I was inspired to write this post because in the past two weeks I was asked to review OR solve problems on a few websites (built by someone else) and coincidentally 3 of them were using the same theme. One of the biggest complaints was speed. Page Speed can be affected by many things:
- How well designed the theme is
- How many plugins are used
- Whether the plugins used are designed well
- How many “requests” a page makes (requests are mostly images, scripts, and css files)
- Whether Image Compression is used or not
- Whether Caching is used or not (there are many types of caching)
- How many CSS and JS files are used
- Whether CSS files and JS files are minified
- The quality of the hosting
Why Multi-Purpose Themes are Slow
This is not an attack on Themeforest, this is a problem common to almost any theme vendor. Two of the most popular WordPress Themes on Themeforest are described as Multi-Purpose because they can do so much from portfolio websites to e-commerce. The reason they are slow is that they are bloated with features and multiple ways of doing things, many of which are not used because most websites don’t need every feature. Most recently I worked on a site that used the Avada theme and I couldn’t help noticing that it included several slider plugins (even though the website didn’t use any sliders!)
This illustrates that part of the problem is the “designer.” Most web designers aren’t thinking, they are just doing which is why they just “grab a theme” that looks good (or worse let the client choose) instead of planning what they want a website to look like and how it will function. A good web developer will take the time to disable things that aren’t needed. Just because a theme comes with 3 slider plugins doesn’t mean you can’t deactivate them.
A good developer will test plugins and compare how lightweight they are so they can build a site that is fast loading which is good for SEO.
Authors Note: So much has changed since we wrote this post in 2017 we have to address Page Builders more carefully.
Frank Gómez, Owner of Empowered Marketing
A Smarter Approach to Building a Website with WordPress
Actually create only the layouts you need. We recommend keeping headers and footers consistent across the entire website and if you add elements above or below the main content area be sure to do it thoughtfully.
There are at least 100 page builders out there but only a handful are solid and well supported. Most importantly be sure that the page builder you choose is accessible. (Most are not, most are only partially accessible so you have be careful which modules you choose to use)
Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
Figure out how to do something the simplest, smartest way instead of hunting for plugins. The more plugins your site uses the more problems you will have and in some cases the less secure your website will be.
Another big mistake designers make with layout builders and drag and drop themes is to try to create the entire layout using drag and drop elements. Sometimes you can just use some CSS to accomplish what you want. The biggest joke is when a drag and drop tool doesn’t work as well as the functions already built in to WordPress. I recently tested a gallery created using a module the Divi Plugin by Elegant Themes instead of using the standard WordPress gallery function plus a colorbox or lightbox like Simple Colorbox. The standard gallery function plus colorbox loads faster and uses either thumbnails or medium sized images while the gallery module in Divi uses the full size images instead. This is minor item but it has a huge impact on site speed.
A good resource for web design.
If you are hiring a web designer make sure they are also a “developer” and like to think and challenge themselves. If you are a designer, strive to learn enough so you can be considered a developer. Learn some CSS, test various tools and challenge yourself to work smarter so you can give your client a higher quality result.