Good(ish) WordPress themes vs Bad WordPress themes

Jade @ Absolute Hosting

Jade @ Absolute Hosting

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Wanted to share my experience with the community as its not often that we get to beta test sites on a server that hasn't been put into production.

Without revealing too much, we have a server prepped for deployment and are currently working through a checklist of things to get done before the server is released to prod and with these tests we're running extensive test on performance.

Too often than not clients will blame the server or the host for bad website load speeds and as per the examples below, we have two vanilla sites loaded onto an unused, high end server and the differences between the two sites are concerning.

These two themes are by no means considered lightweight and optimized for performance, and are readily available via themeforest.

Interested to hear what @Bryn has to say and his input2023-08-10_10-55-59.png
 
What's the waterfall look like..?

I would venture a guess that the 33%er is accessing external, international resources much more than the 92%er and is paying for it.. might even be the cable breaks slowing things down further..
 
The theme you use makes a huge difference to performance, and also administrative ease of use and risk of plugin issues. In the last decade I can list one theme I’ve come across that made me think, damn that’s actually really good:

GeneratePress Premium. Godlike code quality, support, community and a focus on doing a few basic things very well. Pairs well with GenerateBlocks Pro, its sister product.

I do custom themes for clients but if I had to use something off the shelf, GP Premium no question.
 
WAslayer said:
What's the waterfall look like..?

I would venture a guess that the 33%er is accessing external, international resources much more than the 92%er and is paying for it.. might even be the cable breaks slowing things down further..
Click to expand...
Waterfall of the first site (timeline sorted)

2023-08-10_11-13-14.png
 
Bryn said:
GeneratePress Premium. Godlike code quality, support, community and a focus on doing a few basic things very well. Pairs well with GenerateBlocks Pro, its sister product.
Click to expand...
Would you mind sharing a copy for me to load up onto a test domain and compare, very keen to see the results?
 
I'm loving Simply Static
simplystatic.com

Simply Static - the best WordPress static site generator.

Transform your WordPress website with the best WordPress static site generator plugin. Faster load times, enhanced security, and reduced server costs.
simplystatic.com simplystatic.com

Keep your wordpress site locked away, let your content curators manage the content on Wordpress and use Simply Static to produce static files for your end users. Dirt cheap to host too.
Can't beat the speed or security.
 
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@Jade @ Absolute Hosting there's a business opportunity in there (Simply Static)... have a product that gives content creators direct wordpress access via VPN while automating the process of deploying the Zipped static files that SS produces. Can't be too hard to do. It's pretty insane how much quicker it is to load static pages. Of course there may be one or two gotchas, like having a contact us page or other server side script, but even that can be hosted independently as a single page php.
 
lkpat said:
@Jade @ Absolute Hosting there's a business opportunity in there (Simply Static)... have a product that gives content creators direct wordpress access via VPN while automating the process of deploying the Zipped static files that SS produces. Can't be too hard to do. It's pretty insane how much quicker it is to load static pages. Of course there may be one or two gotchas, like having a contact us page or other server side script, but even that can be hosted independently as a single page php.
Click to expand...
I can definitely attest to static websites. All my businesses have static websites deployed to S3 + Cloudfront. When it comes to things like contact us/newsletter etc all the JS is right in the HTML. Makes for less maintainability but the speed to access is insane. Combine this with hashing and I've literally set the Cache-Control headers to expire in 365 days. Makes it feel like an SPA with early 2000s tech
 
lkpat said:
@Jade @ Absolute Hosting there's a business opportunity in there (Simply Static)... have a product that gives content creators direct wordpress access via VPN while automating the process of deploying the Zipped static files that SS produces. Can't be too hard to do. It's pretty insane how much quicker it is to load static pages. Of course there may be one or two gotchas, like having a contact us page or other server side script, but even that can be hosted independently as a single page php.
Click to expand...
I can see a use case for this for sure and will discuss it with one of our partners, thanks for the tip.

Have a case at the moment where this may prove to be worth while suggesting to the client, thanks again
 
lkpat said:
@Jade @ Absolute Hosting there's a business opportunity in there (Simply Static)... have a product that gives content creators direct wordpress access via VPN while automating the process of deploying the Zipped static files that SS produces. Can't be too hard to do. It's pretty insane how much quicker it is to load static pages. Of course there may be one or two gotchas, like having a contact us page or other server side script, but even that can be hosted independently as a single page php.
Click to expand...

It’s a fun tool for sure, but would be a problem in almost all my projects. Modern websites are dynamic by their nature.

- Split testing would be a nightmare
- Nearly useless for personalisation and display conditions
- Tracking and analytics problems

And it’s not solving any problems with WP these days. Gutenberg sites are lightning fast even before we’re talking custom block-based FSE themes. Like 250-500ms average load time with fairly basic optimisation.

And with a hosting panel like GridPane or RunCloud (combined with Absolute Hosting VPSes obviously ), security is really good. Especially with Cloudflare in the mix. Check out GridPane Fortress to see how small agencies can go hard with security.
 
Bryn said:
It’s a fun tool for sure, but would be a problem in almost all my projects. Modern websites are dynamic by their nature.

- Split testing would be a nightmare
- Nearly useless for personalisation and display conditions
- Tracking and analytics problems

And it’s not solving any problems with WP these days. Gutenberg sites are lightning fast even before we’re talking custom block-based FSE themes. Like 250-500ms average load time with fairly basic optimisation.

And with a hosting panel like GridPane or RunCloud (combined with Absolute Hosting VPSes obviously ), security is really good. Especially with Cloudflare in the mix. Check out GridPane Fortress to see how small agencies can go hard with security.
Click to expand...
It's useful for a huge percentage of WP sites out there, but agree, not for dynamic stuff. We code that type of thing ourselves mostly these days... wouldn't use WP.
 
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I can finally share the news and motivation behind this thread.

We've just gone live with our new AMD Genoa Powered WordPress hosting

A pic of this amazing piece of kit, kudos to the MYBB studio for the excellent pics (will upload more a little later)

sneek_peak.png
 
That's some sexy kit :love: and compliments to the photographer.

Do you mind sharing the WP themes used in the benchmarks?
 
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