The perfect wordpress dev workflow with GP?

Hi,

I have a rather general question to optimize my WordPress development workflow. I hope GeneratePress can be a way to achieve my goal. First of all: sorry for the longer text, but this topic is bothering me every time I start a new project. Maybe this way I can help others who are in the same situation (I’m sure there are many). For this reason, I am posting here in the forum and not using the pre-sales form – I hope that’s OK.

My situation:
I’ve been developing WordPress sites as a freelancer for clients for many years and have gone a long (suffering) way:

• Foundation, partly created with Sage Roots or _s). Often I get layouts which are individual and need to be implemented very precisely. This way works, but is very time consuming and often a bit inflexible.
• I work a lot with Advanced Customer Fields Pro (ACF) Relations/Post Objects and Custom Post Types. Often I have also built my own little “page builders” with ACF Flexible Fields (usually a bit rigid).
• Lately I have also used Divi to save time. Basically good because flexible. BUT: I don’t need 70% of the modules, I have to write workarounds via shortcodes even for simple things and most important: it’s bloated and slow. Especially in conjunction with WPML (also very sluggish but often unavoidable). I’m talking about load times of 5-10 seconds and more. Caching can straighten out a lot of things, but using it in such a slow backend is an imposition.

Now I think it’s time to say goodbye to ACF Flexible Fields and Page Builders and give Gutenberg a chance, am I wrong? I really hope GeneratePress becomes my new Swiss Army Knife and would be incredibly happy to get some insider insights on how you or others solve the problems and what a good workflow (best practices) might look like.

What I envision:

• A solid and fast base for all WordPress projects (whether small sites, large multilingual site (WPML) or Woocommerce sites).
• The possibility to change all areas (for example a completely individual navigation, no need for !important css etc.). I assume that I will almost always work with child themes (that’s where I use my SCSS, JS bundle workflow with Gulp).
• Blocks for Gutenberg to quickly create common grids/layouts (sections/rows/columns). Custom blocks instead of shortcodes for sliders, relationships, etc. (via ACF Blocks) to get custom-fit solutions.
• The possibility to release the backend or blocks specifically for the customer to avoid user errors (not all blocks should be editable).
• An easy way to also build templates of custom post types or similar on an existing grid/CSS and not load additional frameworks.
• As light as possible, as fast as possible, not many presets and modules – but just the few right ones to be able to react flexibly and to be fast 😉

Sorry again for the long text. Maybe I don’t see the wood for the trees and you can give me a push in the right direction. Have I found what I am looking for with GeneratePress? What would you guys recommend as insiders on how to set up for the future with WordPress?

Many Thanks 🙂
Best, Achim

• This topic was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by agssl.