When I chose to venture back to the WordPress default theme, one of my worries was about my Google PageSpeed score. I had to take a serious hit, right? Spoiler, there is a surprise ending!
Some years ago I had made it a mission to get the perfect score across Google PageSpeed, GTMetrix and Pingdom. Although it was a fun project, maintaining a 100% score across all three created a barrier for updating my site in the future. Especially since there at the time were some quirks in all of those tests.
So the big question remained how much of a hit my site would take by using the standard WordPress theme? As it turns out, Twenty Seventeen is plenty optimised as a starting point.
The server setup is essentially the same, and that is after all a significant chunk of the work. But, after setting up minification of CSS and JS the score went up to 91% for mobile and 97% for desktop – which certainly exceeded my expectations.
What would it take?
Actually, there is only one thing standing in the way, and that is the CSS file. Google want’s you to inline the critical CSS and then load the rest once the page has loaded. I’m not planning on doing this since it isn’t a practical solution, nor is a 100% necessary for any reason.
Still, quite impressed with the out-of-the-box performance of Twenty Seventeen.
Ah, what the heck, why not?!
Who am I kidding. When all that stands between me and a 100% score is optimising CSS delivery, I can’t just let that go? So, here it is…
