The results? My homepage, once a loading-bar marathon, now feels like a lightning-fast roller coaster. Sliders glide in seamlessly, and visitors don’t have time to tap their feet (unless they’re actually dancing to the awesome soundtrack, of course).

Slider Revolution is a plugin that I never wanted to give a chance because every time it was applied to a website it saw extremely horrible tests.

Kind Regards
Shiv

One thing that (for many people) is incorrect in the article above:

If you are using Slider Revolution to create header banners, you do not defer the rs6.css or js files. You can also ‘unload’ a few of the files from the public side of the site. If your sliders appear at the top of the page, you want it done and loaded as soon as possible. This can in many cases also help CLS (the jump!).

There is a ‘magic combination’ that is as follows:

Normal load (no defer) these files:
ddTP.css
rs6.min.js
rs6.css
rbtools.min.js

Then completely unload these files:
basics.css
material-icons.css (make sure you don’t use these)
tp-color-picker.css

You probably won’t need these files on the front end.

Secondly, purify the RS6.css file. That has every single option that Slider Rev gives and you are probably like me and not even using 10% of it. It’s like a theme with huge bloat in it that you won’t use.

You can massively cut down the file size by taking out the unused CSS code. This is best done after you have made your sliders and you are happy with them. Otherwise you may go to make new ones and the CSS to run them won’t be there.

Best to keep a copy of the old rs6.css and if you make new files, re-purify the code.

Lastly – bang on with the hosting. It is so, so important not to go for some shared cheap host.

Hope that at least helps someone – a bit of feedback will be great!

And probably being obvious but when testing page speed, always do 2/3 tests to get an average. Scores can differ depending on network conditions.

Simon
Yorkshire Design

Isn’t it more convenient if ThemePunch just fixed their plugin and you didn’t have to be a mad scientist? There is no doubt that this is a money play. There is no doubt that RevSlider is slow, and that the way to speed it up is apparently to buy your products.

Hi Jason,

This is not necessarily issue with RevSlider, giving users customization options as these usually comes with risk of low performance if not configured properly and not using content/images that will give good speed results.

While this could be improved within the plugin code it would also mean limiting the customizations available for users and then it would no longer be a product that is right now.

Majority of options mentioned in the post here are available with our free version of plugins as well and you can check those on our WordPress.org repository.

Cheers,
Predrag