My Wordpress Pagespeed Optimization Guide

[cesareborgia]

>was if you are actually using yourself all/almost all of this at the same time, since you're recommending people to do so.

Yes I am! All of these techniques are complimentary, you should definitely implement as many/all that you can.

>But then you mention that you avoid CDN's like the plague, when you start by preaching them.
A bit weird, but avoiding CDN's and saying they are a crunch is a bit, let's say, stupid?

I'll clarify, the majority of people are not going to implement the majority/all of the guide, and for those people a CDN will be beneficial. If your users are geographically spread out, then a CDN also may make sense to implement. I prefer to spend as little money as possible, and Cloudflare free makes my site slower. If I paid for their premium features, it would probably have a performance benefit. CDNs offer performance consistency across geographic regions since they have servers interspersed around major geographic regions.

>Where is the speed?

Not sure what you're referring to in the pagespeed test, what are you referencing? The site loads in the low 1 second range on mobile for LCP, FCP and the Speed index.

>As for @NullMaster, I think he's just trolling you (or maybe not), since he's just delaying the whole site to load, which is enough to troll Google too.

Delaying javascript and unused css is a necessary optimization technique for fully optimizing a site. It isn't tricking Google, it makes the site load faster since the javascript and unused css is not downloaded until user interaction. This speeds up the initial rendering time and only downloads assets when they are needed.

>As for the server, I wouldn't trust a host that is still running PHP 7.0

VPSDime doesn't configure Wordpress or even preload their Linux VPS's with any PHP version, they give you the raw OS. My server is running PHP 8.3 configured via WordOPs.

>As for the server, I wouldn't trust a host that is still running PHP 7.0.
>Or a 10yr old CPU.
>Or SATA SSD.

The specs are bad on paper, but in practice it's fast hosting. I tested every cheaper and most mid range plans across every host on vpsbenchmarks.com, and VPSDime came out on top. This is through actual testing with my sites, not just benchmarks. Based on the benchmarks you would expect VPSDime to have middling performance, but it is superior to all the ones I've tested. For $7/month for a 4 vCORE 6 GB ram VPS it crushes all the competition assuming you aren't willing to break the bank for expensive hosting.

I'm going to jump the "complimentary" thing and just stick with the no for time sake.
I'll jump straight to the CDN thing.
You are using Flyingpress, which has for 5$ the Cloudflare Enterprise.

The idea of the CDN is know how to use it, and by how to use is by getting a cache hit ratio of at least 90% if paid. All those crushes together are worthless against this, and I'm not going to mention the time wasted to make use of all of them.

You won't have a 100% hit or your will be serving your admin panel too lol.

Put that with FlyingPress or WP Rocket and if your server is not a rock you are on the 90's most of the time on Google.

Now, there's one confusion I think.
Are your visitors only spiders? If yes, ok. If you are thinking about people too, you'll not just use the google tool and call it a day.

And yeah, I guess you didn't opened my second print: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/240426_AiDc38_33H/1/details/

As for what I meant by what Null did, sure, I do almost the same, but not so much, because...user: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/240426_AiDc14_2ZC/1/details/
Honestly, in his case one could just argue that it's his way to do it, but I didn't looked much, since it seems essentially the typical delay and lazy load (which you're not doing very well the first).

Just to end this, in the name of the BPC, I was pointing for the fact that it doesn't project exactly trust a host provider who doesn't know how to handle a server in such a basic setting.

And out of curiosity, can you post the results of a yabs test on that server?
I'll post one which I have for exactly the same price, but just 3vc/4RAM.

Edit. I'm sorry to hear about your condition, and as such, the comments weren't appropriated.
I'm a nerd about neuroscience, used to go to the /r/nootropics, and know Examine since the beginning.
But I workout too, and people are using that not only on the nootropics community but on the gym too.
That's where the comments came from, which as you may see now, they weren't not intented to be rude in any way.
Good to hear that at least it helped, since like its cousin CFS, they're both underinve$tigated, with everything that comes with it.

 

[Septabyte]

I'm going to jump the "complimentary" thing and just stick with the no for time sake.
I'll jump straight to the CDN thing.
You are using Flyingpress, which has for 5$ the Cloudflare Enterprise.

The idea of the CDN is know how to use it, and by how to use is by getting a cache hit ratio of at least 90% if paid. All those crushes together are worthless against this, and I'm not going to mention the time wasted to make use of all of them.

You won't have a 100% hit or your will be serving your admin panel too lol.

Put that with FlyingPress or WP Rocket and if your server is not a rock you are on the 90's most of the time on Google.

Now, there's one confusion I think.
Are your visitors only spiders? If yes, ok. If you are thinking about people too, you'll not just use the google tool and call it a day.

And yeah, I guess you didn't opened my second print: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/240426_AiDc38_33H/1/details/

As for what I meant by what Null did, sure, I do almost the same, but not so much, because...user: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/240426_AiDc14_2ZC/1/details/
Honestly, in his case one could just argue that it's his way to do it, but I didn't looked much, since it seems essentially the typical delay and lazy load (which you're not doing very well the first).

Just to end this, in the name of the BPC, I was pointing for the fact that it doesn't project exactly trust a host provider who doesn't know how to handle a server in such a basic setting.

And out of curiosity, can you post the results of a yabs test on that server?
I'll post one which I have for exactly the same price, but just 3vc/4RAM.

>You are using Flyingpress, which has for 5$ the Cloudflare Enterprise.

Yes, and I have no intention of paying for it. The site already gets perfect scores with no CDN, and I'm not intending to sell to users outside of the US, so there is no reason to add the expense.

>Honestly, in his case one could just argue that it's his way to do it, but I didn't looked much, since it seems essentially the typical delay and lazy load (which you're not doing very well the first)

What do you mean not doing very well? The homepage page weight is 174 kb. There's nothing left to delay without breaking functionality or I'd do so.

>Are your visitors only spiders? If yes, ok. If you are thinking about people too, you'll not just use the google tool and call it a day.

That's why I referenced Debug Bear. Debug Bear's speed tests are one of the best, webpagetest is one I don't use.

>And out of curiosity, can you post the results of a yabs test on that server?

Yes I'll try to do that later tonight.

>And yeah, I guess you didn't opened my second print: >https://www.webpagetest.org/result/240426_AiDc38_33H/1/details/

Right, same thing I said in my edit, that's because you set the testing location as Mumbai and the site isn't using a CDN.

 

[cesareborgia]

>You are using Flyingpress, which has for 5$ the Cloudflare Enterprise.

Yes, and I have no intention of paying for it. The site already gets perfect scores with no CDN, and I'm not intending to sell to users outside of the US, so there is no reason to add the expense.

>Honestly, in his case one could just argue that it's his way to do it, but I didn't looked much, since it seems essentially the typical delay and lazy load (which you're not doing very well the first)

What do you mean not doing very well? The homepage page weight is 174 kb. There's nothing left to delay without breaking functionality or I'd do so.

>Are your visitors only spiders? If yes, ok. If you are thinking about people too, you'll not just use the google tool and call it a day.

That's why I referenced Debug Bear. Debug Bear's speed tests are one of the best, webpagetest is one I don't use.

>And out of curiosity, can you post the results of a yabs test on that server?

Yes I'll try to do that later tonight.

>And yeah, I guess you didn't opened my second print: >https://www.webpagetest.org/result/240426_AiDc38_33H/1/details/

Right, same thing I said in my edit, that's because you set the testing location as Mumbai and the site isn't using a CDN.

The thing is, you published basically a book on speed optimization, and then go on and comment that CDN's are a no.
I was speaking for the general user, while you're speaking just for your use case. Just that.
And well, if you want yeah, publish the results to make the comparison out of curiosity.

 

[jar]

Great effort Septabyte.

There are so many factors that are often out of the web designer/developer's hands. I get asked all the time to make sites faster. But clients often don't want to move off their $1 shared hosting to a better (often more costly) host, they don't want to get rid of the 5MB of images on their home/landing page, they don't want to remove some of the 50 plugins they are using, they must have that huge video or 5mb gif on there. So we control what we can.

As some have commented, you don't have to have a 99 pagespeed score. I have a client with two sites that sometimes get 50-70k pageviews per day. I constantly chastise her for putting 2MB images on the site. She's in her 60s and is a fantastic writer but never pays attention to things like images. I can't get her site over 50 pagespeed for mobile but the traffic keeps coming.

So we do our best. And it's great the OP found some tools and processes that work. I think we all have our quiver of tools (or should) for these exact purposes. And when I find some time I'll give it a better read. Thanks for posting!

 

[guguk]

The blank cart page with the blank textboxes you screenshotted was because I had previously had CheckoutWC installed and then removed it. I never got around to replacing it, I'm considering just going back to CheckoutWC. I intend to just use the Mini-Cart for the cart and there won't be a cart page listed, but I might make a basic one just as a backup in case someone somehow lands on the cart url.

>And I bet that you can't achieve same GPI with same content same design and same server environment with using elementor without using CDN

I don't have a CDN active on my site (and did not have one on when this test occurred), and I actually explicitly avoid them. Please check the headers and urls in the debug bear report to confirm. CDNs are a crutch people lean on and you can get better pagespeed without a CDN than with one in the country the server is hosted in if the website is optimized properly.

>However, if you sell a product you need to give some extra info on single product page or landing page to your visitors like infographics, testimonials, video etc. So without those things you need to extra work also spend a lot of money on social media or another paid platforms. So, your works and times for spending optimization will be waste if you does not sell anything.

All of the content is currently just placeholders. Those will be added when the site actually launches.

Edit: I added a Checkout and Cart page just for you . Optimized them as well.

I did not check that you use CDN or not but I just checked your "doc" and you mentioned and suggested firstly "use CDN" and I supposed to using CDN but now you said "I actually explicitly avoid them" So why are you suggesting if you dont believe CDN does not work?

Secondly, your page is just a page that mean there have not any function or giving a service/product to customers. So It's not a matter when you achieve 100 such a page.

I just gave you real example and please COMPARE both of them:

Your Page ​	My Page​
Page Size: 174 KB	Page Size: 6.7 MB
No media (images, videos, even logo) , no animations even simple one	100+ Images, 4 videos, CSS and some little JS animations
Overall Score Mobile: 100 Desktop: 99	Overall Score Mobile: 96 Desktop: 99
FCP Mobile: 1.2 sc. Desktop: 0.6 sc.	FCP Mobile: 1.4 sc. Desktop: 0.6 sc.
LCP Mobile: 1.2 sc. Desktop: 0.8 sc.	LCP Mobile: 2.5 sc. Desktop: 0.9 sc.
SI Mobile: 2.2 sc. Desktop: 0.7 sc.	SI Mobile: 1.4 sc. Desktop: 0.7 sc.
Builder: Elementor	Builder: Livecanvas

So, as you can see you did not OPTIMIZE anything actually.

Let me example for human body: Your progress is similar to people who become obese by constantly eating junky foods and then suddenly slim down through aggressive weight loss. So this time probably occuring another problems such as diabets such as "not loading font properly".

But my way is similar to the situation of people who always eat healthy foods and eat enough. So there have not an issue for human body at all and my website working as usually, there have no breaking part

Ah please note and keep in your mind that do not make anything for "me" just please do whatever you want for yourself because I'm already educating to people who want to make a good web developer in my city

And I can not remain unconcerned when a guy misleading people about "web design and developing".

 

[cesareborgia]

So, you're saying you make pages with 7MB AND teach people who want to become good developers too?

 

[guguk]

So, you're saying you make pages with 7MB AND teach people who want to become good developers too?

Please make sure that the page including (need to be include) 100+ images (actually photos not vectors) + 4 videos. So could you please tell me how should be page size? 200 kb? Should I mention that page size is not meaning page loading?

 

[guguk]

So, you're saying you make pages with 7MB AND teach people who want to become good developers too?

Ah btw did I mention that page was reached rank #1 global SERP for 12k search volume? And still currently rank #1 in 8 countries? And this page selling a service that revenue 4k Euro?
So could you please give me real example if you have such a portfolio? Please dont mention "page visits"

 

[cesareborgia]

Yes, I can,
Give me 2mins.

 

[Septabyte]

I did not check that you use CDN or not but I just checked your "doc" and you mentioned and suggested firstly "use CDN" and I supposed to using CDN but now you said "I actually explicitly avoid them" So why are you suggesting if you dont believe CDN does not work?

Secondly, your page is just a page that mean there have not any function or giving a service/product to customers. So It's not a matter when you achieve 100 such a page.

I just gave you real example and please COMPARE both of them:

Your Page ​	My Page​
Page Size: 174 KB	Page Size: 6.7 MB
No media (images, videos, even logo) , no animations even simple one	100+ Images, 4 videos, CSS and some little JS animations
Overall Score Mobile: 100 Desktop: 99	Overall Score Mobile: 96 Desktop: 99
FCP Mobile: 1.2 sc. Desktop: 0.6 sc.	FCP Mobile: 1.4 sc. Desktop: 0.6 sc.
LCP Mobile: 1.2 sc. Desktop: 0.8 sc.	LCP Mobile: 2.5 sc. Desktop: 0.9 sc.
SI Mobile: 2.2 sc. Desktop: 0.7 sc.	SI Mobile: 1.4 sc. Desktop: 0.7 sc.
Builder: Elementor	Builder: Livecanvas

So, as you can see you did not OPTIMIZE anything actually.

Let me example for human body: Your progress is similar to people who become obese by constantly eating junky foods and then suddenly slim down through aggressive weight loss. So this time probably occuring another problems such as diabets such as "not loading font properly".

But my way is similar to the situation of people who always eat healthy foods and eat enough. So there have not an issue for human body at all and my website working as usually, there have no breaking part

Ah please note and keep in your mind that do not make anything for "me" just please do whatever you want for yourself because I'm already educating to people who want to make a good web developer in my city

And I can not remain unconcerned when a guy misleading people about "web design and developing".

Do you have a link? I don't believe you that your site has a 90+ mobile score with 6+ MB of images.

Secondly, I don't know where you're pulling those test scores for my page up, but they don't match Page Speed Insights, Lighthouse or Debug Bear.

 

[Septabyte]

That's what bothers me as well, you'd get 99/100 in most cases with astra/kadence/gp/blocksy out of the box.
The website is minimal, no background images, no videos, no forms, no animations, no popups. It would be ideal if there was a more challenging case study.

Btw I appreciate the effort and I thank you for the guide!

Another site I optimized is https://moderatelymessyrd.com which is more complex than mine. The site is currently hosted on the lowest tier Siteground plan, although I'm trying to get the site owner to move to a VPS for a bit of a performance bump.

There will be more soon! No exact dates, but there will be more complex sites to include as case studies in the near future.

 

[guguk]

Do you have a link? I don't believe you that your site has a 90+ mobile score with 6+ MB of images.

Secondly, I don't know where you're pulling those test scores for my page up, but they don't match Page Speed Insights, Lighthouse or Debug Bear.

As you provide via Pagespeed and I provided Pagespeed. I'm preffering to test my projects via webpagetest which is gives most realistic results.

It's not my personal website and belong with the company which I'm working with it so I can not provide the URL. If you dont want to believe it no matter I coded line by line via Livecanvas that's why you dont believe it and you cant achieve it even with just using static HTML instead of Wordpress
I might take screenvideo with blurring url and image fields while I'm testing on pagespeed but I dont think that even you believe it

Another site I optimized is https://moderatelymessyrd.com which is more complex than mine. The site is currently hosted on the lowest tier Siteground plan, although I'm trying to get the site owner to move to a VPS for a bit of a performance bump.

There will be more soon! No exact dates, but there will be more complex sites to include as case studies in the near future.

Pardon me, where is the more complex side? If you have "optimized" then I can see blurred and size corrupted images, also missing fonts really murky desing etc.

 

[Septabyte]

As you provide via Pagespeed and I provided Pagespeed. I'm preffering to test my projects via webpagetest which is gives most realistic results.

It's not my personal website and belong with the company which I'm working with it so I can not provide the URL. If you dont want to believe it no matter I coded line by line via Livecanvas that's why you dont believe it and you cant achieve it even with just using static HTML instead of Wordpress
I might take screenvideo with blurring url and image fields while I'm testing on pagespeed but I dont think that even you believe it



Pardon me, where is the more complex side? If you have "optimized" then I can see blurred and size corrupted images, also missing fonts really murky desing etc.

>Pardon me, where is the more complex side? If you have "optimized" then I can see blurred and size corrupted images, also missing fonts really murky desing etc.

I didn't build her site or upload her content, I just made it fast. You could message the site owner and let her know you feel that way.

>I might take screenvideo with blurring url and image fields while I'm testing on pagespeed but I dont think that even you believe it

Please do, because it isn't possible to score an LCP under 2 seconds if 6 MB of data (which are mostly images) is loaded on the initial page load on mobile pagespeed insights or lighthouse. Video would be good.

 

[guguk]

>Pardon me, where is the more complex side? If you have "optimized" then I can see blurred and size corrupted images, also missing fonts really murky desing etc.

I didn't build her site or upload her content, I just made it fast. You could message the site owner and let her know you feel that way.

>I might take screenvideo with blurring url and image fields while I'm testing on pagespeed but I dont think that even you believe it

Please do, because it isn't possible to score an LCP under 2 seconds if 6 MB of data (which are mostly images) is loaded on the initial page load on mobile pagespeed insights or lighthouse. Video would be good.

okay do you want to bet with me?

I'll make screenvideo while on pagespeed test and pingdom tools (for seeing the general page size) and what will give me if LCP under 2 second and GPI 90+ ? If I could not provide that I can give you $1000

 

[Septabyte]

okay do you want to bet with me?

I'll make screenvideo while on pagespeed test and pingdom tools (for seeing the general page size) and what will give me if LCP under 2 second and GPI 90+ ? If I could not provide that I can give you $1000

I don't have any money to bet, but I'll admit I was wrong. I'm not referring to desktop score btw, mobile only.

 

[lachhab]

Another site I optimized is https://moderatelymessyrd.com which is more complex than mine. The site is currently hosted on the lowest tier Siteground plan, although I'm trying to get the site owner to move to a VPS for a bit of a performance bump.

There will be more soon! No exact dates, but there will be more complex sites to include as case studies in the near future.

While I appreciate your efforts and acknowledge that your methods may be effective, the examples you have shared do not effectively show your skills. Thank you again for the guide, and I wish you the best of luck!