Least bloated theme forest themes??
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Potatoe
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Not sure how it compares to Top News, and it's definitely nowhere near something like Lightning in terms of speed or being unbloated, but I like the "Newspaper" theme on TF. My homepage is 800kbs and loads in 800ms and I haven't added caching, or a CDN, or done any minifying or any of that good stuff yet. That's with a bunch of images, slider, etc, too. I can't speak to the quality of the code or anything tho.
animalstyle
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I really liked seeing you get into the development end of things.
Based on the tone you set starting this thread, it felt like you were feeling the struggle learning to develop your own Wordpress theme and opted to just get a pre-made one.
You're doing so well with traffic generation. My push would be for you to learn at least enough basic coding to at least be able to easily make changes to your themes in ways that are pretty basic. I think once you get there your learning will come more naturally too as you dig into the theme more and more.
Regardless of if you choose to go with a pre-built theme, I hope you study basic coding because coupled with your efforts on the traffic side I believe it would take your game to the next level.
Based on the tone you set starting this thread, it felt like you were feeling the struggle learning to develop your own Wordpress theme and opted to just get a pre-made one.
You're doing so well with traffic generation. My push would be for you to learn at least enough basic coding to at least be able to easily make changes to your themes in ways that are pretty basic. I think once you get there your learning will come more naturally too as you dig into the theme more and more.
Regardless of if you choose to go with a pre-built theme, I hope you study basic coding because coupled with your efforts on the traffic side I believe it would take your game to the next level.
turbin3
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Bro, please consider this seriously, as I hate to see you beat your head against the wall.
TL;DR version:
Forget Themeforest. If there's one thing I've found, I would have to say the vast majority of, or at least a significant percentage of developers there don't know two shits about running a business. That is compounded by the fact that so many of them also seemingly can't put together a functional product that isn't rife with issues. When a person is trying to build a "business", relying on someone else' unreliable business/service to "run" you're own is a potentially costly proposition filled with headaches. I've quite literally looked at thousands of themes (God I've wasted my life) over there, bought quite a few, heavily modded a number, and used a number in production. It all only ever resulted in massive headaches. Even plugins I've purchased from there often seem to not be production-worthy. I look at TF as a place where I can go to get "starter code" that I will HAVE to build from heavily myself.
So what's the alternative? Trust me on this. Since you're looking for something magazine-style, get Performag from Thrive Themes. It's not perfect, and it could use a little performance optimization (my OCD is just nitpicking the last few percent, honestly). That being said, it's extremely fast and well-optimized out of the box. More so than the vast majority of ThemeForest themes. Out of the box I usually see 85-95 page speed scores.
Other reasons why. It's a relatively mature codebase with excellent support, built on a stable and growing company. I cannot overstate the importance of those factors. It's not from an individual developer that'll be out of business in a couple months. They seem to release theme updates every 2-3 weeks, release plugin updates on almost a weekly basis, and have been doing so consistently for several years now. They also have an active forum for questions and support issues. This means good long-term stability, which is what you want.
I've been seeing your posts lately, and in the past. I think I know some of what you're going through, as I've been there myself. One of the biggest issues I've had, and still deal with (though less and less) is paralysis by analysis. So many what-ifs. Always looking for the "perfect" theme or design... There are many other potential mind traps, but those are a few of the common ones. At the end of the day, what really matters is, "What did I accomplish today?" Just looking at the past, you already know what you can do and what you're capable of, because you've already done it.
For me at least, the single most valuable factor in choosing to go with Thrive Themes is that I no longer had to worry about a lot of those little issues. True, some of the designs might not be quite ideal, but design doesn't always have to be perfect. What matters is having a mature codebase to work from, and more importantly, having an efficient workflow to work with. With a lot of themes out there, there are some pretty messed up ways some "developers" code their themes. Often they code themes to work in non-standard ways, which can cause you to have to reinvent the wheel.
It seems like what's hurting productivity the most for you, is worrying about the dev side of things. If I'm off base, please feel free to correct me, I'm just basing that on posts I've seen over the past year. I certainly don't mean to offend either, and am simply trying to help as well as to "pass it forward". At the beginning of last year, a BuSo member introduced me to Thrive, I took it and ran with it, and my life has gotten so much easier and more productive as a result. With a theme from them, it will take a significant amount of the dev issues out of the way, so you can get back to doing what you already know you can do.
If you can afford it, spend the $19/mth on a membership, and you'll get unlimited access to all of their themes and plugins for any of your own sites. Dude, check this out. Performag + Content Builder (1 to 1 true visual page builder. It rocks.) + Thrive Leads + Thrive Clever Widgets. You'll have your magazine, and it will look good. You'll have your lead gen / list-building stuff taken care of, and easy to connect to most common third party platforms (Mailchimp, Aweber, etc.), and you'll have an awesome workflow that will allow the platform to get out of your way so you can be productive. In the illustrious words of Arnold, "DO IT! Gnnnhahlalhl!"
TL;DR version:
Forget Themeforest. If there's one thing I've found, I would have to say the vast majority of, or at least a significant percentage of developers there don't know two shits about running a business. That is compounded by the fact that so many of them also seemingly can't put together a functional product that isn't rife with issues. When a person is trying to build a "business", relying on someone else' unreliable business/service to "run" you're own is a potentially costly proposition filled with headaches. I've quite literally looked at thousands of themes (God I've wasted my life) over there, bought quite a few, heavily modded a number, and used a number in production. It all only ever resulted in massive headaches. Even plugins I've purchased from there often seem to not be production-worthy. I look at TF as a place where I can go to get "starter code" that I will HAVE to build from heavily myself.
So what's the alternative? Trust me on this. Since you're looking for something magazine-style, get Performag from Thrive Themes. It's not perfect, and it could use a little performance optimization (my OCD is just nitpicking the last few percent, honestly). That being said, it's extremely fast and well-optimized out of the box. More so than the vast majority of ThemeForest themes. Out of the box I usually see 85-95 page speed scores.
Other reasons why. It's a relatively mature codebase with excellent support, built on a stable and growing company. I cannot overstate the importance of those factors. It's not from an individual developer that'll be out of business in a couple months. They seem to release theme updates every 2-3 weeks, release plugin updates on almost a weekly basis, and have been doing so consistently for several years now. They also have an active forum for questions and support issues. This means good long-term stability, which is what you want.
I've been seeing your posts lately, and in the past. I think I know some of what you're going through, as I've been there myself. One of the biggest issues I've had, and still deal with (though less and less) is paralysis by analysis. So many what-ifs. Always looking for the "perfect" theme or design... There are many other potential mind traps, but those are a few of the common ones. At the end of the day, what really matters is, "What did I accomplish today?" Just looking at the past, you already know what you can do and what you're capable of, because you've already done it.
For me at least, the single most valuable factor in choosing to go with Thrive Themes is that I no longer had to worry about a lot of those little issues. True, some of the designs might not be quite ideal, but design doesn't always have to be perfect. What matters is having a mature codebase to work from, and more importantly, having an efficient workflow to work with. With a lot of themes out there, there are some pretty messed up ways some "developers" code their themes. Often they code themes to work in non-standard ways, which can cause you to have to reinvent the wheel.
It seems like what's hurting productivity the most for you, is worrying about the dev side of things. If I'm off base, please feel free to correct me, I'm just basing that on posts I've seen over the past year. I certainly don't mean to offend either, and am simply trying to help as well as to "pass it forward". At the beginning of last year, a BuSo member introduced me to Thrive, I took it and ran with it, and my life has gotten so much easier and more productive as a result. With a theme from them, it will take a significant amount of the dev issues out of the way, so you can get back to doing what you already know you can do.
If you can afford it, spend the $19/mth on a membership, and you'll get unlimited access to all of their themes and plugins for any of your own sites. Dude, check this out. Performag + Content Builder (1 to 1 true visual page builder. It rocks.) + Thrive Leads + Thrive Clever Widgets. You'll have your magazine, and it will look good. You'll have your lead gen / list-building stuff taken care of, and easy to connect to most common third party platforms (Mailchimp, Aweber, etc.), and you'll have an awesome workflow that will allow the platform to get out of your way so you can be productive. In the illustrious words of Arnold, "DO IT! Gnnnhahlalhl!"
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@turbin3 I didn't take the time to look at the code or test the speed and all of that, but I can say that on the surface, plus all the pre-built page templates... I undoubtedly will use this on one of my next big projects + customizations.
I completely developed my current major project from the ground up minus the CMS It was awesome and fun and is fast, etc. But as you said... cutting out all that ramping up time is worth so much more. This theme is like 95% there already, just by glancing at the demo.
Worst case scenario, I take a lot of "inspiration" from some of their ideas for my current project...
I completely developed my current major project from the ground up minus the CMS It was awesome and fun and is fast, etc. But as you said... cutting out all that ramping up time is worth so much more. This theme is like 95% there already, just by glancing at the demo.
Worst case scenario, I take a lot of "inspiration" from some of their ideas for my current project...
turbin3
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It is by far one of the most performance-oriented out of the box magazine themes I've come across, and is surprisingly lacking in bugs and massively inefficient/incorrect code. There are a few things I wish they did differently, because I'm OCD about page speed, but it is more than "good enough" out of the box. It has Kraken Image Optimizer built in, for compressing and/or cropping images automatically upon import. Only downside there is, it issues calls to Kraken's servers to compress the images, which I found out the hard way when trying to develop on an internal network while I had IP restrictions enabled. 
Also, they utilize some sort of "algorithm" (or maybe its just simple queries, I haven't bothered to look) on the backend to basically create a database of related posts every time any post is saved and/or published. Takes a few extra seconds when modifying/publishing posts. The upside is, it makes the front end more efficient in the long run since the related posts are already associated on the backend, as opposed to there being much more inefficient SQL queries on the front end to try and find related posts on page load. Very cool that all of this stuff is just built in and doesn't require any thought or effort.
What I did find helped a bit with some of the improvements I wanted to make with their stuff, is this Autoptimize plugin for minifying and aggregating JS/CSS/HTML. Normally I might recommend W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache for those features, however with certain NGINX setups where I do not have full control over the config, I've had issues with W3TC and WPSC, especially with Multisite setups. I've found Autoptimize to be quick, easy, and haven't had any significant issues so far. Only thing to watch out for, is if you have specific JS files that you might need to add exclusions for in their settings, in case it might break plugin/theme functions.
One of the few things I didn't like with Thrive is the current CSS/JS structure. There are a LOT of resource files being loaded individually, and particularly with the CSS. On the one hand, some of how they have their CSS setup is good for certain end users. For example, they have a "custom CSS" box in their dashboard settings, so instead of modifying original files, it simply overrides existing elements and uses the custom CSS where it is found. One flaw in the implementation is, ALL of that custom CSS gets inlined in the HTML, which I'm not a big fan of. Either way, Autoptimize made quick work of that, cut everything down to 1 or 2 JS and CSS files, and turned out fast enough.
Also, they utilize some sort of "algorithm" (or maybe its just simple queries, I haven't bothered to look) on the backend to basically create a database of related posts every time any post is saved and/or published. Takes a few extra seconds when modifying/publishing posts. The upside is, it makes the front end more efficient in the long run since the related posts are already associated on the backend, as opposed to there being much more inefficient SQL queries on the front end to try and find related posts on page load. Very cool that all of this stuff is just built in and doesn't require any thought or effort.
What I did find helped a bit with some of the improvements I wanted to make with their stuff, is this Autoptimize plugin for minifying and aggregating JS/CSS/HTML. Normally I might recommend W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache for those features, however with certain NGINX setups where I do not have full control over the config, I've had issues with W3TC and WPSC, especially with Multisite setups. I've found Autoptimize to be quick, easy, and haven't had any significant issues so far. Only thing to watch out for, is if you have specific JS files that you might need to add exclusions for in their settings, in case it might break plugin/theme functions.
One of the few things I didn't like with Thrive is the current CSS/JS structure. There are a LOT of resource files being loaded individually, and particularly with the CSS. On the one hand, some of how they have their CSS setup is good for certain end users. For example, they have a "custom CSS" box in their dashboard settings, so instead of modifying original files, it simply overrides existing elements and uses the custom CSS where it is found. One flaw in the implementation is, ALL of that custom CSS gets inlined in the HTML, which I'm not a big fan of. Either way, Autoptimize made quick work of that, cut everything down to 1 or 2 JS and CSS files, and turned out fast enough.
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Yeah, almost every theme that has a dashboard feature to add CSS does this. I'll tack it on to the main style or just call another CSS file in the header after all the others, when I don't care about speed or the theme build is just absurd.
Sounds like, if I knew exactly all the plugins and features I'd ever want to use, you could combine everything natively without a plugin, strip out other stuff, and get closer to paradise. I'd definitely have to dig in like that, OCD style as you say.
badya122
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What server is your site running on? VPS?
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I actually just switched from that theme to the busolightning I was customizing, so far so good. I may go back if things dont pan out the way I want them to or switch over to what @turbin3 mentioned.
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Maybe one of those https://colorlib.com/wp/fast-loading-wordpress-themes/ ?
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I've tried at least half of those and unless your hosting is top dollar they don't come close to the results they've posted in my experience.
Biggest problem with those themes is they're bloated as hell with features you probably won't need. That's half the problem with WordPress themes in general, either they're full of features to make a selling point of it, or they have basically no features and you wreck your site speeds with plugins.
I tend to go the route of removing features I don't use, but I've got some coding experience. Not enough to build the features I need in from scratch.
Removing features can go horribly wrong though lol.
Potatoe
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What was wrong with it? I'm not defending it, I'm sure it's got issues, but it's been going smoothly for me and anything I've need to customize has been easy to do right in the dashboard. Wondering if I might run into issues down the road or when I have a bajillion users at once...
Total dev time of maybe 25 minutes. Have you had issues with it running slowly or did somebody just tell you that it was bloated so you ditched it?
I have another site with the same theme that I have taken ~30 minutes to optimize and speed up, and it's the same size - about 800kbs, and it loads in 600ms. I just don't see where it's worth trying to overhaul that.
All the tweaking and optimization stuff is great but I think anyone who geeks out on it will admit that you'll hit a wall pretty soon where the returns diminish very quickly.
Built, this is what my concern is for ya bro. Could I find a faster, better performing theme that's less bloated and works better than Newspaper? Yeah, definitely, but that's the point of diminishing returns when I could be focusing on link building, content, marketing. If my site doesn't kill it, it won't be this theme that's holding it back - so don't let the theme hold you back.
I'm not saying go one way or another and the Thrive package does look lovely, but don't let this dev stuff and theme switcherooing slow you down because at the end of the day... Well, most of your visitors won't even see your homepage (At least according to my analytics), and unless you're trying to learn to code and get into development, this is like a French guy re-writing his site while trying to learn English.
SSD 4000.
turbin3
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+2 what @James said. I've worked extreme ends of the spectrum, from very small and specialized niches, to large, international industries. Site speed is a factor, but IMO it's on a sliding scale as to how important and how much value it delivers. What I mean by that is, it depends on what end of the spectrum your site is, as well as where your competition stands. For example, if you're in an extremely competitive and high-end niche (think billion dollar industries, major brands), competition is to the degree where you're scraping the bottom of the crack pipe to even remove bloat from HTTP headers, cut a couple HTTP requests, optimize inefficient SQL queries, etc. just to squeeze every bit of performance out of your site and edge past the competition. In many niches, I would say that is not at all the case. Even though speed may be a factor, it also is likely considerably less important in comparison to on and off-site optimization, content and content frequency, links, social signals, etc.
Trust me on this, and this is coming from a page speed fiend. Good is good enough, unless you're going after big brand niches and world class competition. Get the other stuff going, start building content frequency, working your off-site factors. Those things should almost always take precedence. When things get neck to neck, THEN think about edging them out with some of those other factors. You simply need something that works "good enough", that will allow you to be productive.
Trust me on this, and this is coming from a page speed fiend. Good is good enough, unless you're going after big brand niches and world class competition. Get the other stuff going, start building content frequency, working your off-site factors. Those things should almost always take precedence. When things get neck to neck, THEN think about edging them out with some of those other factors. You simply need something that works "good enough", that will allow you to be productive.
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I ditched it because of the high number of requests and visual composer. Also because I wanted to customize my own theme.
But who knows. I may go back to it if this buso Lightning doesn't work.
My load times were 1.5s-3s
