High-SPEED WORDPRESS

Modern Frontend

In our all-fresh theme called Yours59 (or Y59), we have adjusted everything to Gutenberg and block-based editing and implemented some modern best practices in frontend web development.

• Adding certain filters to core blocks, allowing us to add options for core-blocks (e.g. Animations, Custom Spacings, Options like “Hide for small screens”)
• Implemented a mechanism to overwrite the core block settings when we do not agree.
• dropped more than 3/4 of CSS used in the standard wp-block-library
• replaced SASS Variable with CSS Custom Properties.
• kicked jQuery out of the frontend
• implemented more modern Web APIs like Intersection Observer or Resize Observer, instead of writing slow “scroll’ or ‘resize’ Listeners
• kicked out zurb foundation frontend framework, resulting in around 40KB of CSS (including styles for animations and things like slideshows)
• Y59 makes use of Modern CSS-Standards like:
  • flexbox and grid
  • CSS custom variables
  • object-fit for images and backgrounds
  • calc, min, max, clamp for e.g. responsive font-sizes
  • viewport units (vw,vh) for sections like heros
  • scroll-margin/padding/snap for things like scroll-snapping or adjustments for fixed headers
  • sticky elements to keep elements in the viewport for a while.

• All Markup and JS is prepared so that it is compatible with SWUP. So we can have app-like page transitions.

Each of these little improvements subtracts a couple of milliseconds from loading and processing time. In sum, they make a noticeable difference to most other sites out there.

Some bandwidth to waste

Y59 makes just a few HTTP-requests for JavaScript and CSS files. Since it is carefully crafted theses files have a rather small file-size. That’s why there is still some space for additional libraries without a performance drop-down.

A noticeable performance advantage

Speedy loading and displaying websites is one of the most positive user experiences. Not only do users honor speedy sites, but also search engines take it as a ranking measure.

Our WordPress Systems get all green lights from google page speed insights/lighthouse and reach at least a score of 80%, even if pages are packed with media.

But beside all these measures and stats, more important is that you can actually feel the speed!