XTheme Speed Extremely Slow

[asdfrew]

I am frustrated beyond belief with XTheme. When I started two years ago, the marketing said you do not have to be a programmer. Now, I have to grapple with these speed issues.

My website HappySoulHungryMind.com is painfully slow. It takes 8 to 14 seconds to load a page. I do not have that much content.

And, no the Yahoo server speed is not the problem! I created a page using Yahoo site builder with the same content as one of my pages and it loads extremely fast (1 second). Here it is: https://editor.yahoosmallbusiness.com/viewer/vbid-37172665-abbmfckb

And my page using Xtheme having the same content takes 12 seconds. https://happysoulhungrymind.com/HWP/about-ravi/

Please help. My choice otherwise would be to discard XTheme and start over. I have put two years in XTheme, and I have two websites and both are very slow. Please help is a meaningful way.

Please do not send me links to pages that have generic information on speeding websites. This is a XTheme specific issue. Please help in a meaningful way. Please help me make the website fast so I can be a good reference for XTheme, not a disappointed customer.

[astran]

My site is also extremely slow (https://www.voicedialogue.com). I have been using x for years and although I am still using Visual Composer - now WP Bakery - it was promised that this would still be supported for those of us who didn’t want to rebuild our sites with Cornerstone. My web host - WPX who are known for their superior hosting and speed - also agree my site is very slow. I have caching with W3 Total Cache, autooptimise, images smushed, plus my site is pretty simple. Looking forward to seeing what is suggested.

[christian]

Hey @asdfrew,

I understand your frustration but it’s unfair to blame our theme for the factors outside of its control that are the ones causing the slow speed of your site. Please read the points below.

1. The Yahoo Business Site you’re comparing to is not powered by WordPress therefore it does not load resources added by WordPress like in the following screenshot. That’s from WordPress itself. You can use plugins like this to unload resources you don’t need. Just note that we do not provide support for 3rd party plugins. I’m just providing an example.
   
2. There are only a few contents especially images in the yahoo site in comparison to your live site. And, according to GTMetrix, images in your live site aren’t optimized. I compared the sites in GTMetrix and your HappySoulHungryMind.com site is heavier. Its weight is not composed of our theme. Check the comparison results here https://gtmetrix.com/compare/fwSly2j4/6Tk2jwQy
   
   
   If you also see the comparison, the yahoo site loaded in 4.7s not 1s as you claimed. Your banner comprises almost one-third (400+kb) of that weight (1.4MB). If you’re using an image optimization plugin, contact the plugin support why it’s not bringing the weight of the image down. You should also not compare the yahoo site banner with your live site as the yahoo site banner is cropped so it’s much smaller in file size.

Even if you have all the optimization, if you’re content is heavy and coupled with unnecessary resources loaded in your site, your WordPress site would still be slow even if you’re using the lightest theme.

I’d encourage you to deactivate all 3rd party plugins and test a blank page in GTMetrix. That will tell you the weight of our theme. Notice that I’m referring to weight and not speed. That’s because your server and other factors like DNS which are outside factors contribute to the speed of a website.

Now the things you can do WITHIN the theme to speed up your site are as follows:

1. Don’t use Google Fonts. You’ll have generic-looking font but it will speed your site up a bit for sure. In Theme Options > Typography, disable the Font Manager and choose a system font.
   
2. You can also disable the loading of Font Awesome in Theme Options > Miscellaneous. Disable the Font Awesome Icon weights you’re not using.

For more information, I’d still point you to our Performance article. The things that are causing your site to be slow are discussed in there and we do not provide website performance optimization as part of our product support.

Also, note that nothing in our sales pages we promised that you’ll have a very fast website using our theme. That is because we know that there are factors outside the control of the theme contributing to the website speed.

In summary, you can only blame a theme if it loads megabytes of unnecessary resources. Our theme is not the lightest but that is not the case with our theme.

Hope that helps and thank you for understanding.

[asdfrew]

To increase speed, I turned off Font Awesome, but my icons disappeared

1. Double down arrow in menus
2. Book mark icon between post categories
3. Social media icons in side bar and footer

How can I replace these with faster icons or something else. Will it make a substantive difference to the page load speed. thanks

[ruenel]

Hello @asdfrew,

You may also apply Critical Path CSS so that the load speed of the page is much faster not worrying about the icons. You may check out this video tutorial:

Hope this helps.

[asdfrew]

I have turned on Critical Path CSS in autoptimize. Is the combination of WP Fastest Cache + Autoptimize + Optimole a good one? Should I also add Cloudfare?

[asdfrew]

I made the changes in the video, But the Font Awesome icons are still using up 2 to 3 seconds total to load.

[ruenel]

Hello @asdfrew,

The Font Awesome file is 139kb. It takes 270ms to load it into the page.

You can check it out in the secure note below.

[asdfrew]

Okay, I won’t pursue replacing Font Awesome. But my website is still slow (7 to 10 seconds) and I have put WP Fastest Cache + Autoptimize + Optimole. I dont know what else to add.

[nabeel]

Hey @asdfrew,

You should try considering compressing your images and enable GZip to decrease the size of the content that the browser has to load.

Since you’ve enabled the optimization plugins, you should consider enabling Minification option. Keep in mind that if you’re using a large number of plugins, script minification and concatenation can cause plugin conflicts. If you run into any issues, you can disable this feature.

This should speed up your site loading, Hope this helps!

[asdfrew]

I have compressed the images using Optimole. I have turned on Gzip in WP Fastest Cache. I have truned minification in WP Fastest Cache. I have setup the Autoptimize options as well. Still the webpages are slow to load. And my web site is a simple site.

[christian]

Hey @asdfrew,

Please remove your banner image or the one you’ve made as the background for the Top bar. It looks like the one causing the LARGEST CONTENTFUL PAINT. This is not related to our theme.

Remember what I said previously that this is not an issue with our theme but your content and even your web host according to the website speed reports.

If your site is still slow after this reply, please consult with a website optimization expert. We already have provided all the basics here. Our theme support only covers issues with our theme and I’ve shown you that our theme is not the issue here. We do not cover in-depth website optimization.

We also do not cover consultations as to what optimization plugins to use or if they are good or not. We are just providing guidance. It’s the website owner that should test the plugins and ask the plugin support for concerns regarding the use or anything related to the 3rd party plugin.

Thank you for understanding.