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Thank you for your highly usable theme. My webmaster is currently out of the country on travel, but I wanted to communicate a few small improvement opportunities so that when he gets back the theme will be ready to upload with these improvements:
1) Under Enfold>>>Social Profiles – Youtube should be corrected to YouTube (proper capitalization)
2) Under Enfold>>>Social Profiles – Could you please add Slideshare? Thank you.
3) Minify javascript and css – I was running the site through https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ – there are several opportunities to improve load time performance as outlined below if the files were minified….
Minify JavaScript
Compacting JavaScript code can save many bytes of data and speed up downloading, parsing, and execution time.
Minify JavaScript for the following resources to reduce their size by 17.5KiB (29% reduction).Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/js/shortcodes.js?ver=3 could save 11.7KiB (37% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/js/avia.js?ver=3 could save 5.8KiB (20% reduction) after compression.Minify CSS
Compacting CSS code can save many bytes of data and speed up download and parse times.
Minify CSS for the following resources to reduce their size by 14.8KiB (22% reduction).Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/shortcodes.css?ver=2 could save 6KiB (21% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/layout.css?ver=2 could save 4.2KiB (22% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/base.css?ver=2 could save 742B (19% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/grid.css?ver=2 could save 722B (36% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/themes/js/mediaelement/skin-1/mediaelementplayer.css?ver=1 could save 584B (18% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/print.css?ver=1 could save 523B (32% reduction) after compression.Thank you for taking a moment to forward this to the right people. Take care.
Hey David Dalka,
Thank you for bringing this to our notice. We really appreciate it.
1. I have informed Kriesi and it will updated in the future release.
2. To add additional or custom social icons please refer to this link http://kriesi.at/documentation/enfold/custom-social-icons/
3. For minification we recommend a caching plugin like https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/ for more options please check our recommended plugins list https://kriesi.at/support/topic/recommended-plugins/
Let us know if you have more questions we are glad to help :)
Best regards,
VinayRegarding #1 – Thank you. I was expecting this type of response for all three items.
Regarding #2 Slideshare is an extremely popular website with much more traffic than some of the social media sites that you have added, it would be much easier to add this to core in the next version as your way of saying thank you for pointing out the capitalization issue. Could you please consider adding it to core directly? it is not a custom icon for my garage built site, it is asking a mainstream site to be added properly to core code. Thank you.
Regarding #3, a caching plugin is a really bad idea as it increases server load and creates many other problems. Additionally, many hosts ban these plugins for this reason. A much better solution would be for each Enfold release to be run through https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and for any issues to be properly fixed and minified in the core code prior to release so that nobody in your community ever has to see these types of messages. That needs to become the standard best practice as any and all errors can negatively impact Google’s impression of a site and likely the themes as well as I’m sure they keep tabs on that as well. It is in the interest of your reputation with Google to create the ideal best practice of core code they deem clean, minified and optimized.
Could you please send all three items to Kriesi for proper consideration and eventual inclusion in core as all three need attention. Thank you.
Actually one more to optimize in core code – Thank you for removing unnecessary characters from the core code and images files! :)
Optimize images
Properly formatting and compressing images can save many bytes of data.
Optimize the following images to reduce their size by 9.8KiB (44% reduction).
Losslessly compressing wp-content/themes/enfold/images/background-images/grain_top.png could save 9.8KiB (44% reduction).Thank you.
Hi,
Thank you for the info. We will push this thread to Kriesi. For stylesheet and script minification, use the BWP Minify plugin. This is the plugin that we used for the demo sites. https://wordpress.org/plugins/bwp-minify/
Best regards,
IsmaelThank you. My point is that the files should be minified and extra spaces removed in core. Extra plugins use resources, add complexity, are not required and should not be encouraged.
Thank you. Please let me know what Kriesi says. Happy to talk with you guys offline. Thank you for your efforts to make Enfold the best it can be.
Hi,
Thank you. My point is that the files should be minified and extra spaces removed in core. Extra plugins use resources, add complexity, are not required and should not be encouraged.
Alright. Let’s wait for Kriesi’s response.
Best regards,
IsmaelHey!
I am afraid its a common misconception that a plugin uses more resources than if we would put the minify code into the theme files. This comes from a time when plugins were not well tested and were often bloated and would add a lot of functionality that was not necessary.
But the truth is that a well coded plugin will use the same amount of resources as a function put into the theme files. Whats more, and that is why we don’t add this feature to the theme, when you switch the theme in the future, the plugin will still work fine and take care of whatever it should do. It is also heavily encouraged from WordPress.org to separate form and function as much as possible. A theme should do all the stuff that is styling related and plugins should add functionality. We are already stretching this recommendation a lot with the included template builder since its simply necessary for a successful theme nowadays but we try not to include any more stuff that should really be part of a plugin :)
I am also not sure who told you that a caching plugin would take up more server resources but the whole point of a caching plugin ist to lessen the strain on the server and make the site load faster. We use Better Wp-Minify and Wp-Superchache on kriesi.at mainsite as well. Without it the site would be down pretty much all the time with nearly 500.000 Users per month ;D
So if you want to improve the performance of your site I would recommend to use a similar set of well tested plugins.
Hope this clears up some things ;)
Regards,
KriesiKriesi,
Thank you for your reply. I want to to stress that Enfold is already infinitely better than the last them I tried on this site.
Regarding #2 ( which you did not address) = I’m only asking for one code change in the base – I’m asking for Slideshare to be added to the social media area as I’ve spent hours trying to make sense our of the instructions on how to add one manually unsuccessfully. it is both complicated and confusing. Slideshare is one of the busiest sites on the web. It really should in core. If you can’t do that, the process to add a social site needs to be dramatically simplified.
Other than that, I’m not asking for new functions in the theme at all. I’m simply asking for clean code and minified sites.
Regarding #3 – I’m simply asking for clean, minified code and / or files in the following enfold files, not new features elsewhere in the theme! Apologies if there was any confusion. Even if you use a caching plugin, it has to do work it wouldn’t have to if these files were resized and text minified.
let me put it a different way. If there is a car has a loose spark plug wire and you add engine cleaner to the gas tank, it will perform better. I will not perform as well as if you fixed the loose spark plug wire. What I’m asking for you to do is recognize the same kind of issue. Even if you use a caching plugin, it still has to work harder than if these issues were not there. I’d urge you to to look at your test sites prior to release through both https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and https://gtmetrix.com/ without any caching plugin and ask the question, “how many of my 93,000 Enfold users would benefit from perfecting some of this code. The answer is a lot! Including, most, importantly, yourself. :) It made a huge difference when changed in another theme I use on another site.
More importantly, Google still sees these issue and it affects their perception of a site. It is worth doing for that reason alone.
Thank you for fully considering and having someone take action the issues. I include the 8 files that need optimizing below. Thank you for your time. I look forward to seeing a new version with these small clean up items soon. if you’d prefer I do the work and send them to you, please provide an email address, I’d be happy to make a contribution to the community. :)
Minify javascript and css – I was running the site through https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ – there are several opportunities to improve load time performance as outlined below if the files were minified….
Minify JavaScript
Compacting JavaScript code can save many bytes of data and speed up downloading, parsing, and execution time.
Minify JavaScript for the following resources to reduce their size by 17.5KiB (29% reduction).Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/js/shortcodes.js?ver=3 could save 11.7KiB (37% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/js/avia.js?ver=3 could save 5.8KiB (20% reduction) after compression.Minify CSS
Compacting CSS code can save many bytes of data and speed up download and parse times.
Minify CSS for the following resources to reduce their size by 14.8KiB (22% reduction).Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/shortcodes.css?ver=2 could save 6KiB (21% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/layout.css?ver=2 could save 4.2KiB (22% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/base.css?ver=2 could save 742B (19% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/grid.css?ver=2 could save 722B (36% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/themes/js/mediaelement/skin-1/mediaelementplayer.css?ver=1 could save 584B (18% reduction) after compression.
Minifying wp-content/themes/enfold/css/print.css?ver=1 could save 523B (32% reduction) after compression.Thank you for taking a moment to forward this to the right people. Take care.
I am including the page insights page privately. Thank you again for your attention to this small, but important issue.
Lastly, this query shows how many hosts do not allow the type of caching plugins that you suggest. Your suggestion is not viable for a large portion of your user base. https://www.google.com/search?q=w3+super+cache+banned+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Thanks again, when I fixed that elsewhere it only took me about 20 minutes.
Hey!
#1 As for slideshare: I don’t know the service but it seems its part of linkedin? It uses the same logo. Therefore I would recommend to just use the linkedin logo with a slideshare URL?
#2 Providing minified code in the first place would be a viable strategy, but it makes any customizations for beginners (which we have a lot here) and maintenance so much harder that we decided against it. The minify and caching plugins do this job very well, only need to generate the compressed file automatically once and use virtually no server resources afterwards. I will keep your request in mind, I don’t easily dismiss valuable feedback but right now I’d rather improve and implement features that are not easily added with a perfectly valid plugin ;)
#3 Most of these hosts use their own caching functionality by default paired with server side optimizations. Thats why they do not allow additional ones: they are not necessary and also to prevent any incompatibilities :)
Regards,
KriesiThe current version still has YouTube spelled as Youtube. Could you please make sure it gets included in the next update? It got missed somehow. Thank you for your efforts.
June 1, 2016 at 8:47 pm
#641712
ReplyVinay
ModeratorHey David Dalka,
Thank you for bringing this to our notice. We really appreciate it.
1. I have informed Kriesi and it will updated in the future release.
- The topic ‘Enfold – Minify Javascript and CSS’ is closed to new replies.