Conversion to a faster theme? Newbie suggestions needed.

[bytemoo]

HI there guys,

My Target customers are fashionista's, IG's Influencers so I used Bridge theme:

[Mod Note: Please embed images rather than linking to them]

I'm targetting speed now and I can't seem to manipulate the theme. Pingdom is on 92% but Google insights speed is on 58%. I cant seem to fix it after a week of ins and outs and getting their suggestions.

My current theme is heavy and it seems that changing to Buso lightning theme is my solution. I'm a bit scared of how to use images and how to make it look like the theme before. Is it possible with buso theme to look like my old website? Im open for suggestions

p.s. I am the type who tries to do it myself so I will know what im using inside out, hiring someone is out of my options

 

[Ryuzaki]

This is less of a question about BuSo Lightning (though it's a perfect candidate for what you're wanting to do) and more of a giant question about Wordpress design and theme development in general.

If you travel down this path, we do have an Official BuSo Lightning Support Thread where anyone can help you out, and all of the messages will help future travelers.

Having just looked at the demo of the Bridge theme that you've shown, I can say that it's definitely possible but I hope you're really good with Wordpress, PHP, CSS, and JS. And the more of these giant splash images you add, the worse off speed will be (you can't lazy load background images).

The real problem with Bridge and every other theme like it is they all use those visual page builders, notorious for loading a million CSS and JS files. They tend to have bloated Theme Options panels that let you load a ton of extra files under the guise of giving you some cool options. These themes offer the world to non-developers in exchange for speed, largely because it's easy marketing to non-developers who don't know any better.

Are you better off trying to strip down Bridge or recreating it without the bloat on BuSo Lightning? Honestly, probably neither. If you want to build something similar on Lightning then you'll have to make some compromises anyways. As you start dumping in giant images and plugins you'll see it bog right back down.

Alternatively you could find a theme that has more pizazz than the base Lightning theme, which is meant to be spiced up by a developer, and save your self a ton of time. Just make sure it's focused on speed and even find a demo that you can run through speed tests.

If you want to take the adventure, I'm happy to talk about it, and even have a thread incoming that's all about HTML / CSS / PHP / JS meant for that purpose. But if you don't already have a background in Wordpress development, you're going to be delaying the roll out or speed optimization for a long time. It'd still be a journey worth taking, but I don't know that I'd let it stop me from taking care of business in the mean time.

 

[Steve]

90% of CMS speed problems can be fixed with a full page cache and image optimization. The remaining 10% is trickier, but then you are well into diminishing returns.

Why don't you post you page speed insights results and I bet we can get it working fine with a few tweaks.

 

[bytemoo]

we do have an Official BuSo Lightning Support Thread where anyone can help you out, and all of the messages will help future travelers.

Thanks a lot for this. I'm not a coder or developer, not good in WordPress, I really don't know CSS and any coding but I'm really good in researching and studying. Studying to make myself a developer or a WordPress expert will take me time instead of focusing on what I'm really good at. Marketing. I scratched the surface in creating the website and followed the tips to optimize the site using the Crash course and that's about it.

If using the lightning theme is gonna take me a long time to get the balance of both (with my experience level), I think that I'm gonna go with your suggestion of finding another theme that looks good with the speed in focus or try to cut down the problems of the website first. I'll try to cut the problems first below

90% of CMS speed problems can be fixed with a full page cache and image optimization. The remaining 10% is trickier, but then you are well into diminishing returns.

Why don't you post you page speed insights results and I bet we can get it working fine with a few tweaks.

Thanks for checking in steve, Ill post the results here. Most of the problems are in google insights. I get 71 on Desktop and just 37 on Mobile

Here's the pingdom scores
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GeoPeeker Scores
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These is what I have in Desktop Insights
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These is what I have in Mobile Insights
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These are the plugins that I have. I might've edited or tried to edit them according to the Pingdom and Insights suggestions. Also some are needed by the theme.

[broken image removed]

What do you think can I improve here to get the mobile really down? The theme claims to be mobile responsive. Should I try to fix this or changing theme with speed in mind would be a better options? What do you think steve and ryuzaki?

Thanks a lot for the help!!

 

[Steve]

Where you trying to embed images - i'm not seeing anything

 

[Ryuzaki]

@bytemoo, you're trying to hotlink to a private dropbox account, which is throwing 401 errors (unauthorized). Drop those images into Imgur for free and you can copy and paste each image's direct URL.

 

[bytemoo]

@bytemoo, you're trying to hotlink to a private dropbox account, which is throwing 401 errors (unauthorized). Drop those images into Imgur for free and you can copy and paste each image's direct URL.

Sorry about that, Here's the Imgur Links


Here's the pingdom scores

GeoPeeker Scores

These is what I have in Desktop Insights

These is what I have in Mobile Insights

These are the plugins that I have. I might've edited or tried to edit them according to the Pingdom and Insights suggestions. Also some are needed by the theme.

What do you think can I improve here to get the mobile really down? The theme claims to be mobile responsive. Should I try to fix this or changing theme with speed in mind would be a better options? What do you think steve and ryuzaki?

Thanks a lot for the help!!

 

[Ryuzaki]

@bytemoo, mobile responsivity doesn't' have to do with speed, but with design. I'm sure you're fine in that regard.

Your Time to First Byte (TTFB) is pretty atrocious. 1.72 seconds is 1,720 milliseconds. My servers respond in under 100 milliseconds most of the time. You could shave off 1.5 seconds by fixing that. Unfortunately there's not much you can do about that other than use a better host. Who are you hosting with currently? Is it a shared server?

The first thing I'd recommend doing, so you can get a real test, is to disable Autoptimize and then clear your cache on the caching plugin and the CDN. You could possibly get faster results since if you're using HTTP/2. If you have SSL in place (do you have https:// set up?) then you are using HTTP/2. If that's not faster, I'd turn it back on and clear the caches again.

Next I'd tell you to grab the WP Rocket Lazy Loading plugin and turn it on and set it to only lazy load images (not videos or iFrames).

I'm assuming you're using Google Fonts. You need to make it so that it defers it's loading so that a system font loads first and then the Google Font "swaps" in. Currently, swap is disabled and it's making the font become render blocking. That's a whole fiasco that I can help you with later.

Beyond that, your issue is other render-blocking CSS. There's some stuff I can help you get rid of, but it won't make a huge difference. You'll need to have a child theme set up too if you're going to do any customization. Of course I can't help you dig real deep without working on the site itself and can't get that involved for free, either.

Otherwise, your plugins look good except the several different Slider plugins. Why do you need three of these? If possible I'd get rid of all three. They're undoubtedly each loading a ton of JS files and CSS files (render-blocking) and sliders load multiple images that slow things down, and research proves people don't often engage with them and they don't really help with conversions.

That's what I'd try for now and see where it takes you. Your current results aren't thaaaat bad, by the way. It's not great, but you should see some of the other stuff out there. Try running CNN.com through PageSpeed Insights, for instance.

 

[bytemoo]

Your Time to First Byte (TTFB) is pretty atrocious. 1.72 seconds is 1,720 milliseconds. My servers respond in under 100 milliseconds most of the time. You could shave off 1.5 seconds by fixing that. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about that other than use a better host. Who are you hosting with currently? Is it a shared server?

Thank you so much for extending the hand Ryuzaki, this is really appreciated!!

Yes, I used Namecheap shared before and had 2ms+. I switched to Hostgator Cloud hosting now but still this slow. I had a problem setting up a VPS as a hosting cause I really don't know Linux and my mind is saying stay away from that since I can pay dedicated instead, with lower work.

The first thing I'd recommend doing, so you can get a real test, is to disable Autoptimize and then clear your cache on the caching plugin and the CDN. You could possibly get faster results since if you're using HTTP/2. If you have SSL in place (do you have https:// set up?) then you are using HTTP/2. If that's not faster, I'd turn it back on and clear the caches again.

Next, I'd tell you to grab the WP Rocket Lazy Loading plugin and turn it on and set it to only lazy load images (not videos or iFrames).

I tried disabling auto-optimize and clearing cache here and results go from yellow to red.

WP Rocket Lazy Loading plugin really increases the speed. from 71 it's up to 80 in desktop and up to 50 on mobile however, the front page did not load properly with this plugin. It got stuck into loading the grey front page with loading, So I disabled it. I think its because of the theme. About the fonts, I did not touch anything. I just loaded the theme and start writing. The three plugins are required by the theme itself.

On the other side. Your right about the minify CSS, these options isn't checked before. it Improved the speed from 71 to 74 n desktop and mobile increased to 42.

So I suppose changing the servers would obviously get my scores up probably by 10-15 points since this is the only "red" problem that I have in the desktop results. What hosting should I use to remove this 1.5 speed at a lower cost?? We are only getting less than 2k unique traffic monthly since this website is just for taking orders, sales happen elsewhere. I'm going for FB ads consistently in the next few weeks, (currently studying a course), so we can expect an increase in the 2k monthly. I think I can stretch the budget up to $100 a month for hosting if it can remove this 1.5 speed probs.

Thanks again so much ryuzaki for the assistance!! your the best!

 

[Steve]

Where are your visitors located? In the US, EU?
For the volume, you dont need dedicated at all - with WP fastest cache running, you are serving static html.
So you just need a decent shared host, close to your customers

 

[bytemoo]

Where are your visitors located? In the US, EU?
For the volume, you dont need dedicated at all - with WP fastest cache running, you are serving static html.
So you just need a decent shared host, close to your customers

Thanks! 90% of the visitors that I have is in US.

2 months ago I was using NameCheap $1-2 a month hosting, I saw this problem before. So I moved to Hostgator cloud Webhosting business. Here's the current stats of the server

Even with the upgrade, the server response time did not move in google insights. So I was thinking that was with the theme already, that's why I created this thread as well So is it with the theme or should I change the shared server again?

Thanks!

 

[CCarter]

Dude, Hostgator is the worst company in the history of the universe to host with. Things went downhill when they got sold.

 

[Steve]

If you have your cache set up correctly, then all the server has to do is read a file from disk (or ram if it's still in Linux OS cache) - PHP and mysql are not touched.
TTFB is measuring the time until the server starts sending data, so with a static cache set up, pretty much all themes should be equal in that regard (of course bad themes will include tons of CSS and js, but the browser loads those after the initial html, so they do not contribute to TTFB measurement).

So the important thing becomes the network latency.

 

[BCN]

For hosting Wordpress, and running Wordpress atm I generally use:

- Buso Lightning or custom theme built on Tailwind (and I compile it in Webpack, so I only get the CSS I use and need)
- Minimal plugins, most stuff is defined in custom mu-plugins. I generally end up with just Yoast and Advanced Custom Fields.
- Remove jQuery for non-admin (I never use jQuery)
- Some sites I run in Docker containers with Nginx others I have at Runcloud.io, also with Nginx.
- I either use W3TC for caching, and use Cloudfront as CDN, or just define some caching in Nginx for smaller sites. I cache full pages for individual articles and front page.
- Cloudflare for DNS

It seems to make sites pretty fast.

I am currently reworking some sites to this setup, sites that run on bloated themes with page builders and other junk. It will be fun to see if I get rewarded in SERPs once they are recrawled.

Those shared hosts really kill your load times, they are the absolute shittiest stuff out there.

If you decide to go the route of i.e. Amazon or Digital Ocean, and setup Runcloud, just hit me up. It's a very easy transition that won't cost you more than a shared host, and I've done that for some members in here already.

 

[bytemoo]

Dude, Hostgator is the worst company in the history of the universe to host with. Things went downhill when they got sold.

ahh.. gotcha! Thanks for the info. In the crash course in setting up, the name servers are HostGator, so i thought that you guys are recommending them Maybe that was before. But at this point what can you recommend that is in the startup package? I am expecting to get to 10k-20k monthly traffic by next month. What hosting are you using on your own sites? (If its ok to reveal it)

Thanks CCarter

 

[CCarter]

@bytemoo I use Linode.com for 90% of my sites.

 

[bytemoo]

@bytemoo I use Linode.com for 90% of my sites.

Sorry if it took me time to get this transfer to happen. I've finished studying FB ads for my business yesterday. I just started studying Linux so I can transfer my website to Linode. However, I ran into problems. Forgive me for the noobness, this is the first time I am using Linux. Kindly correct my mistakes.

I created a Linode in Fremont Ca, with Cpanel with a $20 Linode 2GB plan. IT can only choose CentOS07. I already set up the Cygwin Terminal for windows, SHH and how to log in to the Cpanel. Problem#1: There's a popup that the Cpanel is a trial. I searched for it and it says that the Cpanel and WHM is only trial for 15 days and after that I need to pay $12 or 24 a month just for the Cpanel.

I don't know anything else rather than Cpanel because that's what other shared hosting providers like hostgator, namecheap and goddaddy use. I can shift to any options since I am already doing this. I am thinking that I'd rather invest in $40 plan of Linode with more resources than go to $20 Linode, $20 Cpanel, right?

The target is to have the file transfer done via FTP and get multiple Email setup for the business itself. What OS should I use? Debian, arc Linux, fedora, etc? What App should i use as well? I am already searching for some answers before I type this and currently reading the guides of Linode on their website.

Thanks a lot guys, really appreciate the assistance.

 

[CCarter]

@bytemoo I didn't even realize Linode has the "one-click" install for Cpanel or WordPress. Wow, that's new. What are you running that you require more resources? That's the question.

You can get away with the $5 nano plan for most server setups. We got our email server on a $5 server. If you need Cpanel they do $5 nano then the Cpanel monthly.

I don't use GUI interfaces anymore to communicate with servers, all command line, so I'm not sure the best option for you.

I would recommend and ping @SmokeTree, he has ideas on most server setups and he's my goto person whenever I need to get more advanced help.

Edit, just realized it looks like since you are going the "one-click" App route that's the reason you are only allowed CentOS 7. I assume they've already got that stuff all configured. I used Ubuntu 18.04 for all setups.

 

[Potatoe]

Maybe I'm off here but it seems to me if you're already in for $30-$40 a month for an unmanaged Linode + cPanel, maybe you're better off going the managed route instead of having to learn linux server management from scratch? Then you'll have support staff that can help with all sorts of issues that'll arise. That's the conclusion I've reached for myself when I've played around with it, at least.

Now, I'm sure meticulously going over every setting and knowing how it all works is much better in the long run and it's a good skill to have if your business relies on webservers which most of ours do. For myself, I looked at the opportunity cost, too. Server management for hosting is a relatively easy thing to outsource and not have to worry too much about, compared to a lot of stuff we do. Hosts have people on staff 24/7 to help with whatever comes up, they've already handled the scaling for us.

In this case, maybe a managed VPS from a reputable company would be a good option so that you can keep moving forward in the meantime, maybe learn the ins and outs in a $5 Linode in the background without stalling your progress. You can always switch over. I think Knownhost has something for $25-$30 with cPanel.

 

[Steve]

30k visits a month is not high load. Presuming that most visits are concentrated in an 8 hour window each day, that's still only 2 visits a minute.
Any decent shared hosting can handle that just fine.
All our stuff is in the UK/EU, so I don't have any recent first hand experience with US hosts, but I just this minute check a clients Elementor based site (with WP fastest cache) and Its getting < 50ms TTFB (page speed insights - overall scores 84 mobile, 98 desktop), on a £6.99/month shared hosting account.

 

[jamessmith110]

There's a popup that the Cpanel is a trial. I searched for it and it says that the Cpanel and WHM is only trial for 15 days and after that I need to pay $12 or 24 a month just for the Cpanel. I am thinking that I'd rather invest in $40 plan of Linode with more resources than go to $20 Linode, $20 Cpanel, right?

It might be worth considering DirectAdmin instead of cPanel, it has a few quirks in terms of how you have to do some things, but the functionality is there, and it's a lot more cost-effective.

For example, if you have 10 domains or less, DirectAdmin admin would cost $2 a month vs cPanel's $15, and that's depending on the host you choose, some hosts like Knownhost will give you DirectAdmin for free.

Have to agree with Potatoe though if you don't have any Linux experience and are planning to pay $20-$40 a month anyway, Managed hosting would make a lot more sense for you because they will take care of keeping the server online versus unmanaged where you are on your own.

 

[bytemoo]

Sorry for the late update.

I mentioned above that I am currently creating my own freebie product for my niche and also studying and putting up Facebook ads for my traffic and targetted Audience. All is done on that list (I have a new one again) and all is running now and I just finished the website yesterday.

hey, @Potatoe @Steve @jamessmith110 Thanks for all your inputs. Yes, I tried going with Linode but it gave me more problems (because I don't really know Linux) but the speed of Linode is a real monster based on some of my google guided tests, that I can tell you. But more problems means more things to do for me.

So I moved to your suggestion and I used Knownhost @$35 a month Basic VPS with DirectAdmin. I created 7 tickets right on the same day I purchased an all was answered and they helped me all the way. So this is what I literally needed. So for me, I would suggest Linode if you know Linux and can support your own because of the awesome speed. I would suggest Knownhost if you are an online marketer with no programming background just a Jack-of-all-Trades Type of Guy.

I renewed the Theme of the website and built it from the ground up using google search with every table and every line the theme needed. It has the same content as what I had before with added Manychat Messenger on the website.

Thanks to @CCarter and @Ryuzaki for helping me in the Personal Messages Much appreciated.

I applied all the suggestions that I got from this thread used the Plugins that Day04 of the Crash Course suggested (all of it except the custom fields). Here's my crash Course, I review really well in books not in videos or ebooks so I printed it back and 2017 and have been applying it ever since when I need something I just pull it out my shelves. Here's a glimpse

Anyways back to the topic here's the speed now after applying everything.

Google Insights is at 96% Desktop and 90% Mobile

Pingdom is at 91%
I'm getting expired header probs since I put it in a month and don't know how to edit it for now. (all from google page results)

My Gmetrix speed is also up at 91 and 93 on Yslow

Thanks a lot for all your inputs guys! Much appreciated!
p.s. one question though. I am not using CDN for this speed. Should I use CDN?

 

[zelch]

Here's my crash Course, I review really well in books not in videos or ebooks so I printed it back and 2017 and have been applying it ever since when I need something I just pull it out my shelves. Here's a glimpse

I know this is an old thread but did you have those printed and hardbound somewhere like cafepress or something? If yes I"d love to buy one if it has a public URL where I can order it