Really fast home page?

[Trapbarn]

Would Ibe correct in thinking that the fastest loading web pages are created in pure HTML? That is without using a theme package with JS and CSS etc.

I ask because, one of my competitors has a site that loads in an instant -absolutely amazing! OK, it looks rubbish but we are both in a market sector which is influenced by product pricing rather than fancy presentation.

Secondly, if pure HTML is the answer for speed, how practical is it to have the home page created that way whilst the rest of the site is based on a theme package?

 

[fisicx]

Yes pure HTML can be faster but if you have a shop you need JS and PHP.

If you want a fast site pay for better hosting and properly optimise the site. There are loads of things you could do on your site to speed things up.

 

[Trapbarn]

OK, but if there was no Woocommerce products offered on the home page and no slider and nothing apart from one paragraph of text plus 6 thumbnails. These thumbnails would link to pages for the 6 particular products - each with several variations - handled by Woocommerce.

In that case, on the home page, could I dispense with burden of JS, CSS etc that comes with a theme?

 

[fisicx]

Not really. All the files get loaded with wordpress. The savings would be insignificant.

It's your hosting that's letting you down.

 

[UKSBD]

OK, but if there was no Woocommerce products offered on the home page and no slider and nothing apart from one paragraph of text plus 6 thumbnails. These thumbnails would link to pages for the 6 particular products - each with several variations - handled by Woocommerce.

In that case, on the home page, could I dispense with burden of JS, CSS etc that comes with a theme?

You can create a template with a header that doesn't use wp_head and a footer that doesn't use wp_footer then just add the title, meta descripion, pull in css, etc. manually

 

[fisicx]

You can create a template with a header that doesn't use wp_head and a footer that doesn't use wp_footer then just add the title, meta descripion, pull in css, etc. manually

Yes, but the site is already super fast, it’s the hosting that’s slow.

 

[Trapbarn]

Not really. All the files get loaded with wordpress. The savings would be insignificant.

It's your hosting that's letting you down.

I reckon you are right and have started to research web hosting providers but it's a real jungle out there. There's dozens of ultra cheap packages out there starting at £2.95 pm and I would hazard a guess that they would be pitiful in terms of performance. Currently paying £10pm (inc vat) but for all I know, I might be getting £2.95 performance.
The site doesn't get a huge amount of traffic so it's bandwidth requirement is modest. But what I do need is fast page load on the home page.
I was able to off-load a heap of unused content by using the paid version of Asset Clean UP. That gave significant improvement, also hosting fonts locally together with other tweaks.

 

[dabpc]

You can examine a site using gtmetrix.com or Chrome / Lighthouse to see where the bottlenecks lie.

 

[Trapbarn]

You can examine a site using gtmetrix.com or Chrome / Lighthouse to see where the bottlenecks lie.

Yes , been there done that and sometimes get 98% to 100% rating. I also use Page Seed Insights and get 98% for desktop and 84% for mobile quite often but not always.

 

[dabpc]

Yes , been there done that and sometimes get 98% to 100% rating. I also

How does the competitor's page compare?

 

[Trapbarn]

Here is PSI,

 

[fisicx]

It’s how fast the server responds to the initial request that matters. Look at the waterfall for both on gtmetrix.

 

[antropy]

Would Ibe correct in thinking that the fastest loading web pages are created in pure HTML? That is without using a theme package with JS and CSS etc.

Depends how good the caching system is. We've tested pure HTML vs cached pages and there's no difference, but that's rare in practice.

Anyway check out how fast our site is

OpenCart Developers UK

We're the UK's Leading OpenCart Developers and OpenCart Gold Partner, Offering a Full Range of Services From New Builds to Upgrades, Hosting and Bug Fixes.

www.antropy.co.uk

Paul.

 

[dabpc]

Good point re cached pages - it effectively bypasses your PHP/mySQL and some systems also minify (removes whitespace, strips comments, combines files) your HTML, JS & CSS making them very fast (assuming sufficient hosting too!).

 

[dx3webs]

Be careful.. that gtmetrix test was run from canada.. that is going to have an exaggerated effect.

There is no reason for shared hosting not to be fast

https://images.dx3webs.com/RVQ1vO.png

this site has 5m sku on our shared hosting.

 

[od3d]

This is a hard one to answer without more details.
There are tools that can speed your load time by creating a static homepage in html - netlify is something I've used before for that.
There are many different other reasons for slowness - some are mentioned above: storing the site in US and the customer in UK is one. Unused static resources [js,css] can be another.

 

[tzach]

There can be several reasons why a webpage may have a slow loading time, including:

1. Large file sizes: Large images, videos, and other media files can slow down the loading time of a webpage.
2. Server response time: If the server hosting the website is slow to respond, it can cause delays in loading the webpage.
3. Poor coding: If the webpage has poorly optimized code, it can result in slower loading times.
4. High traffic: If there are many visitors trying to access the website at the same time, it can slow down the loading time.
5. External scripts: External scripts, such as those for ads, social media plugins, or analytics, can also slow down the loading time.
6. Slow internet connection: If the user's internet connection is slow, it can affect the loading time of a webpage

Can you provide more details on your case?