Optimizing Dante: PHP load time, minifying code, other options

[ResonateOrDie7]

Hey guys,

Love the Dante theme as far as look and feel. Unfortunately, we have worked diligently and spent thousands of dollars (and weeks of time) to optimize the theme for maximum efficiency and speed, and it still needs work.

Long story short: We ended up having to install W3TCache plugin, CloudFlare MaxCDN to overcome the sluggishness of the theme. It is now within the acceptable range, but still not great.

Upon further analysis, it has become clear that the code needs to be minified, but when we try it, the theme completely breaks.

1. Is there a way to at least move the PHP code to the bottom of the code? This would help tremendously with load times.

2. Are there other things we can do to optimize this theme?

Thanks,

Kerry

[Nishant – SUPPORT]

Hello,

I will forward it to our development team and get back to you.

[ResonateOrDie7]

Thanks, Nishant. Hoping they will know what to do . . .

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi @ResonateOrDie7

The sluggishness isn’t to do with the theme itself – as you’ll see the main demo gets a superb page speed result – http://gtmetrix.com/reports/dante.swiftideas.com/92CjAuW8

Your site loads incredibly quick here for me, not getting any speed issues.

Looks like you have both revolution slider and layer slider plugins enabled? Are you using both of these? Should really only be using 1 at most.

Try the Better WordPress Minify plugin – we’ve always had much better results with that.

– Ed

[wizastudios]

Hi

I wanted to know in relation to this if the site was ever optimized. if so what techniques did you use? For myself I’m using both W3-Total-Cache & WP-Optimize to get a better performance from my website. I currently have issues with Leverage browser caching & static resources. They appear to take up a lot of load time.

I’m using AWS Cloudfront as a CDN & did everything I could on W3TC. I’m adding a Pingdom test below.

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[Nishant – SUPPORT]

Quoting what ED replied above

Try the Better WordPress Minify plugin – we’ve always had much better results with that.

– Ed

[wizastudios]

I’ll give it a try. Thanks.

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

No problem. Thanks Nishant.
-Rui

[fotogarcia]

I’ve tried using the Better WordPress Minify plugin and it breaks apart my site. It gives me this warning.

“Warning: Cache directory /var/chroot/home/content/02/7782902/html/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/cache/ does not exist and can not be created automatically. Please manually create the cache folder and make sure that it is writable for Minify to perform more efficiently.”

Would this prevent site from breaking apart?

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

You would need to manually create that folder as it seems that the file/folder permissions are disabling it from doing so. That’s likely not what is causing your site to break, could be the combination of minification, unfortunately it requires configuration to work 100%. You may need to remove certain scripts/styles for it to work.

– Ed

[teddyden]

How would you deactivate the swift slider? It looks like its only part of the swift framework plugin. ?

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Hi,
Is it your theme Dante? Because the Swift Slider doesn’t exist in Dante theme.
Can you confirm?

-Rui

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Apologize for the confusion, yes Swift Slider exist on Dante.
Can you confirm what is your current theme?

-Rui

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Already saw that you are using Atelier in the other Atelier topic.
Already replied there.

-Rui

[wizastudios]

Hi

I’m trying the BWM and it’s even worst. My CDN gets pulled but I get missing icons and still can’t minify the CSS.