Speed up the Hueman Theme
Enable the option for images to load on scroll
In the live customizer, navigate in Advanced Options > Performances and SEO
Check the "Load Image on scroll" option to delay the loading of non visible images. Images below the viewport will be loaded dynamically on scroll. This can really boost speed performances by reducing the weight of long pages that include many images.
Use a cache plugin
Using a cache plugin prevents repeating database request and serving of same information, by storing data that has already been asked for and serves it up instantly.
There are many excellent free and premium cache plugin around : https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/cache/
A cache plugin will also help you reduce the sizes of your page by compressing it (HTML, CSS, Javascript) before it's actually renders by your browser.
This results in faster page load times, and an improved user experience. By applying good practices you'll get excellent speed performance scores as measured by several online tools like, GT Metrix, PingDom, and WebPageTest.
Optimize your images
1) Scale your image : recommended maximum dimensions
For the Hueman theme, I would recommend a maximum width of 720 pixels for your image. Wider image will just be too large for most of the devices.
Use the right image format
- JPEG/JPG : for photos of things, people, places
- PNG : for screenshots
- GIF : for animations
Compress your image files : We can use online image compression tool or computer software, to reduce the file size but not the image quality :
- tinyPNG. The best, I use it everyday, it works for png and jpeg format
- Pixlr – A free online tool that works great for minor formatting.
- Paint for Windows
- Preview for Mac
Typically, large high quality images should be kept between 100K and 60K. source : Image sizes and quality on WordPress.org.
2) Regenerate your images for your current theme's various image sizes
Each WordPress theme defines specific image sizes that will be used in various contexts. Each time you upload an image to your media library, WordPress generates in the background all the theme required sizes.
When you switch from one theme to another, all your previous images are not automatically re-generated. So you may have many images with wrong dimensions. The simple solution to avoid this problem is to use the excellent and free plugin called : Regenerate Thumbnails.
Recommended external resources