How to choose a low-carbon WordPress theme to maximise speed and performance
Summary
In this article, we explain how your theme may be slowing down your WordPress website and increasing its carbon footprint. We also provide helpful guidance for selecting a low-carbon WordPress theme to maximise website speed and performance and to become more sustainable.
An overview of WordPress themes in relation to speed and performance
Your WordPress website’s carbon footprint is directly linked to whether your visitors receive a fast, positive experience or a slow, frustrating one.
Today, one-third of users (around 33%) are not willing to wait more than six seconds for a website to load.
As we explained in a recent article, a data-heavy WordPress site with a larger carbon footprint is almost always slow and inefficient, so you should prioritise sustainability to maximise website speed and performance.
One of the best ways to improve is to review your WordPress theme.
In this two-part series, we’ll help you select an optimal WordPress theme that will improve your website speed and performance while also helping you reduce your carbon footprint in the process.
You may want to choose a WordPress theme from the WordPress theme directory, or you may want to build one from scratch. So, this first article will help you find a low-carbon WordPress theme, and in the next article, we’ll show you how to develop a sustainable theme of your own.
What makes a low-carbon WordPress theme?
You’ll need to be aware of a few key aspects when assessing whether a WordPress theme is low-carbon and sustainable.
If you want a theme that’s going to drive website speed and performance, you’ll want to look for a theme that is:
- Minimalistic
- Efficiently designed
- Light on code
- Optimised for speed and performance.
Key factors to consider when evaluating WordPress themes
As we look at those four elements in closer detail, you’ll quickly see why a sustainable, low-carbon WordPress theme can help improve the speed and performance of your site.
Website speed and performance is largely determined by how much data makes up your site and its pages.
The less data involved, the less energy your host’s servers need to use to present your pages to visitors in their devices. So, a low-data theme will accelerate the speed at which your web pages can load for your visitors.
Choose WordPress themes with minimal features and an lightweight design
Make a list of the features you definitely must have in your WordPress theme, then label all the other unnecessary features. These features are created in the theme’s code, and the more code that is included, the more likely the theme will larger than necessary.
Many themes are packed full of features that are “nice to have” rather than “must have” and are compatible with many plugins. So, if you do not have an e-commerce shop using WooCommerce and events listing with The Event Calendar, you do not need a theme that includes these.
Look for WordPress themes with optimised usage of media
This applies to the overall design of the theme. Including lots of fonts, colour schemes, icons and graphics, and other design-centric qualities will similarly affect your site’s speed and carbon footprint.
Inefficient use of media across your WordPress website is a significant contributor to slow, inefficient performance. Ensure the themes you’re evaluating make it easy to optimise all images and videos you use.
- Lightweight design: Does the theme have a clean and lightweight codebase that minimises the need for excessive resources? Avoid themes with unnecessary scripts and features.
- Image optimization: Does the theme include features to optimise images and support lazy loading, reducing bandwidth and data consumption?
- Energy-efficient fonts: Does the theme use system fonts or a limited set of web fonts to avoid heavy font-loading processes?
Assess the WordPress themes’ code
Going one step further, there can be significant differences between the carbon footprint of a WordPress theme that’s developed with code that follows best practices for coding and sustainability and one that isn’t.
Always ensure the themes on your shortlist contain clean, accessible sustainable code. Look at the theme reviews and for compliance with best practice WordPress coding standards.
- Minimal dependencies: Does the theme rely heavily on external libraries or plugins that could increase load times and energy usage?
- Server-side efficiency: Does the theme minimise database queries and server-side processing, which can reduce server energy consumption?
- Accessibility: Does the theme follow accessibility best practices, as these are often signs of care and with efficient coding?
And when you’re aiming to improve the speed and performance of your WordPress website by reducing its carbon footprint, here are some other things you can do:
- Optimise your videos
- Optimise your images
- Shift to a green hosting provider
- Use a content delivery network (CDN).
- Performance testing: Has the theme been tested for performance using tools like Google Lighthouse or GTmetrix? High-performance themes tend to consume less energy.
- Custom settingseatures: Can you disable unnecessary elements or features to streamline performance for your specific needs?
- Documentation and support: Does the theme provide clear documentation on how to optimise it for performance and hence energy-efficiency?
- Green hosting: Is the theme optimized for running on green web hosting providers that use renewable energy?
- CDN integration: Does the theme work well with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), which can reduce energy consumption by delivering content from servers closer to the user?
Other things to look out for
Here are a few more factors you can consider when searching for a low-carbon WordPress theme:
- Who built it? Was it built by a reputable source who is known for prioritising sustainability?
- How old is it? The older the theme, the more likely it will be inefficient, as practices have evolved a lot in recent years.
- Has it got positive reviews and feedback?
- Is it tested, updated, and optimised on a regular basis?
The benefits of a low-carbon WordPress theme
Selecting a low-carbon WordPress theme will be a big step towards a faster, more performant, more sustainable WordPress website.
The less data making up your site, the faster your page speed. At the same time, this requires less energy from your servers, reducing your site’s carbon footprint.
Ultimately, the main purpose of this should be to provide the best possible experience for your visitors. When your website is as fast and easy-to-use as possible, benefits include:
- Higher SEO rankings
- Reduced bounce rates
- Better visitor retention
- Increased website conversions.
- Competitive advantages
By prioritising sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint of your website, you’ll naturally see a significant improvement in the overall results you achieve from your website.
Need help figuring out whether you need to find a new WordPress theme or not? Why not start by measuring the carbon footprint of your website right now.
This will give you a baseline to use and measure the improvements your theme changes make towards reducing your carbon footprint.
Measure and reduce your WordPress website’s carbon footprint with Kanoppi
Try a free demo of Kanoppi, a tool that provides helpful insights about your WordPress website’s carbon footprint with intelligent recommendations for reducing it.
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Louise Towler
Founder of Kanoppi and WordPress agency Indigo Tree, with deep expertise in WordPress websites, technical SEO and commercial performance for clients across the UK.
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