Major Keys to Wordpress Speed

Editor's Notes

• #2: Major Keys to Wordpress Speed by Steve Floyd – Founder & Principle of AXZM – www.axzm.com/about/steve-floyd
• #3: Whatup? My name is Steve Floyd. I am the founder & principle of AXZM based out of Dallas, TX. We build & promote stuff on the web and often use Wordpress to do it. This presentation is geared toward people who have a self hosted Wordpress blog who are looking for ways they can improve load times without a ton of technical resources.
• #4: Back in 2010, Google announced (on the webmaster blog) that speed was officially a ranking factor. Now here we are in 2016 and the last few years this is finally a real conversation in marketing meetings. Good job guys.
• #5: KISSMetrics released data that they have been adding to for years that claims 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
• #6: If you are chasing anything in 2016, chase improving your Users Experience. That’s really what load times are all about. That’s a huge part of what Google is rewarding in the SERPs in recent years and if you are not putting that at the top of the list, the performance of your website probably reflects that.
• #7: Now any of you who have tried to get your Wordpress website to score a perfect 100 in PageSpeed Insights have probably pulled out a few handfuls of hair in the process. I get asked all the time if a website is being judged by the results of this tool and the simple answer is: Maybe. So many people in our industry (including myself) disregard a lot of the stuff that pops up in PageSpeed insights, but I think if you look at these things more closely, you realize it’s about providing a consistent speed across the largest number of devices, carriers and locations.
• #8: When you really look at average internet speeds across the world, and more specifically on most mobile carriers just here in the states, you see that a lot of the stuff Google PageSpeed is looking at are things that hinder load times for all users, not just the top 25%. So in that regard, I would completely dismiss some of their recommendations, especially with compression and render blocking.
• #9: The main bottlenecks that effect website speed sit in one of two buckets:1. client side2. server side Things like page composition, your computers processing power, your internet connection speeds, the actual quality of your code, the quality of the network you are on as well as server performance and the physical location of the server your website is hosted on can all play a part in how fast your website loads.
• #10: Another question I get asked a lot is if it’s safe to switch to HTTP/2 yet. For those of you unfamiliar with HTTP/2, this is an overhaul of network protocol we use to connect on the web. The limitations of HTTP/1.X forced us to develop various application workarounds like: 1. sharding 2. concatenation 3. spriting 4. inlining - We did all this to optimize performance, but in the process we’ve also introduced numerous regressions: poor caching, unnecessary downloads, delayed execution, etc…. HTTP/2 eliminates the need for these hacks and allows us to both simplify our applications and deliver improved performance. Most major browsers added HTTP/2 support by the end of 2015.
• #11: Here are a few tools to test your websites overall performance.
• #12: Chrome DevTools Timeline is probably one of my favorite performance tools toquickly identify performance costs on a website. Select More Tools > Developer Tools from the Chrome Menu.
• #13: As janky looking as the interface is, another one of my personal favorites for performance profiling is WebPageTest.org. In my experience their performance profile and data is the most accurate and actionable of all the tools. They just gotta work out that UI.
• #14: GTMetrix is also a good FREE performance profiling tool. I wouldn’t use it as an end all as some do, but it’s going to get you most of the way there without spending any money. I do recommend their PRO option if you are monitoring performance and related changes over time.
• #15: I’m sure most people here have used Pingdom Tools at one time or another. The main reason I find it useful is to establish TTFB or “Time To First Byte”. They provide one of the more accurate server response time metrics of all the tools, so if you are trying to gauge how long your server is taking to respond from various locations, this is a good tool to use.
• #16: If you can spend money on some performance tools, especially if you are trying to test the performance of an app, I highly recommend Load Impact as an option. They provide extensive testing that looks at a lot of things the other tools don’t address, and their results are usually a little more accurate than the free tools.
• #17: If you have a private / gated membership website and you’ve got the coin, you should check out New Relic Synthetics product. They allow you to test your website from all over the world and a bunch of other really cool features you don’t get with the aforementioned tools. Be aware this tool is specifically built for web applications.
• #18: One of the most frequent questions people ask about Wordpress performance is about caching options. Here are a few of the top options available with their pros and cons.
• #19: WP Super Cache is probably the leanest option available and it’s supported by Automattic themselves. It’s also the least robust in my opinion. If you are running a small blog on shared hosting, this is one of the easiest and best options out there for your Wordpress site.
• #20: As bloated and badly coded as some parts of it are, W3 Total Cache is still one of my favorite caching solutions. It does require some technical ability to configure correctly, but nothing too hairy. W3 has options for shared, VPS and dedicated hosting. In my own experience, W3 Total Cache can be a resource hog and performs best on a VPS or Dedicated host. Also, security holes have plagued W3, so it is advised if you do decide to use it, you make sure it’s up to date.
• #21: Third on my list is WP Rocket. It’s touted as the fastest of all the plugins, but it’s pretty marginal when stacked against W3. In my own experience it’s pretty buggy and you might use it with caution.
• #22: Another question I get asked a lot is what Content Delivery Network should you use for your Wordpress website?
• #23: The easiest CDN solution to implement in my own experience is MAXCDN. It integrates with W3 Total Cache pretty seamlessly. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to get CDN working on your Wordpress website easily, MAXCDN is the way to go. The downside of of MAXCDN is that it can be pricey if your website has significant traffic. If you are trying to validate your website via SSL, their SSL support ($99) is also overpriced in my opinion.
• #24: Another painless solution that integrates really easily with W3 Total Cache (and without) is CDNify. They have much cheaper options for SSL support as well, but their distribution is not as robust as MAXCDN.
• #25: The 3rd option for a CDN if User Interface is important to you would be KeyCDN. They are comparable to CDNify in pricing and performance and their interface is easy enough to hand off to beginner to mid level in-house IT people without too much worry.
• #26: On the other end of the spectrum for sites with serious traffic is Amazon‘s Cloudfront. My main complaint is that it’s too expensive and can be difficult to implement depending on your configuration. They do have the best overall availability / performance during peak hours though, so if that is at the top of your list, then it’s probably the best option. Cloudfront also integrates really well with W3 Total cache.
• #27: Google also has a CDN product that has high availability, probably the best of any CDN I’ve tested, but like a lot of their cloud / developer products it’s hard to set up / implement. Their currently isn’t any support for W3 Total cache.
• #28: One of the easiest ways to speed up your website is to change your host. If you are on a bloated shared hosting environment, simply switching to a VPS or dedicated server will give you immediate improvements.
• #29: If you aren’t afraid of the command line, or have access to DevOps / IT resources, I highly advise checking out Digital Ocean. It one of my favorite cloud hosts on the market.
• #30: Another great cloud host that will really help speed up your website is Linode. The only downside to Linode is they don’t have as much documentation as Digital Ocean in my experience. If you are DIY and don’t have a lot of experience in the Command Line, then I would go with Digital Ocean.
• #31: If at all possible, use NGINX. It’s far superior to Apache in many ways and will speed up your Wordpress considerably right out of the box.
• #32: One of my favorite Wordpress deployment tools for cloud hosting is EasyEngine. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a total noob, I advise you give it a try to deploy Wordpress sites. It makes them blazing fast right out of the box, with minimal effort.
• #33: If you can, make sure you load Google’s PageSpeed Module to your server. They have support for
• #34: If you do have limited technical ability, time or resources but want to utilize cloud hosting, I advise you check out Server Pilot. It makes deploying cloud instances a lot easier.
• #35: For those of you still stuck on WHM and looking for an alternative, you might check out Commando.io. They have a great GUI interface that can help you deploy and manage Cloud Servers at scale.
• #36: For those of you still stuck on WHM and looking for an alternative, you might check out Commando.io. They have a great GUI interface that can help you deploy and manage Cloud Servers at scale.
• #37: Thank you so much for having guys!
• #38: Google Developers > Web Fundamentals > Performance by Google – Link HTTP/2 on Github – Link Pagespeed Optimization by Patrick Sexton – Link Google Incorporating Site Speed in Search Rankings by Matt Cutts – Link The Utlimate Guide to Speeding Up Your Wordpress Site by MetaCDN – Link Web Page Sizes: A (Not So) Brief History of Page Size through 2015 by Alex Pinto – Link Why use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)? by GTMetrix – Link How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line by KISSMetrics – Link 15 Website Speed Test Tools for Analyzing Web Performance by Brian Jackson – Link A Crash Course in How DOM Events Work by Brian Moschel – Link DOM Enlightenment by Cody Lindley – Link How to Configure Nginx for Optimized Performance by Linode – Link Ludicrously Fast Page Loads by Nate Berkopec – Link How I Sped Up My Site 68.35% With One Line of Code by Mike King – Link
• #39: About Me For over a decade I’ve been crafting digital experiences for businesses large and small. In that time I’ve learned a few things about how to drive measurable results and I like to share that knowledge from time to time. If you need help with your web presence, we should talk. I’m a doer in a sea of middle men and sales people who delegate or outsource 90% of the work you pay them for. Hit me up, I’m easy to talk to.