Sorry

I already made a support ticket several months ago. The advice was simply to reduce the number of resources my site loads or try a caching plugin like autoptimize.

However, this didn’t work. I disabled every single plugin and downloaded autoptimize, but it still got the same error for months.

To be honest, this is like my 20th website. I have used every major theme there is.

Generate Press was the only theme that caused this failed google mobile test.

….
I made this review because I spent weeks (maybe months) wasting time on this theme building my site. I dont care about the $50 cost of the theme. I care about the lost hours building the site and lost revenue from crappy SEO caused by failed mobile test. I have to redo everything on this site with my new theme.
….

My advice to everyone reading is this:

Do not believe google has ‘false positives’ or that google’s mobile-friendly warnings don’t mean much. They surely do.

If your website isn’t focused solely on PPC, then SEO is probably your number one priority. Do you honestly believe that major from warnings from Google about your site, in particular, should be ignored? I would suggest not.

As we’ve said a few times already, we would be happy to help you debug those issues. When you first posted this review, I was hoping we’d be able to work together to resolve it, but it seems like that was never your intention, unfortunately.

The issues you mentioned:

• Clickable elements too close together
• Text too small to read

The theme, by default, does not have these errors. If it did, every single website using our theme would have them. Luckily, anyone can test a GP site to see those errors are not normal.

Here’s the test: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly

Our URL: https://generatepress.com
Our speed test: https://speedtest.generatepress
The preview provided by WP.org: https://wp-themes.com/generatepress

That does not mean these errors can’t happen. The theme has options that you can change, like your font sizes and overall spacing, which can lead to issues if they’re configured in a way that’s not mobile-friendly. This is where we’re able to help and point out the issue areas so that these errors can be resolved.

I’m sorry that you feel you wasted your time, and I wish you nothing but luck with your website.

You’re right it’s not my intention to debug (note I did already ask for support and described it above). I’ve moved on from Generate Press.

I’m sure your preview pages are in good shape, but my demo page wasn’t, sorry to say. I added the demo and this issue came up on google within weeks. In terms of other links, here’s another one about the theme not having mobile friendly issues out the box:

https://www.bing.com/search?q=generatepress+mobile+test+google+site%3ageneratepress.com

I don’t recall changing the font and padding etc until after I found this issue, but even then, that shouldn’t cause this issue. The pages look and appear perfectly fine, its just that google thinks otherwise, and I cant have a website that google thinks there is an issue.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by alfrapper.
• This reply was modified 4 years ago by alfrapper.

We managed to track back your Support topic from 4 months ago. The original URL you posted was still in our secure archive. And that site is still running GeneratePress.

I checked the site across multiple devices. All visual tests passed with the site rendering correctly and no visible mobile issues were displayed. I also checked the network requests that had been made and there were significantly fewer than the 76 that was referenced in the original support topic. So some changes have been made.

I then performed a Google Mobile Friendly test on the URL, which failed.
I checked the Page Loading Issues > View Details:

There are a total of 9 Page Resources, a mixture of CSS and Javascript files that Failed to load. All of which are required to render the site correctly. All of these files are being served from a 3rd party CDN ( secureservercdn.net ). Each of them are displaying the Other Error.

You can read more about the Other Error from a Google Platinum expert here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/4425254?hl=en&msgid=4426601

In summary the issue is related to Google not being able, or willing to wait, to load the necessary resources required to render the site correctly. Which leads to it failing the test. Whereas in the real world the site loads correctly without error. Hence this is a false negative, but it is important that this issue is resolved.

There can be many reasons as to why those files cannot be loaded. From various other tests i performed it seems most likely that one of the following is the cause:

1. The CDN is denying google bots requests.
2. The redirect to the CDN and the response time from the server is taking too long and Google simply moves on without them.
3. The files are being transferred as a Mime Type, which a browser may interpret correctly but Google does not.

I would recommend speaking with the provider of the CDN to see if they can explain the issue. Their server logs should hold any requests being made by google bot, and they can check to see if there are security protocols blocking them or any related server errors. The alternative method would be to remove the CDN to eliminate that as the main cause.

If i can be clear, GeneratePress has no control over, or does it any way interfere with, how your server setup is delivering those files. This is not Theme related. In regard to your bing searches, anyone wanting to read those topics will see that those issues were resolved and none of them were directly related to an issue with the Theme.

I hope the information above provides some clarity on the issue.

Apparently all of your issues are unrelated to the theme. Why did you decide to give it a 1 star rating when the team is still trying to help you fix it, even though it’s related to your CDN and the amount of plugins you installed?

This review is completely absurd! ??

And after all this mess, the apology is a mere ‘sorry’. Anyway, Read this.

Glad everyone’s on the same page. If you’re willing to share the link, I’m sure there’s a lot of us that would be happy to look at it and see what else you might be able to optimize.

@alfrapper Glad to hear that the issue has been resolved. And thank you for changing the review!

@alfrapper Thanx for correcting your review.

I used to work with Elementor (Pro) and liked the interface, but for new sites I am now on the WordPress block editor, plus GenerateBlocks for layouts and some other specialized blocks if necessary.

If you’re working with GeneratePress, you might wanna give GenerateBlocks a try.