Optimisation (moved from feature request)

Disclaimer: I’m not a programmer/web developer and in most cases don’t know what I talking about.

That being said, one of the biggest ‘features’ slowing down BlackFyre seems to be ShareThis. The general consensus seems to be that ShareThis is one of the worst things you could install on any website. Not only does it collect data on your users, okay sure it’s anonymous but it has a ridiculous amount of unnecessary redirect chains and external references. Before the last update I hacked out all the hard coded ShareThis and increased the speed by, I kid you not, nearly 200%. If I remember rightly, after hacking out all the external crap (not just ShareThis), the ‘time to first byte’ was reduced by a whooping 800% and I honestly couldn’t find a single feature that stopped working afterwards (of than the share buttons were gone).

All social networks (other than Pintrest – as if any gamer cares about Pintrest) offer their own API intergeneration/social buttons. Why on earth anyone would integrate this, let alone hard code it into the core theme with no option to remove it is beyond me.

Although I’m fully aware that a lot of speed/seo enhancements are made either server side and with a CDN, personally, my biggest request would be to work on the themes seo/pagespeed/caching/compression/minification. BlackFyre currently scores F (33%) from Google PageSpeed and D (67%) from YSlow. https://gtmetrix.com/reports/skywarriorthemes.com/CiomMzCW

Another thing that baffles me is why all the Java/CSS is in so many different files when when every reputable online testing tool seems to mark this a a serious concern due the the amount of HTTP requests every page has to make. For example http://snag.gy/Qtp3O.jpg (BlackFyre homepage default install). BlackFyre homepage makes 172 requests (global average is 69) and this is before installing any of our own plugins.

EDIT: In fact, I actually have a waterfall test of before I installed the last update (with all the rubbish hacked out) vs after I updated the theme (all the rubbish back in) http://i.snag.gy/ZEzJM.jpg

I’m sorry this has turned into a rant more than a feature request. I LOVE this theme so much it just pains to see that this has been completely overlooked in the 8 months I have owned the theme.