Forward

Built for Exceptional Page Speed
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Forward Theme, Designing Speed.

Speed and ease of use are currently winning the day for user experience. Forward combines the flexibility of a theme, with blazing page performance - eclipsing what even expert coded sites achieve...




Exceptional Page Speed.

Forward has a zero-compromise codebase, that satisfies even Google’s highly demanding PageSpeed Insight standards. This page has a
100/100
mobile and desktop score for both Speed and User Experience, this page cannot be tweaked or modified for better performance. Test this page.


Google PageSpeed Insights Testing
- Standard RapidWeaver Pages

100/100 Styled Text, Markdown, Contact Form, Sitemap, File Sharing

97/100 Blog (banner + 1 image or embedded video for each blog post)

89/100 Photo Album (banner + 12 album images, 800px width each, medium quality)


Google PageSpeed Insights Testing
- Stacks, 3rd Party RapidWeaver Plugin

99/100 Stacks, with Production stack (banner + text columns, no content images)

90/100 Stacks, with SuperFlex stack (3 image slideshow banner)

* Tested on a server with GZIP enabled, and expire headers in an .htaccess file.





Super Fast Page Speed, So What?

Increase organic search traffic.
Page speed is a factor in Google’s search algorithm. Excellent load times will improve your Google search ranking.

Higher visitor retention.
Fast loading pages is a better user experience, it encourages visitors to stay on your site, and return later. Half of users expect webpages to load in 2 seconds or less.

Improved conversion rates.
Fast page speed assures visitors finish what they came for. Amazon reported a 1% sales decrease for every 0.1s decrease in response time, and Shopzilla reported a 7-12% revenue increase simply by speeding up its site.

Boost trust and loyalty.
For every second you shave off of load time, you boost customer confidence and trust in your site, and in turn, making them want to tell others about you.





More Forward Pro Features.

Plus Navigation.
Custom coded by Nick Cates Design, "Plus" navigation is a sticky drop navigational system, supporting unlimited top tier pages, and up to 5 level deep sub pages. In short, even the most complicated page structures can be easily tamed, and still remain highly accessible for mobile formatting.

Custom Banners.
Image banners are nothing new, but how we’ve implement them in Forward - is a new and beautiful thing. Drag an image into the RapidWeaver sidebar area - and you have a site banner. Thoughtful consideration was put into creating custom banners as easy, and fast, as possible.

SSL Ready.
SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.

Color Adjustable.
25 color selectors provide full control of all site elements within Forward. 10 color style presets are included - these make for great starting points for further customization.

Slideshow Ready.
Slideshow banners are popular, and it doesn't get easier than importing our SuperFlex stack, setup and go in seconds! SuperFlex is not included with Forward, it's a stack sold separately at Nick Cates Design, requires the Stacks 2 plug-in.

Over 60 Social Icons.
Our custom social icon library has grown to over 60 social networks! These icons can go anywhere in any editable content area, or import into the Forward footer area. Setup is easy, and covered in the theme manual.

Responsive Video & Images.
Creating a responsive website is hard, to ease the process, Forward features built-in tools and logic to convert added images and embedded video - for responsive viewing across all screen sizes.





Full Disclosure, Please Don’t Expect...

Server/Hosting tweaking.
To achieve the very highest of page speeds, "GZIP" (or Mod Deflate) must be enabled on your site hosting server. Most host companies *should* be able to help with this upon request. Setting Expire headers in an .htaccess file is also necessary for the highest page speed ranking, basic steps for this are covered in the Forward manual. Even without these tweaks, Forward still shines with impressive speed on any server.

Custom Fonts.
The beauty of custom fonts come with a cost, causing what’s know as "Render Blocking". Render Blocking incurs a significant penalty on Google page speed ranking, and the workarounds are not practical for theme implementation.

Adjustable sidebar or site width.
Forward’s content area is optimized to let text and images flow, no columns needed. RapidWeaver’s Styled Text, and Markdown pages provide the best possible page speed. If you need columns, using the Stacks plugin and our Production stack is a great solution with minimal speed impact.


Say no more, proceed to checkout.

Extra Content (EC2) Footer   © 2015 Nick Cates Design