I like the convenience of using WordPress, but I'm really not impressed with the HTML it produces, and the anal use of a dedicated style for everything instead of reusing styles. My websites that make me the most money load FAST because my styles and HTML formatting are cut to the bare bone. I'll spend a hour to remove 200 formatting characters and still the page looks exactly the same. I develop like Google who says that 20% of users out there are on slow connections so they design for dialup (look it up - it's in Google's annual report!). Can anyone recommend an efficient WordPress theme? By efficient, I mean a theme that doesn't require a loooooong css file and only sparsely uses HTML.
The things is, you can only strip things back so far until a site starts looking boring and old fashioned. You could go for the default WP theme but keep in mind that things still need to be positioned. It might be better for you to pass on using WP.
Of course. As a side note, CraigsList looks boring and old fashioned. You need to know when that look makes sense, and when it doesn't.
Higly optimized style sheet, zero images used and minimum http requests. Comes with a stunning options page. http://swiftthemes.com/2009/08/wordpress-themes/swift-the-fastest-loading-wordpress-theme/
I'm in the process of creating a WordPress Theme Framework that uses the bare minimum of code necessary to get the job done. Depending on how good you are with CSS (and I do mean "almost Godlike" here) it may work for you. I'll be more than happy to let you try out what I have if you want. (This applies to the OP only.) I've still got to optimize (read: rewrite) the archive.php and comments.php files and add a PHP function that will allow the user to add a custom logo, and deal with a few lingering security and SEO issues, but it's almost ready for prime time.
Minimal themes, are the ones you are looking for I think. Do check out popular theme sites like elegant themes. And 9scratching head) do check my own one at http://getwp.in
What I'm working on is (mainly on the HTML/CSS side, for now anyway) going to blow that out of the water. Oh, and it'll be free (probably released under an MIT license). </offtopic>
Wordpress would still take a bit more time to load than basic HTML websites because it needs to call up the database and it takes a bit of time while basic HTML templates do not need to call up anything ^^^^^ Dan hope to see your theme soon. Sounds great. If it is better than Brian (studiopress) with similar functions then it would be really great.
I haven't bought any of Brian's Themes so I wouldn't know what the back-end looks like. My project was started to primarily meet my needs, but is being expanded to provide a starting point for other Theme developers.