When developers create templates for the most popular Content Management Systems, they most of the time try to pack as many features into their products as possible.

They work this way to maximize profit; it's more difficult to sell specialized templates than general ones that are somewhat appropriate for most website owners.

You might have heard that "if you try to build something for everyone, it will work for no one".

And this pretty much sums up the problem with general website templates.

Imagine how difficult it would be to build a car capable of winning the Dakar Rally along with the Formula One Series. It would have to be able to accelerate fast and give an outstanding performance in tight turns while carrying 3-4 spare wheels and water for a couple of days.

No wonder no one's ever tried to build a car like this.

Unnecessary parts

General templates are extremely popular among website owners, and they are sold in large quantities on most template marketplaces. And this happens despite the fact that:

  • about 30-40 percent of their CSS files are needless. In most cases these parts of the CSS code are not referred to in the HTML files and they are also not required for the Javascript to work properly.

  • Their HTML code contains a large number of unnecessary DIV elements to be able to display anything anywhere.

Of course, in itself, there's nothing wrong with using a pre-made template on a website, as it can make its development easier and save costs.

But it you'd like to create a fast website, that will help its owners rank well, you'll need to clean the selected template from all the unnecessary elements.

How to get rid of the useless code and speed up your site?

Once the visual tasks with the site are completed, you'll have to combine and clean the files in your template. At this stage go through the following steps:

  1. Remove every unnecessary element from the HTML code
  2. Remove the inline styles and use CSS files instead of them
  3. Combine the CSS files
  4. Combine the JS files
  5. Throw out every needless line from the JS code
  6. Remove every formatting element from the CSS files that you don't use on the site
  7. Take out every needless page break or space from every file

You can reduce the source code's size by 30 percent with these steps, which will make your site load a lot faster. And who knows? In the end it might win the Dakar OR the Formula One...