[theme-reviewers] Proposal for a new guideline and plugin function

[Chip Bennett]

More than likely, everyone subscribed to this list is not only familiar
with, but uses, either/or/both of YSlow and PageSpeed (along with several
other, similar tools). :)

The problem with basing a guideline around such results is - again - the
results are heavily dependent upon installation environment. A Theme
installed in your environment won't score the same as a Theme installed in
my environment. A Theme on a site running your content won't score the same
as a Theme on my site, running the Theme Unit Test data.

While I see benefit in using such information in an advisory capacity, I
think that using it as an acceptance criterion is probably a bridge too far.

Chip

On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 9:08 AM, Robb Shecter <robb at weblaws.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday, April 24, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Edward Caissie wrote:
>
> On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Doug Stewart <zamoose at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Speed and performance optimization is a complex problem that has no
> specific set of solutions and said solutions can vary greatly based
> upon your hosting situation.
>
>
> This is the key to the issue, aside from the additional points @James
> offered, how would be insure a "level playing field" to use the benchmarks
> suggested?
>
>
> I don't think it'd be hard.
>
> I'm guessing from these replies that you're not too familiar with YSlow
> and PageSpeed? These tools and their motivation are somewhat revolutionary:
> Yahoo and Google realized that much a user's perception of a site's speed
> is not server-side configuration per se, but rather things under control of
> the theme (in WP context).
>
> So, the values could be advisory. But I further believe they could be
> mandatory. Because Both YSlow and PageSpeed give clear "grades" of a web
> page along with very specific instructions on how to improve them.
>
> Here's a great example: the results for the online demo of News, the theme
> that gave me trouble:
>
>
> https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=http_3A_2F_2Flocallylost.com_2Fnews&mobile=false
>
> You can see that it scored 42 out of 100. That's the lowest I've score
> I've personally seen it give. And click on the very first "high priority"
> item - "Combine images into CSS sprites":
>
>
> https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=http_3A_2F_2Flocallylost.com_2Fnews&mobile=false&rule=SpriteImages
>
> Page Speed is showing the exact problem that brought down my server.
>
> Prior to this, I've only seen it go down to 70 - and that was for some
> *slow* sites. For comparison, TwentyEleven out of the box gives 78.
>
> So as you can see, there's a lot of room for an objective measurement
> which is independent of server config. Say, for example, a minimum of 70
> would raise a flag, but 60 would be a hard reject.
>
> Robb
>
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