Terrifico is built to be light: no jQuery of its own, one small script loaded with defer, fonts served from your own server, and Theme Options compiled into one cached CSS file.
Theme Options → Performance
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Save Theme Options CSS as a file | On | Faster and cache-friendly. Turn it off only if your host doesn't allow writing to the uploads folder |
| Preload fonts | On | Starts loading the body and heading fonts right away, so text appears in the right font sooner |
| Load jQuery in the footer | Off | Lets the page appear before jQuery has loaded. Turn it off again if a plugin stops working. Needs Terrifico Core |
| Remove WordPress emoji script | On | Browsers show emojis on their own; this saves a request on every page |
| Remove WordPress embed script | Off | Only if you never paste links from other WordPress sites into posts. Needs Terrifico Core |
What we measured
Lighthouse 12 on each demo's home page, served from a plain server with gzip and no caching plugin:
| Demo | Desktop performance | Mobile performance | Accessibility | Best practices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | 98 | 80 | 100 | 100 |
| Salon | 99 | 83 | 100 | 100 |
| Restaurant | 96 | 76 | 100 | 100 |
| Roofing | 98 | 81 | 100 | 100 |
Total blocking time is 0 ms and layout shift is under 0.02 on every demo. Best practices was 100 on the WordPress test site. The mobile score is mostly held back by the number of separate stylesheets Elementor loads for its widgets. A caching plugin that combines CSS closes most of that gap.
Recommendations
- Use page caching. LiteSpeed Cache (on LiteSpeed hosts such as Hostinger), WP Rocket, or your host's built-in cache. Terrifico needs no special settings for them; the Open now label in Opening Hours updates in the browser, so cached pages stay correct.
- Combine or inline CSS in the caching plugin, and test the site afterwards.
- Keep Elementor's performance features on under Elementor → Settings → Features (most are on by default in Elementor 4).
- Upload photos at a sensible size. 2000 px wide is plenty for a full-width hero. WordPress makes smaller copies for phones automatically.
- Use WebP or AVIF images if your caching or image plugin offers it.
- PHP 8.3 or newer is noticeably faster than older versions. Your host can switch it in the control panel.