best wordpress theme to address the latest google webspeed tests

[dogstyle007]

Don't use WordPress and don't use any free/paid themes.
You can achieve everything with your own code, which can be about 90% smaller (even if you minify everything and apply all sorts of cache).

You mean coding your blog from scratch, like using php ?

 

[Lamarr]

You mean coding your blog from scratch, like using php ?

Yes. I don't know, but it is nothing hard.. You create simple sites, simple blogs with only some posts, maybe some comments.
But Wordpress is huge.. I think it's not always necessary to use it (otherwise you are building big project, with e-shop, forum etc..).
I suggest to not be afraid of programming. You just need like 3 simple database tables, some PHP knowlage and you are good to go.
You don't even have to create administration part of your site - you can insert new posts through PHPMyAdmin or direct SQL.
Just go through Wordpress source code sometimes.. it's a mess and I guarantee that a lot of people here doesn't need 3/4 of it's features.
For example, Yoast SEO plugin - it just do absolutely nothing.. If you study a little bit of SEO by yourself, you just don't need it.

 

[irishengteacher]

I'm using Performag from Thrive on one of my sites. I have done the A to Z of speeding up my site, which I mostly got from Shree's Amazon Affiliate course. So Wp Supercache, I use Wp Optimize every few months to tidy up the database, I also Smush all images using WP Smush, and started using Cloudfare as a CDN to speed things up.

What's odd is the HTML load time is 4 to 5 seconds. I did an analysis on Siteliner, a site I read about last week. Apparently my page load time is in the slowest 1% of the entire internet, some achievement.

Dunno if it is solely due to the theme, but it is on my to do list to do some digging on.

Replying to my own comment in case it helps someone else. I've spent the last 90 minutes or so reading up on what I can to help speed up my site.

I mainly use https://www.webpagetest.org/ for speed test and also https://gtmetrix.com/ which is free to register for but you don't need to register

I read this about slow plugins:

https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/the-slowest-wordpress-plugins-and-alternatives-to-try-instead/

And of course I had number 1 and 2 on the list, Broken Link Checker and Contact Form 7.

So I deleted Broken Link Checker and then I discovered that Thrive have added their own contact form which is cool and fully customisable, so I used it instead of Contact Form 7.

I then just did a lot of trial and error of disabling a plugin I thought wasn't essential and then redoing the test on webpagetest.org.

After a lot of fluting about I disabled Async Javascipt, which was a plugin I added in order to try and speed up the site so was probably not needed.

Far Future Expiry, which apparently should speed up your site overall and is recommended on GTMetrix, but it seems to slow down the time to first byte, TTFB ,and page load time on my site.

Redirection, which helps you do 301 redirects etc, I'm guessing I don't need it active all the time.

UpdraftPlus for backups, I probably only need to do backups once a week or so. I can just activate it, do the backup every so often myself and then deactivate it.

And as suggested above, I disabled Yoast, as I pretty much know what I should do for on-page SEO myself at this stage. I can always activate after every few posts to review everything and make sure it's setup right and then deactivate again.

But it has made a massive saving on time. My site has tolerable page load speed now.

I also installed, used, then deleted WP Optimize to tidy up my database which is good housekeeping to do every couple of months.

 

[fb3003]

Replying to my own comment in case it helps someone else. I've spent the last 90 minutes or so reading up on what I can to help speed up my site.

I mainly use https://www.webpagetest.org/ for speed test and also https://gtmetrix.com/ which is free to register for but you don't need to register

I read this about slow plugins:

https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/the-slowest-wordpress-plugins-and-alternatives-to-try-instead/

And of course I had number 1 and 2 on the list, Broken Link Checker and Contact Form 7.

So I deleted Broken Link Checker and then I discovered that Thrive have added their own contact form which is cool and fully customisable, so I used it instead of Contact Form 7.

I then just did a lot of trial and error of disabling a plugin I thought wasn't essential and then redoing the test on webpagetest.org.

After a lot of fluting about I disabled Async Javascipt, which was a plugin I added in order to try and speed up the site so was probably not needed.

Far Future Expiry, which apparently should speed up your site overall and is recommended on GTMetrix, but it seems to slow down the time to first byte, TTFB ,and page load time on my site.

Redirection, which helps you do 301 redirects etc, I'm guessing I don't need it active all the time.

UpdraftPlus for backups, I probably only need to do backups once a week or so. I can just activate it, do the backup every so often myself and then deactivate it.

And as suggested above, I disabled Yoast, as I pretty much know what I should do for on-page SEO myself at this stage. I can always activate after every few posts to review everything and make sure it's setup right and then deactivate again.

But it has made a massive saving on time. My site has tolerable page load speed now.

I also installed, used, then deleted WP Optimize to tidy up my database which is good housekeeping to do every couple of months.

what kind of numbers did you get on google pagespeed test?

 

[magicjones]

I'm using Performag from Thrive on one of my sites. I have done the A to Z of speeding up my site, which I mostly got from Shree's Amazon Affiliate course. So Wp Supercache, I use Wp Optimize every few months to tidy up the database, I also Smush all images using WP Smush, and started using Cloudfare as a CDN to speed things up.

What's odd is the HTML load time is 4 to 5 seconds. I did an analysis on Siteliner, a site I read about last week. Apparently my page load time is in the slowest 1% of the entire internet, some achievement.

Dunno if it is solely due to the theme, but it is on my to do list to do some digging on.

I used Thrive themes before and had that same problem. Switched to GeneratePress and got it down to 1-2 seconds. I also use WP Rocket cache plugin for speed and Clearfy to remove some bloat which helps.

 

[irishengteacher]

what kind of numbers did you get on google pagespeed test?

Since I posted that my times are jumping all over the place. It was right down to about 0.6 sec TTFB, thought I had everything solved. Try it again a few mins later and it jumped out to 5 secs again. I have all those plugins disabled now and it seems to have steadied to around 0.8s TTFB which is not ideal but a massive improvement on 4/5scs.

I have run Google Page Speed twice today. Once with all plugins disabled and terrible 4/5sec TTFB and got something like 37 on mobile which is horrific and then something around 80 on Desktop which is ok.

I just ran it again now that my TTFB has steadied to 0.8s and I'm getting 53 mobile and 93 desktop.

I used Thrive themes before and had that same problem. Switched to GeneratePress and got it down to 1-2 seconds. I also use WP Rocket cache plugin for speed and Clearfy to remove some bloat which helps.

Thanks for the tip, I looked into WP Rocket cache before, it does seem to be the best and probably worth the money, will look into it again and your other tips.

 

[Defeatenonce]

I tried alot of different themes. But the only thing where I was able to achieve 100/100 is by not using wordpress. Sinds wordpress will always add scripts on every theme

 

[raylewis98]

Guys just switch to Litespeed Server with Lscache if you are using wordpress. Use their Litespeed Cache plugin. Everything is included: Cache, HTML/CSS/JS Minification including inline. Combine CSS and JS, optimizes images and also converts it to webp, lazy loading, db optimization and so on. Then use Cloudflare, better if you have railgun then just make a pagerule to cache wp-content/uploads, if theres no railgun, cache everything.

I previously used W3 Total Cache and wp rocket on some sites, but I ditched it once I found the perfect settings for my sites with Litespeed.

 

[dogstyle007]

Yes. I don't know, but it is nothing hard.. You create simple sites, simple blogs with only some posts, maybe some comments.
But Wordpress is huge.. I think it's not always necessary to use it (otherwise you are building big project, with e-shop, forum etc..).
I suggest to not be afraid of programming. You just need like 3 simple database tables, some PHP knowlage and you are good to go.
You don't even have to create administration part of your site - you can insert new posts through PHPMyAdmin or direct SQL.
Just go through Wordpress source code sometimes.. it's a mess and I guarantee that a lot of people here doesn't need 3/4 of it's features.
For example, Yoast SEO plugin - it just do absolutely nothing.. If you study a little bit of SEO by yourself, you just don't need it.

Nice one, well I'm a PHP Dev and I code with laravel framework, probably I should build a simple CMS for this purpose. However, It didn't occur to me that building a custom PHP based CMS would help in that aspect. Since you've mentioned it then I will give it a try.

 

[dogstyle007]

Guys just switch to Litespeed Server with Lscache if you are using wordpress. Use their Litespeed Cache plugin. Everything is included: Cache, HTML/CSS/JS Minification including inline. Combine CSS and JS, optimizes images and also converts it to webp, lazy loading, db optimization and so on. Then use Cloudflare, better if you have railgun then just make a pagerule to cache wp-content/uploads, if theres no railgun, cache everything.

I previously used W3 Total Cache and wp rocket on some sites, but I ditched it once I found the perfect settings for my sites with Litespeed.

I will check this out, thanks for the tips

 

[fb3003]

Nice one, well I'm a PHP Dev and I code with laravel framework, probably I should build a simple CMS for this purpose. However, It didn't occur to me that building a custom PHP based CMS would help in that aspect. Since you've mentioned it then I will give it a try.

one of our developers mentioned that we can keep our wordpress theme, but for the keyword and corresponding page that we really care about, we can create a PHP version of it. I decided against it.

 

[FamousPR]

As per my knowledge, the problem is not always with themes as we had an issue with one page where it was 76MB page size on Google speed & GTmetrix, all we had to optimize the code and database to count it less than 3MBs. It also includes smashing the images, and make it less than 3 seconds instead 42 seconds.