You might have noticed a lot of theme developers advertising highly performant load speeds for their themes. This is a bit wrong, mostly because there are a lot of factors that can affect the load speed, not the actual theme itself. We try to avoid these kind of advertisements because the burden itself relies on the user, not necessarily the theme developer.

Now don’t get me wrong, the code matters a lot, for example, unlike other themes, this one actually seriously considers this problem of resource loading and treats it accordingly. For example the page builder’s elements CSS & JS resources (stuff that can affect page load) are loaded mostly on demand only. If something is not used, it isn’t loaded. Many themes load absolutely everything that they have included which is of course wrong.

So if the theme developer is using proper coding standards and avoids pushing too many resources that are not actually used, the rest of the speed improvements relies on the user.

To start improving the page speed, you can first start by checking the Chrome Developer Tools’ – Network tab, more at https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/profile/network-performance/resource-loading?hl=en . You’ll see an in-depth overview of what’s actually loading on your website/page.

Improvements:

1) Combine and minify the CSS / JS resources. You could use a plugin such as Autoptimize https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/ .

2) Cache your page to server it statically. You could use WP Super Cache https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/ . Serving pages statically means all queries and resources are served from cache, rather than dynamically loaded. In a WordPress website (or any general CMS websites), a lot of stuff is happening in the background (database queries, etc.), and also for each visitor they’re running. If providing a cached version of your website, it’ll mean pages it will just be loaded from cache.

3) Reduce images filesize. This is a general rule to optimize images as they’re the biggest cause of a website slow speed. You could use an automatic tool such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/ which will compress images without losing quality.

4) Disable all un-needed plugins. If it’s not used, remove/deactivate it. It’s likely activated plugins (although unused in the entire website), will load several resources.

5) Use a CDN ( Content Delivery Network ) to serve files. Read more here https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/top-cdn-services-to-make-your-wordpress-site-blazingly-fast/ . We’re using MaxCDN and we’re very happy with it.

Improve speed with Page speed https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ . While it’s almost impossible to get a 100 score without making some weird hacks, you could surely get a higher score. If you’re not a tech savvy or can’t handle such tasks, try hiring a professional with affordable rates from Envato Studio.

Doing these steps will surely improve the speed of your website and do keep in mind that while they may seem optional, they’re not. It’s strongly recommended to solve them on a modern website.