Improving Google PageSpeed in WordPress

I set out to improve my Google PageSpeed score to 100. Through many trial & errors, I finally dumped my current theme and used just the default 2016 WordPress theme. Technically I should create a child theme if I was going to put it into production, but I just needed some insight so I ripped into the parent theme.

The end results for making 2016 theme score 100 is:

1. Remove the external stylesheet style.css, minify it, and place it in the head.
2. Remove references to Genericons and specialty fonts out of the functions.php file
3. Minify the functions.js file
4. Add this to functions.php to move the jquery scripts to the footer:

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', 'rudr_move_jquery_to_footer');  
 
function rudr_move_jquery_to_footer() {  
 	// unregister the jQuery at first
        wp_deregister_script('jquery');  
 
        // register to footer (the last function argument should be true)
        wp_register_script('jquery', includes_url('/js/jquery/jquery.js'), false, null, true);  
 
        wp_enqueue_script('jquery');  
}

This last step got me past the dreaded “remove render-blocking js”.

Practicality?

While this theme is now technically scoring 100, getting a site ready for production will be a little harder. As plugins are added and dependencies appear, the score will decline, but at least I now have a basis to start from (start a new theme) and can work on the score each step of the way.

Bookmark: Function found here:

https://rudrastyh.com/wordpress/render-blocking-javascript-css.html