It is 2021 and therefore WordPress has launched a new theme:
- Twenty Twenty-One.
Today, we’ll see how it looks, and most importantly: We’ll Test its Speed.
- We’ll compare its Page Speed to that of the Twenty Twenty Theme.
We will tell you one thing: We had a surprise.
In case you don’t know, in this Diary we talk about How we are building this Website: our SEO strategy, Plugins we use, our Traffic Results…
- You’ll find all our Posts sorted by Topic here: “Website building and SEO Diary“.
As usual, this Post will be divided into 4 different parts:
1. What does Twenty Twenty-One offer?
2. Does Twenty Twenty-One slow down WordPress?
3. Is Twenty Twenty-One a good Theme?
4. Our Google Analytics report for today: Users and Page Views we have.
Let’s begin:
1. What does Twenty Twenty-One offer?
The Twenty Twenty-One Theme seems to be designed for highly visual Sites.
It seems perfect for:
- Photography Sites.
- Design-Focused Sites.
- Sites with lots of Blocks and “Pop-Ups”.
- Sites with several visual information at the same time (Images, Posts, Comments, etc).
It doesn’t seem very suitable for:
- Corporate Sites not focused on Design or Visual Content.
- Text-Oriented Sites.
Check our Reference Post, built with the Twenty Twenty Theme:
Now, compare its appearance with the Twenty Twenty-One Theme installed:
What about its compatibility?
- Of course, this Theme is compatible with all Plugins.
However, we have to mention that, it didn’t worked very well with our Page Builder: WPBakery.
Why?
- The appearance was not very good.
So, if you are interested in using a Page Builder, think twice before using the Twenty Twenty-One Theme.
There are other Themes that seem much more oriented to them.
- KLEO Theme, Astra, etc.
2. Does Twenty Twenty-One slow down WordPress?
We have first tested the Speed of our Test Site using the Twenty Twenty Theme.
- We use Chrome’s Lighthouse Tool.
This Test Site has no Plugins installed, just one Sample Post with:
- 200 Paragraphs.
- 1 Heavy Image (7 mb).
We use WordPress 5.6
- If you are interested about it, visit our “Should you update WordPress to 5.6?” Post.
Performance – Benchmark
* This Largest Contentful Paint (5.1 s) is due to the Large Image we use in the sample Post.
- We want to have a representative Page to test.
Opportunities – Benchmark
Then, we have Installed the Twenty Twenty-One Theme and Measured the Page Speed again:
Performance with Twenty Twenty-One
Opportunities with Twenty Twenty-One
We were surprised about the reduction in the LCP:
- From 5.1 to 2.4 seconds: – 2.7 s.
As the Longest Contentful Paint (LCP) is main Speed indicator used by Google right now, this are good News.
Is Twenty Twenty-One a fast Theme?
Yes. No doubt.
Compared to Twenty Twenty Theme, it reduces LCP to half.
- The Performance (measured with Google’s Lighthouse Tool) increased from 80 to 96 just by changing the Theme from Twenty Twenty to Twenty Twenty-One.
3. Is Twenty Twenty-One a good Theme?
If you have a very Visual Site, you should definitely give it a try.
- In our Test, we used a 7 mb image and the Page Performance was excellent.
If you want a more “Not-so-Visual” Site (like ours) and you are considering using a Page Builder…
- You can try it as it is a free Theme, but we think you would be happier with other Theme.
Regardless, its Speed Performance is the best we’ve seen so far.
- If your priority is Page Speed, you won’t find any better.
4. Our Google Analytics report for today: Users and Page Views we have.
Our numbers are improving day by day.
- We estimate that in a few days we will return to our pre-Christmas results.
Users:
We receive almost 4,000 users per week.
- Before Christmas we reached 4,200K.
Pageviews:
We currently receive 16,824 Pageviews per month.
- Our record so far is almost 22,000 that we hope to hit again in a few weeks.
None of this would be possible without you.
So, as always: Thanks for being there.
