Improving Page Speed In WordPress

By John Locke

Why Focus on Page Speed?

• Customers expect it: 57%abandoment rate after 3 seconds

• Google grades you on it: Page speed is a search ranking factor

• Competitive advantage: Page weight is going up

How Fast Are Your Pages?

• http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Start With Hosting

• Shared hosting – You get what you pay for

• VPS Hosting: Works for most businesses

• Dedicated hosting: For heavy traffic

Optimize Your Images

• Images are usually over half the page weight

• Too-large images add unnecessary download time

• Serve small background images on mobile first

• {display:none} still downloads assets!

• Retina.js for HDPI devices

Check Your Theme

• How many HTTP requests are being made?

• Can you consolidate these better?

• Beware Theme Options that look for Google Fonts that don’t exist

Page Caching

• Plugins: W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache

• Takes a snapshot of page assets, serves those to browser

• If you use a CDN, check recommended settings

• You can minify files as well

Minify Files When Possible

• Minification: removing white space and bytes

• W3 Total Cache > Minify > Help [add CSS and JS files manually]

• Careful with RSS feeds, min.js files

• Can be done manually as well

GZIP

• Compresses files before downloading to browser – like a Zip file

• Usually taken care of with caching plugins

• You can check at GZipWTF.com

CDNs

• Content Delivery Network – External servers

• Allows for multiple HTTP requests at once

• Amazon (AWS), Max-CDN, Akamai are examples

• Jetpack Photon also (but images lose some SEO)

DNS Prefetch

• Read this article on front-end performance

• Saves time by looking up DNS for external files

• /* Syntax looks like this: */• <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//www.google-

analytics.com">

• Use sparingly – still a HTTP request

Follow-up Article

http://www.lockedowndesign.com/improve- page-speed-in-wordpress/

John LockeLockedown Designhttp://www.lockedowndesign.com

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Thank You.