Commercial themes are a product, not tailored to a specific user or business. The trade off is often performance. Because the theme creators have to get a return on their time to develop the theme. Market places usually charge a 60 – 70% cut to sell on their sites to creators. So it’s competitive.
Speed is crucial to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of a website. I know it sounds like sales jargon, but there are studies that prove it. Half of your new visitors to your website spend less than 15 seconds on it. I would say less than 1 second if you slam folks with popups, have a poor layout and auto-play videos.
Code Quality
Poor coding can lead to poor performance as well for a site. As well loading too many script files and style sheets. While the size of a site is often unavoidable, for smaller sites it should be kept to a reasonable level.
Introducing Page Speed Testing Tools
Everyone seems to have one now. Google has the Page Speed Test, GTMetrix is one I like, and Pingdom is as well. Obsession over getting a 100% on your webpages is not likely. GTMetrix and others are great tools. But false negatives can still be reported. Test results vary depending upon use of the site. As well server and hardware (both server and yours) and your lovely ISP.
WordPress is actually pretty fast if properly developed on. Thus hire a experienced developer to create a theme or plugin, or use of either for your websites needs. This is where commercial themes and premium differ.
The X Theme
I’ve written a review of the X Theme here. But in this post I want to share thoughts from the creators of the theme. Particularly their thoughts on it’s performance reviews.
From the creators of X:
“While these speed tests can be a good indicator of things in general, there are certain aspects of their testing that we as theme authors have no control over.
For instance, they might convey that “all scripts should be moved to the bottom of the site” – however, we do not necessarily have control over this for numerous reasons:
Some scripts and libraries are loaded in specifically by WordPress and we have no control over their placement. For example, WordPress loads its bundled jQuery library in the <head> of the site, and since it is a bad practice to remove this and move it elsewhere, this must be left in place.”
First this statement
“For example, WordPress loads its bundled jQuery library in the <head> of the site, and since it is a bad practice to remove this and move it elsewhere, this must be left in place.” it’s not entirely true. Using a performance plugin or magnification plugin can resolve this. Bundling it into a single path directory. Thus increasing page speed and passing these online testing tools.
But let’s continue…
“Plugin authors include their own scripts and styles and we have no control over how this is handled. Some authors might include multiple files for their plugin at once, which will make these systems say “you have too many HTTP requests, please reduce them”, but again, we have no control over this.”
In case you are asking, “What is JavaScript?”
Per Google here’s the definition of what JavaScript is. It’s the programming language of HTML and the Web. So javascript (as well as other server side code) makes websites do what you want them to do.
Page speed tools hate how these are handled. And often for a developer, it is a ongoing process to keep ahead of the curve. X Theme creators realized this, and had this to say:
“Regarding deferring the parsing of JavaScript, we avoid inline script tags whenever possible, and utilize HTML data attributes extensively to keep JavaScript in their own files, but still have access to data from PHP. Our recent short-code JavaScript overhaul in v3.0.0 of the short-codes plugin significantly reduced the amount of inline <script> tags, providing large gains in this area.
Setting up caching on the server level can help to ensure that resources are saved for easy recall later and quicker loading times.
Caching plugins can take this a step further by creating “static files” from dynamic PHP to make things even quicker on the front-end (this must be used with caution though as it can be known to create problems if it is not setup properly).
For our X demos, we do not have any extensive caching setup or use any CDNs.
When looking at your sites performance is to not judge it thru a keyhole view.
Your computer, or mobile device, all have unique operating systems. As well as web browsers, and various screen sizes of different quality. So, what you are seeing or experiencing is not what the rest of the world is seeing or experiencing.
For that ask your developer. If your paying a retainer for it, metrics can be applied to delve into any angles where your site online is weak.
Final Thoughts
If you are having concerns with your sites performance contact us, and we’ll look under the hood. A more in depth review requires a discussion. As looking without a login is a lot like taking your car to the mechanic and him not having access to it. We would need access. And there is the time involved for our developers to dive into the minutia of your sites problem.
