Developer Mike Tran has released Mike, a free minimal WordPress theme built without JavaScript that scores 99 out of 100 on Google PageSpeed Insights for mobile. Tran found existing minimal themes either dated or bloated, so he built his own and published it for free on GitHub.
The theme is roughly 68KB as a zip file, with an uncompressed CSS file of around 25KB (15KB compressed). There is no JavaScript at all. The 99/100 PageSpeed score comes from the combination of zero JS, self-hosted fonts via WordPress’s native Font Library (introduced in WordPress 7.0, the theme’s effective minimum requirement), and a deliberately stripped-back codebase — a live demo site is available to test.
Content width is set at 640px, matching the reading width used by Substack, Medium, and Ghost. The theme supports alignwide and alignfull block alignment classes — CSS classes WordPress applies to blocks set to “wide” or “full” alignment, letting content break out of the default column when needed. The same styled block editor experience carries over to the Classic Editor, a legacy interface that predates the block-based Gutenberg editor. Tran uses it personally for email-to-post publishing — a workflow where new posts are created by sending an email to a dedicated address tied to the site. The theme is scoped to a narrow use case, with a few deliberate limitations:
- Not suited for page builders like Elementor or Bricks
- No widget support currently
- No theme-level social icons
- Customizer controls are intentionally limited to typography, a handful of colours, and element visibility toggles
- Not a Full Site Editing theme, and not planned to become one
The file structure is intentionally flat — no nested folders, no framework dependencies, and all functionality built on native WordPress APIs including the Customizer (WordPress’s built-in panel for live theme option editing), menu system, and logo handling. Tran says the codebase is straightforward to audit, adapt, or use as a child theme base. Accessibility was built in from the start, including skip-to-content links and visible focus states.
The theme includes two options Tran is unsure about keeping: a Customizer toggle to exclude pages from search results (enabled by default), and a toggle to activate the Classic Editor without installing a separate plugin. He’s invited feedback on whether those belong at the theme level at all.
Mike is aimed at personal sites, blogs, and what Tran describes as an “indie/dev vibe” — writers, developers, and technical users who want a clean reading layout without building one from scratch. It’s available free on GitHub only; there is no WordPress.org theme directory listing.
