Hi Kyle, to be honest with you, this is a very unsatisfactory answer and approach to the problem.
Of course there will be a difference between the 2015 theme and yours no doubt but the difference is HUGE on our servers.
Under these circumstances telling me your test runs much faster doesn’t mean you created a lightweight template with clean and efficient coding, it means you set up a really fast server and perhaps have unrealistic expectations in terms of how fast your clients’ servers are.
A good theme should not only be pretty and functional but also light and efficient so that it loads fast on slower machines.
On a different topic about SSL you replied me exactly, “the theme is not the issue, it’s your hosting” and then it turned out it was the theme pre-loader that linked to the wrong files on an external server and there was faulty coding.
So can you please be more constructive instead of passing the ball to the hosting providers each time, help me work out a solution so that all your clients can benefit from it?
What can I start disabling and how can I do it to make the theme lighter?
What kind of caching plugins would you recommend?