Development

Since the release of Themify v5, we have received an overwhelming amount of positive feedbacks about the pagespeed and performance improvements. We've helped many users achieve a 90+ pagespeed score on their sites, which they weren't able to with other themes. In this post, we will present a pagespeed comparison of Themify Ultra versus Divi, Elementor, Avada, Beaver, Astra, OceanWP, all of which are extremely popular themes and page builders in the WordPress market. We are presenting an unbiased comparison using the builtin features from each theme, without any third party cache or minify plugins. The pagespeed test was audited using Google Pagespeed Insights and we've recorded the whole process, which you can watch below. When it comes to pagespeed, we are thrilled to show how Themify outperforms other themes and builders.

First of all, thanks to those who have updated to the Pagespeed Framework. We've received a a lot of feedback from the release. Since the release on Monday, we've been receiving 400 to 500 tickets every day related to the update. Our team has been working very hard to help everyone resolving every ticket in a timely manner. Since a lot of the tickets are related to the common issues, we would like to send out advice on the best approach to update your Themify themes and plugins.

Finally, the long-awaited framework update is here. This version (v5) is all about page speed improvements, so we called it the Pagespeed Framework. We initiated the Pagespeed Framework because we saw a common problem, all multi-purpose themes and builders are bloated and slow. So we've decided to solve this issue. In the past 11 months, rather than adding new features on the framework, we put all our effort to make our themes fast and light. It was not an easy task as we had to recode the framework plus the 42+ themes and 25+ addons compatibility. Today we are happy to announce the official release!

Why Does Page Speed Matter?

No one wants to see a slow site. Reports show that slow page load can reduce conversions and increase bounce rates. In other words, if your site is slow, your visitors/customers are likely to exit and move on to your competitors.

Slow page load can also impact your site's SEO as Google uses page load speed and user experience as one of the key ranking factors. If your site relies on search engine traffics, using a fast loading theme is essential. That is why we're committed to make Ultra and Shoppe the fastest multi-purpose themes. Most of our demos now score 90+ on Google Pagespeed Insights without using any additional plugins.

We are excited to announce that the long anticipating Pagespeed framework is close to final. We are going through the final round of testing and ironing the fine details. The project has been taking a long time as we have to re-code some components due to Google Pagespeed Insight algorithm changes. After the previous beta release, we were not satisfied with the pagespeed score, so we further enhanced the lazy load feature to get a better score. Now most Ultra and Shoppe demos score over 90 on Google Pagespeed Insights. The time invested was well worth it. We have the final beta version available if you are interested to give it a try. You can see the new versions being used across all live demos. If you spot any errors, please report them to us. If everything goes well, we will release the official version in a week or two. Another newsletter will be sent on the final release. For now, please enjoy our lightning fast demos below.

Demos:

• Ultra: 97 score (view report)
• Ultra Fitness: 96 score (view report)
• Ultra Construction: 97 score (view report)
• Ultra Yoga: 98 score (view report)
• Shoppe: 91 score (view report)
• Shoppe Sport: 95 score (view report)
• Shoppe Men: 92 score (view report)
• Shoppe Fashion: 97 score (view report)
• Music: 91 score (view report)
• Parallax: 91 score (view report)

We would like to update you on the Pagespeed framework that was announced a few months ago. There has been a long delay because Google Pagespeed Insights changed their metrics when we were close to completion. So we ended up re-coding a lot of stuff to comply with the new metrics. Before, Google just evaluated the page size, HTTP requests, scripts, code practices, etc., but now they also audit user experience as part of the pagespeed score. They implemented some new metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) to determine how user friendly your page is rendered on user's screen. For example, if you have a large element (whether it is a text, image, video, map, or slider) that takes a long time to load, it will trigger a long LCP. Or if you have an element that causes layout shift during page render (eg. inline popup, ad, social embeds, etc.), it will trigger the CLS issue. The long loading LCP and CLS will result in lower pagespeed score. For more information, read Google's Web Vitals.

The new changes have made it harder to score 95+ on Google Pagespeed Insights for everyone (including our new framework). If you refer to our previous post, the demos used to score 97 to 99 but are now down to 90 to 92 due to the new changes. The good news is we've tackled the new metrics pretty well. Most demos (even with heavy content) can still score 90 and up. In this post, we will share the Ultra and Shoppe beta version and show a few pagespeed comparisions between the old vs new version.

We have noticed the Builder Contact addon had security vulnerability allowing hackers to send spam/phishing emails on behalf of the affected sites. The issue was first reported by a few of our members on the support forum and at the same time we were notified by the WordFence team (big thanks to WordFence team for notifying us the concerns and suggestions). We took immediate action to fix all security flaws and released the update. If you are using Builder Contact prior version 1.4.6, it is highly recommended to update to the latest version immediately. If you have the old Builder Contact version installed on the server but not activated, please either delete it or replace it with the latest version (do not leave the compromised version on the server). If your membership has expired and can't update Builder Contact, please contact us. We will offer a 3-month free membership extension so you can update the plugin. We apologize for any inconvenience it may cause.