Basel Review: Speed Test & Plugins Compatibility for a Multi Vendor Scenario

Hello,

I’ve decided to write this topic merely to help anybody interested in Basel and its use with other plugins and how Basel itself performs in terms of speed.

I’ve spent around 3 months in order to set up the layout theme, find the right hosting provider, upload the text content, pictures and plugins.
The theme is currently used for a marketplace. I need to update some plugin that few days ago came out with a new release (YITH) but for the rest this is the situation:

Server

Hosting provider: Cloudways
Cloud Server: Digital Ocean
Server Spec: 2GB Ram, 40GB SSD, 3TB Transfer, 2 Core Processor
Traffic: 300-350 unique visitors per day

Backend

Theme: Basel 3.8
Wordpress: 4.9.2
Active Plugins: 39
Size: 580MB

Plugins (*= comes with some minor problem)

Akismet Anti-Spam Version 4.0.2
Breeze Version 1.0.8
CMB2 Version 2.3.0
Contact Form 7 Version 5.0
Duplicate Post Version 3.2.1
Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades Version 2.0.0
*Feed Them Social Version 2.3.6
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) Version 5.1.2.5
*IP2Location Redirection Version 1.10.1
*Jetpack by WordPress.com Version 5.7.1
MailChimp for WordPress Version 4.1.14
Marketplace Stripe Gateway Version 1.0.7 (part of the multi vendor set by WC Marketplace)
Password Protected Version 2.1
Really Simple SSL Version 2.5.24
Recent Posts Widget Extended Version 0.9.9.7
Redux Framework Version 3.6.7.7
Simple Twitter Tweets Version 4.4
Slider Revolution Version 5.4.6.3.1
*WC Marketplace Version 2.7.8 (multi vendor core plugin)
WCMp Advance Shipping Version 1.0.5
WCMp Paypal Adaptive Gateway Version 1.0.3
WooCommerce Version 3.2.6
WooCommerce Live Sales Notifications Version 3.1.0
*Woocommerce Mailchimp Discount Version 2.0
WooCommerce PayPal Express Checkout Gateway Version 1.5.1
WooCommerce Review for Discount Version 1.6.5
WooCommerce Services Version 1.11.0
WooCommerce Stripe Gateway Version 4.0.4
WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping Version 3.0.6
WPBakery Page Builder Version 5.4.4
XTEMOS Post Types plugin Version 1.2
YITH WooCommerce Anti-Fraud Premium Version 1.1.3
YITH WooCommerce Compare Version 2.2.3
YITH WooCommerce Email Templates Premium Version 1.3.8
YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart Premium Version 1.2.0
YITH WooCommerce Share For Discounts Premium Version 1.4.3
YITH WooCommerce Wishlist Version 2.2.1
*Yoast SEO Premium Version 6.1.2
*Yoast SEO: WooCommerce Version 6.1

*Feed them social it’s a plugin that I’m using for Pinterest Board feeds. It works nice, but apparently due Pinterest API generate redirects that bother the usual web speed tests. This single problem is graded D.

*IP2Location works fine until a user does not type in the url the full address for SSL websites. This means that if the user type https://address, the redirect will not work. It works in all the other possible ways to type in an address. Plugin owner states there’s red light for caching plugins, however I’m not sure if is completely the case. Once I’ve cleaned the cache of two browsers and purge Varnish, the redirection was working also for https, not even disabling Breeze and Varnish, purge the cash and changing IP does not works anymore for https.

*Jetpack and Yoast generate a lot of POST requests. This means that if you have an eCommerce or a marketplace, it’s almost impossible start with just 1GB of RAM. Users will not experiment a slow loading website, but on backend side, edit, upload, publish content will shut down the db due cpu overload. Problem disappear with 2GB of RAM and some tweak on the server provided by Cloudways support.

*WC Marketplace Version 2.7.8 comes with a minor problem related with CSS. Bullet points appears not aligned in the vendor page, or appear where WC Marketplace do not normally display them.

*Woocommerce Mailchimp Discount for some reason, I’ve found out yesterday, that if you disable WooCommerce PayPal Payment Gateway ’cause you don’t need it, all your tax classes and zones will disappear. It’s just a display view problem, they remain active and working in your DB.

Speed Optimization

Many people make the mistake to test the speed of a theme by testing the address that they find on Themeforest. It’s basically useless.
Before purchase Basel I had other themes on my radar, among theme the popular Flatsome which actually didn’t perform well compare to the other by simply testing the URL on themeforest or the one on the dev team website.

The best thing you can do is check if the developer have provided minify files, ’cause a larger impact on the speed test is made by the pictures that you upload, the server that you use, the server that you use to test the speed of your website and if you use a caching plugin like Breeze and a CDN server.

Note that Cloudways also offers a CDN server but I’m not currently using it.

Test with:

– https://tools.pingdom.com/

Why not GTmetrix?
My customers are not in Canada or USA, GTmetrix allow you to test with a server close to your customers only if you register with them. It’s free, but I didn’t care anyway.

For the records, a Canadian user would experiment instead of a Grade A website, a Grade D, these mainly due factors out of my control, such the Pinterest API problem or files automatically created by Breeze or any other caching plugin that can not be furthermore minified and of course, the server distance.

However the best part is see how eCommerce of startups based my country,that have already received an investment xxx.xxx (and have a CTO), perform with a grade D on Pingdom and with a grade F on GTmetrix XD

Anyone should say Basel speed test perform bad, it’s not related with Basel Theme.

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Hello,

Thank you very much for such a detailed review! We hope that a lot of customers will find it useful.

Kind Regards
Xtemos

For those who can’t see the attachment because not logged, it’s:

Grade A 92
Load Time 1.50s
Faster than 80%
Page Size 6.1MB
Requests 157

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