Well, WordPress has produced a new core theme, which includes (at last) a static front page — which I don’t use. It does allow rotating photos on the front and it does scale really well. It does have a clean output.

But I need it to do excerpts. My posts are long. A 200 word except sounds about right, but not always

What I have done… and it may break the system a bit… is install a smart excerpt system. Not sure if it will solve all the problems.

Broad hint to theme makers… make it easy to switch between the full text and excerpts. I post once to five times daily. The site is big. Excerpts speed things up.

UPDATE.

Twenty Seventeen lasted about ten minutes. It is too slow. Back to So Simple.