you still have to contact the support and they are really good at understanding your questions if you provide a visual representation the same goes for extra so in terms of support this is a tie now let's talk about [Music] integrations astra has integrated with woocommerce so that your wordpress site can be converted into an online store they have also integrated with learn dash and lifter lms which are learning management systems if you intend to teach a course or sell a course these are the tools you will need and they have additional add-ons if you are using page builders like elementor or beaver builder plus they have just integrated with toolset which is an advanced page builder that does not require any coding with generatepress they are only integration is with woocommerce and as for the learning management systems they are creating an additional free plugin that will add features for both learn dash and lifter lms but nothing has been concrete yet for this plugin in my opinion generatepress wants to maintain the most lightweight wordpress team because if you do all these team integrations it will increase the file size of the team and could slow down the team performance so in terms of integration i would say astra is much better at this by now you should see that both team developers have different focus astra is more focused on user friendliness and then speed is their secondary priority while generatepress focuses on speed first and then the user friendliness with that said even without integration both astra and generated press should generally work with any other wordpress plugins [Music] now if you are an agency or you are a freelancer helping many clients develop their websites you would prefer extra over generated press at this moment because astra has a white label feature while generate press doesn't if you want a white label function with generate press you still need to have some coding knowledge which again is not user friendly finally it comes down to the price [Music] generate press only has one pricing plan you can either go yearly costing 59 or getting the lifetime plan for 249 with astra there are three plans astra pro which is compatible to the generated press premium and it costs 59 as well and the lifetime membership costs the same as generated press if you use elementor or beaver builder you can get a mini agency bundle for 169 dollars per year and they have a plan specifically for agencies that cost 249 dollars per year so if you want to get either of these teams you can check out the links in the description i will always update these links with the latest deals and discounts so that's the fight between astra and generate press astra is more focused on usability and generate press is more focused on speed honestly i love both if i create a website specifically for blogging and affiliate marketing i would use generatepress but if i'm building a website for e-commerce i would definitely go for extra that's what i would do i hope this comparison is good enough for you to make a decision and let me know in the comment section if you prefer speed over usability or is the other way around and do me a little favor can you smash that thumbs up button for me i really appreciate that also as promised i want to give you nine tips to help you speed up your wordpress website dramatically so if you have side speed problems i hope this video on the right can help you improve your site speed rating and even if you're totally new to building a wordpress site this video will help because no matter what as your site grows speed issues will surface and this video will help you minimize those problems thank you so much for sticking around you're awesome and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Jack Cao

Views: 2,859

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Id: Aq-TtmUlZsQ

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020