How fast is your admin?

Thanks Natascha Vantuykom ! 🙌

Honestly, the biggest wins came from small but consistent tweaks rather than deep server-side coding. A few things that worked really well for me:

• Keep plugins lean → deactivate/delete what you don’t really need. Not just data tables, but also the wp_options, which often gets cluttered with autoloads that slow everything down (many of them are orphan entries). Just check that in case you have not take a look in a while!
• Use solid caching + a CDN (I usually follow the server specs recommendations here).
• Optimize media and clean up database tables on a regular basis.

Most of it is just good housekeeping -no need for hardcore sysadmin skills.

One more tip: check your queries and requests to the server (and third parties). I do this a lot during privacy audits (often discovering on the way that some “well-known” plugins are quietly sharing data, which rise important GDPR concerns🤪).

Along the way, you also get a clear view of what your site is actually doing. For example, we build personal dashboards that call the database - so it’s always handy to keep those requests under control.

By the way, the Fluent ecosystem itself really flies. Honestly, most of the bottlenecks I’ve been hitting lately come from how themes are built rather than plugins.

An optimized theme makes a huge difference (I’m not the best example since I use Thrive Theme Builder -which I love as a suite, but it’s definitely heavier, and still tied to jQuery like many older tools).

I’ve been looking for something lighter for a while (like Kadence), since it’s tricky to have it 100% optimized. But I’m happy with the suite so, I do not see changing that soon😆

Jorge de los Reyes I use Kadence all the way, and most of the Fluent plugins. Use litespeed with redis for cache, but I actually don't know how to best practice configure it...

For the rest, I optimize tables regularely (from the litespeed plugin, don't know if that is enough) and try to optimize images (clients are sometimes horrible with uploading giant images)

Jorge de los Reyes thank you for your insight. BTW if you get a chance I highly recommended Bricks Builder. Changed everything for me. Bricks and Fluent makes for happy days!!

Luke HubCo Mr. Luke, stop creating new necessities please 😂

You keep making my to-do list longer!

Now seriously, I’ll definitely take a look at it! Thanks for the suggestion!!

Jorge de los Reyes Gold! Wish we has a laugh button ;) lol. I stumbled accross it when it came out and have been thanking my lucky stars since. I did come over from elementor so the comparison for me was pretty big. Ive not tried Thrive Theme Builder so the gap maybe smaller ;)

But it is pretty good :)

Luke HubCo I still have nightmares with Elementor’s mobile editor 😂: having to almost recreate everything.

Thrive it’s amazing: it’s has everything you may need.

It’s just sad that, after they were acquired, they changed their brilliant future for… dunno what they are thinking of now 😂 (Apart from keeping their API closed, killing Automator…) 🙂‍↕️

Innovation is a must on online businesses. Fortunately, the suite is still quite solid! Which points out how creative Shane was 💪 - it’s crystal clear when a founder understands their market.

Fluent is a great example: they create tools for themselves 😄

Jorge de los Reyes How solid of a theme would you say Astra is?

Parm Saggu Hello Parm!

Astra is definitely a solid theme. Brainstorm Force (the team behind it) has built a strong ecosystem around it - Spectra (what most “Astra sites” rely on now), Ultimate Addons, Convert Pro, Presto Player (which we already discussed)… I’ve personally used all of them, and they’ve worked really well.

That said, I’ve also seen some design choices I wouldn’t personally adopt - for example, how they handle GDPR in certain implementations... Not a deal-breaker, but it shows their focus is more on marketing features than on strict compliance (something that is quite important for us in Europe).

Support, though, has always been excellent, and their products are great.

However, coming from Fluent, where transparency -eg. : in this community- has become the standard for us, I notice the contrast.

I used Astra myself on a very simple site years ago, and it performed just fine. But like with everything, it really depends on your use case.

👉 If your stack is going to be heavily Fluent-based, then I’d lean towards Kadence. That’s what the Ninja team itself often uses, and it integrates very well.

On top of that, I once asked the Ninja team directly, and they hinted at launching their own Theme at some point. That would be the ideal scenario. I even exchanged thoughts on this with Manuel Müller recently.

For context:

• We currently run Thrive Theme Builder in most sites. It’s powerful, but after being acquired by Awesome Motive, it’s even more “lock-in." and less innovative. In today’s WordPress ecosystem, I wouldn’t recommend that strategy anymore, except for very specific cases (eg.: their suite is still pretty solid, and could save you money on the short term).
• Manuel told me he recently switched to Breakdance, which makes sense, as it’s lighter and easier for ex-Thrive users.
• Like many others, we also keep an eye on Bricks, which is gaining traction fast. And for example, Fluent Cart, has direct integration (basic) and an advanced coming soon...

So, if I had to decide today, my shortlist would be:
Kadence, Bricks, or simply wait for Fluent’s Theme.

We still have several Thrive licenses, and despite the lock-in, there are features we genuinely like. But performance-wise, it demands a lot of care and creates too many issues. Like any theme, I guess...

My hope is that soon we’ll be able to say we’ve moved everything to something faster, lighter, and fully in Fluent’s hands :)

Jorge de los Reyes Oh goodness, I use Astra Child Theme with Elementor Pro and this has been my stack since I first started learning WordPress/building my website.

It might be time to explore other options, Astra theme is not really doing much to be honest, I've built out everything with Elementor, it might even be feasible for me to switch to Elementor's Hello theme.

Yes, my ecosystem is mainly Fluent products. Looking forward to switching from SureCart over to FluentCart soon as well!

Will definitely check out some of the themes and builders you've mentioned here!

Parm Saggu we do use surecart too. So please, feel free to join to the “We need a Surecart Migration path” Lobby 😂

The team has already suggested that, unless they get many suggestions to do so, they will only be covering Woo and EDD.

Reason: Surecart has important limits for migrations regarding their API, according to the team. So, it has to be studied carefully. And it may not be worthy if there’s not much demand. 🙂‍↕️

Jorge de los Reyes I've already commented about this somewhere 😇

Parm Saggu 

We have many surecart integrations in the fluent ecosystem so… let’s cross fingers 😅