So I decided to build the Worlds Fastest WordPress Theme. And keep it optimized for SEO.
Fastest Ever is a WordPress theme built around a simple idea: a website should not need a pile of frameworks, scripts and dependencies just to display text, images and links.
Most WordPress themes are built to do everything. They support page builders, animations, dozens of layouts, custom fonts, sliders and features most websites will never use. Every additional layer comes with a cost.
Fastest Ever takes the opposite approach.
It is a deliberately minimal WordPress theme designed to produce clean, lightweight HTML with as little browser-side work as possible. It uses system fonts, a small stylesheet and no theme JavaScript for normal page views. WordPress remains the CMS, but the frontend is designed to feel much closer to a hand-built static website.
The theme still includes the things a publishing website actually needs: posts, pages, categories, search, archives, featured images, comments and responsive navigation. It also includes hierarchical page navigation that automatically follows the structure of your WordPress pages rather than requiring a huge manually maintained menu.
The design is intentionally opinionated. Large typography, strong contrast, generous whitespace and simple editorial layouts replace decorative effects and UI clutter.
Fastest Ever is not intended to be the WordPress theme with the most features.
It is intended to be the theme with the least amount of stuff standing between your content and the reader.
What Fastest Ever does differently
- No theme JavaScript on normal page views
- No external font requests
- No CSS framework
- No jQuery dependency from the theme
- Small, purpose-built stylesheet
- Native WordPress posts, pages, categories and comments
- Responsive without a frontend framework
- Automatic hierarchical page navigation
- Clean semantic HTML
- Built for Core Web Vitals and fast rendering
- Fully translatable
- Compatible with the WordPress.org theme requirements
Why I built it
I built Fastest Ever after becoming increasingly frustrated with how much code a modern WordPress site can send to a browser before displaying what is often a very simple page.
I wanted WordPress for the part it is exceptionally good at: managing content. I did not want the frontend overhead that often comes with a modern theme stack.
So I started from the other direction. Instead of asking what features I could add, I asked what I could remove while still having a useful publishing platform.
The result is Fastest Ever.