It is very much essential to have a site that loads fast. A fast loading site has two-fold advantages. First is that your website visitors will have to wait less to read content and second is that a search engines loves fast loading sites.
The theme you choose should not contain any elements that you’re not going to use. For example; are you really going to use all those shortcodes, those widgets, page templates, and bundled scripts (like TimThumb and more) that come with the theme? When the theme is bloated with such elements, it loads slow and thereby affecting user’s experience. No one likes to wait and that’s why when it comes to choosing a theme, you should choose a fast loading WordPress theme for your website. Below we’ll be taking a look at 7 such WordPress themes that focuses on speed – the faster, the better.
Frank
Frank is an open-source WordPress theme designed to provide a light, responsive and unobtrusive reading experience. The theme’s default home page makes only 9 database queries and consists of 2 requests weighing at roughly 30KB (9.5KB gzipped). The theme comes with various different layouts for your home page (1 column, 2 column, 3 column, 4 column, etc.) that can be mixed and matched as per your needs.
Google PageSpeed Score: 97 out of 100 (really impressive).
Swift Basic
Swift Basic is a free, fast loading, developer friendly and SEO friendly theme with many customization options and infinite number of layouts. It supports custom menus, post types and post formats features.
Google PageSpeed Score: 95 out of 100.
Mon Cahier
Mon Cahier is a simple, clean and elegant theme. The theme comes with very minimalist design and is perfect for blogs and magazines site.
Google PageSpeed Score: 95 out of 100.
Twenty Twelve
The Twenty Twelve theme is the default theme for WordPress and comes with an impressive page speed score. The theme is responsive and features front page template with its own widgets, styling for post formats on both index and single views, and an optional no-sidebar page template. You can implement custom menu, header image and background.
PageSpeed Score: 94 out of 100.
zBench
zBench though not responsive, but it comes with support for WP-Page Navi, WP-RecentComments, custom-menu, widgets and threaded-comments.
Google PageSpeed Score: 94 out of 100.
Parament
This is the perfect theme for those who love dark color scheme and a textured background. You can add a custom header and a background image. The theme also comes with a full-width image template to display large images in their full glory.
Google PageSpeed Score: 94 out of 100.
Toolbox
Toolbox is a HTML5 and CSS based theme that acts as a canvas for WordPress theme development. The theme is developed by Automattic and is a superb choice for those who’re thinking to make customizations through CSS.
Google PageSpeed Score: 93 out of 100.