Theme Performance

First, thanks for creating such an awesome theme. My problem is this theme is looking like it will be completely unusable to me because of the performance issues. It takes this theme anywhere from 7-12 minutes on average to load but I’ve had much longer times. This is even with disabling all but the most basic and suggested (by theme) plugins.

This theme uses a huge amount of stylesheets and scripts and any effort to minify and/or combine them severely messes up the website.

I have tried the following plugins:

1. W3 Total Cache (most robust caching solution but not for minify)
2. WP Super Cache (this theme needs more muscle than offered here)
3. Wp Fastest Cache (simplest caching and very fast)
4. Better WordPress Minify (followed BWP settings found in this forum already)
5. WP Head Cleaner (best solution for minify/combine/etc but ignored my custom css)

In addition, I am using CloudFront and object caching on the server. I’ve been able to eliminate all performance issue and have gotten 100% on both Page Speed Insights and YSlow, but it breaks the theme no matter which solutions I chose or settings that I use. Even when I get high marks, the pages still load very slow as there is still a lot of server requests. All the minify/combine does is reduce the number of files and extras being processed.

I have thoroughly searched this forum and it seems like this is a consistent problem with many users providing screenshots that display the same problems. This most likely means that there are specific files causing the problem. The feedback from the support is also consistent in saying that the problem is the plugins and that you are able to use BWP just fine.

However, when I test the demo pages, they perform horribly and I’m kicking myself for not testing these pages before purchase. They do load fast though. Who do you host with? Server settings?

Demo Test results:
GTMetrix Testing
Page Speed Insights

It seems like it would be a better idea to try and improve on these issues as the problem is the theme needing to be optimized. For instance, you can improve the framework to include more combined and minified files. I’ve purchased other themes that do this and the result is a better experience for me as I can actually work on improving my website and not optimizing a theme.

It would at least be helpful to provide a structure of the files and what files should be processed vs. left alone. All of the plugins listed provide this level of customization. As theme developer, it is your responsibility to provide properly optimized themes or assistance in optimizing. I’d be happy to set my website to my optimized settings and give you access so that you can troubleshoot the problem.

If you don’t really understand how these plugins work, that’s ok. I do. What I don’t understand is how to traverse your framework to fix my site and I don’t have that kind of time or I would have developed my own theme to begin with. Let’s work together to fix this problem so that you can provide a more optimized solution.

Other than fixing these problems before packaging the theme (combine, minify, clean head), it seems the best solution for my server is to use W3 total cache with memcache (no minify) and combine that with Head Cleaner for minifying/combining/etc). I just wish I could get this to work without breaking either the theme or my customizations.

Sorry for the rant. I just am frustrated as I stayed up all night working on this with my host and my website is still crawling.

My Website