My post-Suffusion life

December 29, 2018 9:54 AM

For many years I used Sayontan Sinha's Suffusion theme on my blog. It's no longer supported and recently I've been getting ridiculously long load-times. Can you recommend a simple, lightweight blog theme I can move to with the least difficulty?

I have a site/ blog which no one reads, or is intended to read. It's on a self-hosted Wordpress site using the Suffusion theme in a simple old-fashioned blogging format, plus a couple of pages with stories, etc. I have added the link temporarily to my profile so you can see the look I am going for.

Suffusion is no longer supported and the blog has been getting very slow to load. Plus there have been minor cosmetic issues after Wordpress updates, such as the blog title font changing size for no apparent reason.

I am looking for a new, minimal blog theme that I can use instead of Suffusion. My criteria:

- Lightweight, fast to load
- Well-supported or with a good user forum
- Simple and straightforward to use
- Preferably free or inexpensive
- Looks like a blog but has up-to-date features like responsive layout.

I am a relative beginner at this, so would not want anything too complicated unless it comes with a lot of handholding.

posted by tavegyl to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Some themes you might like:
Twenty Sixteen
Bhari
Slightly

These are all pretty simple looking & are responsive. Twenty Sixteen is going to have the most information/support available, since it was designed by WordPress.org and was a default theme. Lots of people are using it.

If none of those grab you, you could go to https://wordpress.org/themes/ and then use the "feature filter" link to search for themes. I'd suggest picking "accessibility ready" and "blog". Things like one or two columns or theme options may or may not be important to you.
posted by belladonna at 10:23 AM on December 29, 2018

Best answer: Every year, Wordpress creates a free "year" theme (they just released "Twenty Nineteen"), which they include with major releases of WP, and they update their old themes as well. So you could try out all of the year themes going back to 2015 or so and stick with whichever one you like with reasonable confidence that it will support all the modern bells and whistles, not have an excess of fripperies, and be well-supported in the future. In many cases, there are a few layout and color options.
posted by adamrice at 9:48 AM on December 30, 2018

I used Suffusion on my site for a long time, and when I decided to change it up, I went to the free version of the GeneratePress theme. I've currently got mine set to be a 2-column site, which it looks like you don't need, but I believe that can be changed. I do like that I could customize fonts/colours fairly easily.

As I blog less and less (one post for all of 2018!), I'm feeling the need to simplify as WordPress gets more and more complex for infrequent users. I'm currently considering my options (and searching AskMe for ideas is what brought me to your post).
posted by melissa at 12:54 PM on January 1, 2019