Fast responsive Blog and Blog Theme that work in China.

October 19, 2016 12:17 PM

Sounds easy but is surprisingly difficult. I need a blog and a blog theme, e.g. WordPress and a theme. Requirements: 1. Must be for a finance related blog 2. Must be FAST, must be also fast in China. Meaning loading no bulls.t from Facebook, google analytics, google fonts etc. since this stuff is blocked there. 3. Must be responsive. Must look good on a cell phone.

I have word press with a simple and responsive theme installed. It looks ugly on phones and is slow. Any ideas?
I had a look on gohugo.io at leas the page loads very fast and looks good on my phone. But for Hugo I would need another server and not just hosting.

Any suggestions welcome.

posted by yoyo_nyc to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Way to general of a question. I'm not really sure what your after. The technical answer to your question is "any or all of them" because you don't identify what's wrong with what you've tried so far.

Blog platforms and themes are more or less content independent. Just about "any and all" will be/work for for a finance related blog.

What do you mean by fast in china? You can easily find a wordpress theme that doesn't load facebook, google analytics, google fonts. All you have to do is take a quick look. Just about "any and all" will have these functions readily apparent, giving you control in the back-end.

Finding a mobile responsive theme is also very easy. Just about "any and all" are these days. Certainly the authors readily identify them as such since it's a selling point.

I use Wordpress and Woothemes Canvas theme for a very busy e-commerce site i run. We have lots of Chinese customers and we've never heard any complaints about speed.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:41 PM on October 19, 2016

Response by poster: Well, most sites are just unusable for me in China or annoyingly slow. One of the main reasons is that they load to much stuff from external sites that are blocked.

I googled "wordpress theme without google fonts" but this did not yield much.
This was interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12722917
But again, I would need more than some simple hosting service.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 6:59 PM on October 19, 2016

Response by poster: I mean, all the themes look like total trash on a HTC and an iPhone if accessed in China.
It is no comparison to a phone renderer like this one: http://mobiletest.me
Why?
posted by yoyo_nyc at 7:21 PM on October 19, 2016

I don't actually know the first thing about web-in-China, but could you Google Translate + Baidu?
posted by batter_my_heart at 10:36 PM on October 19, 2016

Response by poster: I am not sure what you mean by "Google Translate + Baidu?"
In China many websites are blocked (e.g. google, facebook, youtube etc. etc.). I can access this via a VPN but site visitors from China likely can't. And since basically ALL Themes load tons of stuff (javascript libraries, fonts, googleapi) that is blocked, this slows down a site tremendously and breaks many sites.

I have found a few hints but this will be a very time consuming project:

Disable Google Fonts
https://wordpress.org/plugins/disable-google-fonts/


Google Fonts Unstable in China – Here is How to Fix It
Forget Google and Use These Hosted JavaScript Libraries in China
All Websites Should Use DNSPod in China
https://chineseseoshifu.com/blog/categories/performance-optimization/
posted by yoyo_nyc at 4:06 AM on October 20, 2016

basically ALL Themes load tons of stuff

That's utter tosh, buddy. You seem to be a little out of your element. You might want to hire someone for some better advice.

You can disable Google font by not including them in your code.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:25 AM on October 20, 2016