Most of it should be, assuming you’re running Apache/Linux. Note that the nice formatting of my code got kind of whacked when they moved to the new forum template…. soo.. might not be super readible/legible.

Kind of multiple threads going in my old mega thread — so, perhaps useful to work ‘backwards’ ?

a) some basic wp-config cleanups (add direct paths, memory change, image compression)
aa) htaccess stuff for common time to live, file type, redirect xmlrpc queries, etc.
b) some basic functions.php stuff to clean needless stuff in header of WP pages, remove stuff like XMLRPC stuff, some security stuff; remove ‘?’ queries on stuff (versioning);
c) optimize style.css with minifcation; compress main .js file per Google tool
d) consider moving to web-safe font stack and not loading ANY google fonts; have to hack out section in the main them booster function file, then search/replace the ‘font-family’ elements in the style.css (easier prior to minification, obviously)
e) put custom CSS bottom of style.css vs theme panel

advanced stuff included – un-enqueueing the main style.css, loading in footer; after generating “critical CSS’ with the critical CSS generator online; putting above the fold CSS in header.php (only way to remove render blocking css) ** not needed if moving to http/2 platform.

Super advanced peeps might choose to use mod-pagespeed, https, php 7, and http/2.

So, basically.. kind of a “test your speed,” (with *no* ads running); then make some mods; then retest couple of times, etc., rinse repeat.

I’m no longer using Newspaper – moved to NewsMag 3x last year entirely. Not yet on 4x. But also using TagDiv’s WPION thing as a beta test. (actually re-rendering thumbs for one test of that right now in other browser tab!).

Soooooooo….. basic Apache stuff, and WP-config.php stuff, and common sense thing for functions.php that do specific things — all useful. Good to research WHAT things do before using them.

• This reply was modified 9 years by simchris.

If you look at your GTmetrix score, note the item ‘enable browser caching…’ this is the ‘time to live’ that items should live in browser; such as your style sheet be cached first time and not reloaded every new page. See the various tutorials, and help on GTM for how to do that — it’s also covered in my long winded optimization thread in the docs > tutorials > best of forums section here.

If you look at your GTmetrix score, it appears you have the gzip settings okay.

However you have bad score for the expiration headers, or time to live, or browser caching — often referred to in those different ways.

Make sure you deleted old folder; then uploaded new folder; not merging old/new theme folders via over-write. Common issue of mixing old/new code in same theme folder.

If you are loading the *old* theme panel for Newspaper and not the current one, that is often the culprit, in my own experience.

If you did clean install of 8x vs “overwrite/merge” …

You can also try
a) clear all caching
b) clear transients with wp-optimize
c) resave permalinks

Yes, make sure you properly paste in the code into the correct box in the custom code section of panel — if correctly pasted in, then it works perfectly. At least on our sites. (I don’t work here.)

Revert back to prior version?

and I’m *still* doing this 😉

Probably need to be way more specific?

You add tags from the tag box in the post editor — part of WordPress, not the theme.

You can add tags ‘per post,’ and once you add one to a post, it can be re-used in future. Or you can add them in advance:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Posts_Tags_Screen

What I usually do for my tutorials here is put

[Tutorial] at start of the subject here — if TD think it’s super useful they might add it to the ‘best of forums’ section here in the theme docs; but still searchable if you tag if properly — the [Tutorial] is kinda useful when people doing a search for something like ‘cleanup image directory’ or whatever.

(I don’t work here; but been a troll… er.. active user here for almost 4 years now.)

I think you can put any size you want in the custom ad boxes as long as it fits layout and you use modern responsive CSS3.

You might want to look at the IAB standard international ad unit sizes as a guideline, too.

( I don’t work here. )

Try this https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_table.asp

There is some documentation in the WordPress codex (wordpress.org) on how to do this.

In our case we tend to manually un-enqueue the main CSS, move to footer, remove things like comments.js via functions.php hook/filter since we don’t use comments on our sites anymore, and use the ‘scripts to footer’ plugin to move .js to footer.

Main issues with speed are usually
a) image optimization
b) minify the main css and js when done messing with them
c) time to live, gzip settings
d) using PHP 5.6 and up with opcache — don’t use 5.2/5.3 and try moving on from 5.4 as all are end of life, and possibly no longer secure, and slloooooow with WP
e) limiting external calls – such as ping to FB/twitter for “number of likes/shares”
f) limiting number of ad units per page
g) consider removing all Google fonts and going with web-safe font stack; or limit to only ONE Google font family
(etc)

I use basic HTML5 and CSS3. Often applying a class of “table” is good start.

Not part of theme. Good to google solutions and plugins for hacking wp core. Easily done with function added to functions.php, or with plugins in the wordpress.org repo.

I don’t work here.

No worries… we have all been there — it’s always new until you go through it once 🙂

I’m about to migrate one site from TD NewsMag to TD IONmag — and literally making copies of my custom text widgets right this moment, due to the same issue. There is a plugin supposedly for this, but rather have the backups anyway.

At least WP usually does include them as deactivated widgets on the appearance menu — they didn’t even used to do that!

Disable the ‘lazy load’ effect.

TD composer is not a 1:1 replacement for VC — it’s not the same thing and doesn’t have all the same features, but runs much faster and optimized for mobile etc., less overhead, more secure, etc.

Add a widgetized sidebar element to your sidebar column in tdcomposer

then add widgets to the sidebar under appearance > widgets

that’s how I do it

See the theme docs on how to use the big giant custom code option in the theme panel ?

If you look at the theme admin panel – there is section ‘custom code’ — designed to use… well, what it says. You can possibly add to the google analytics box if you don’t know how to edit your header.php or footer.php file.

I don’t work here.

Basic setting in WordPress – you might want to review the documentation on learning to use WP on WordPress.org …
https://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_Reading_Screen

Basically under WP settings > reading

If using a custom module with a page builder; that is set in the module setting.

(I don’t work here.)

🙂

See the theme docs > tutorials on how to increase WP speed.

Looks like missing CSS file. Try testing page with F12/console in Chrome.

Consider ‘rolling back’ to your prior Theme install, then do proper upgrade via FTP vs using the Envato plugin.

Also, for major theme upgrades — going from 3x to 4x is like going to new theme, so you need to read all the docs to see ‘what has changed.’

Yes. We have a dedicated server, and have been doing our own server management since 1996, and webdev since 3/95, and using WP since Dec 2004. VC caused CPU spikes, more RAM usage, and on two occasions major security vulnerabilities. On our old server (prior last August), we would get bizarro CPU spikes where system would go from 0.7 load to 72.0 !

We were early adopter of the “shim” that Radu came up with, to make Newspaper run for home page blocks without using VC. This evolved into TDC, which was in BETA last year, and we have been using since then. We are using it on numerous sites and refuse to use VC for anything, regardless of its popularity.

Of course, we have high traffic news portals, found in Apple News, Google News, Bing News, (main site syndicated worldwide from 250+ other news sites, top 10 social platforms, etc.), and so we get a lot of traffic, which means a lot of queries.

Besides all of that … the biggest change was moving fully to PHP 5.6.x and no longer using PHP 5.4 for anything in prep for PHP 7.0.x. 5.4 is a dog compared to 5.6, and frankly nobody should be using it anymore for WP, certainly not for VC; and anybody using 5.3 and 5.2 will likely get hacked at this point.

In our case, dedicated server, PHP 5.4, Apache, Linux, any theme with VC => DOOM!

And yes, if you look at the specs posted by TD, they have tested TD against VC for speed — and since it has lower footprint, less code bloat, etc., it’s faster. QED.

My opinion based on our sites and millions of page views. Your mileage may vary.

You can also usually do a simple time.php file and put the echo time in there and see what time php is reporting for system.