How to make your site load like a Rocket

[haseeb9211]

mind sharing your configuration in w3 total cache? thanks

General Settings Tab
Page cache: enabled
Method: Disk: enhanced
Minify settings, opcode cache, database cache, object cache
All Disabled
browser cache: Enabled
All other settings are as default
Page cache settings
In general settings, Cache posts page, Cache SSL (HTTPS) requests, and Don't cache pages for logged-in users enable these options. Disable the rest of them.
Extremely important: Scroll down and enable compatibility mode.
Browser cache settings
Enable followings
Set Last-Modified header
Set expires header
Set cache control header
Set entity tag (ETag)
Set W3 Total Cache header
Enable HTTP (gzip) compression
Prevent caching of objects after settings change
Remove query strings from static resources
Don't set cookies for static files
Leave rest as default and save changes.

 

[theduke60]

Hi,

I am not a Wordpress developer or expert, just a fellow black hatter trying to speed up my site. With the new Google Page Experience update coming its more and more important for the site to be ultra fast.

This is how I achieved this

View attachment 170641

Pagespeed Insights

Desktop

View attachment 170642 View attachment 170643

Mobile

View attachment 170644 View attachment 170645

This is for my home page which has lots of images and elementor stuff and also elementor epic news elements. There are few more things I can optimise to improve it even further, but I am ok with having a slowish site then have a bad user experience.

This is my own experience and trying to get the speed up without being too technical and how I achieved that step by step

Stop using Shared Hosting

With new and easy cloud hosting solutions, stop using shared hosting for your sites. You will have some issues adapting to new interfaces but if it means faster site, so be it.

This site is hosted on Vultr $5 droplet with Runcloud, if you want more support can go with cloudways, if you have multiple sites can look at gridplane for good support. I have only used runcloud, its plan with unlimited servers is around $15 pm.

These are the steps in short what I did to achieve such speeds

1. Cloudflare DNS (I only use DNS and not their CDN)
2. Runcloud + Vultr $5 Droplet (you can use high frequency droplet with NVMe for even higher speeds at $6)
3. NGINX Native + FastCGI - don't worry about technical terms its just click and go with Runcloud, its Runcloud hub plugin automatically does cache
4. Redis Object Cache - Do this only if you have heavy DB frontend like woo commerce or your backend is slow and you want to speed it up
5. WP Rocket - This plugin is great, I have used Lighspeed cache plugin earlier, which was also good, but it doesn't cache on NGINX. If you have litespeed server try litespeed cache instead of WP Rocket
6. Statically.io Free CDN - This website does not use this CDN, but I have used it on another site and it increases your score, especially if you have worldwide audience. Its really simple to integrate and have easy to use plugin with few options

Thats it. other than that you know general guidelines for having a fast website i.e.

1. Use Fast Theme - Currently using Kadence, Astra is also fine, I am also digging Neve as it doesn't require jquery
2. Use Minimum Plugins - Self explanatory, I am using elementor and pro and few block plugins on this site

Other Plugins for Optimising
1. Perfmatters

Additional Service Required
1. Mxroute - For emails. I use $45 per annum plan to handle all emails or all domains
2. Rackspace Email or any other email provider if you are ok with paying per email

I hops this is helpful

Hadn't heard about perfmatters before, I'll look into it - thanks for the info!

 

[fireworld9298]

Nice Shared Doing good job.

 

[DigitalJedi]

Hi, I have to do speed optimization for one of my client. THe issue there is the landing page has a lot of images, and all of them come through API because of which we cannot compress them. Can someone give me a solution to this. There are other standard things which i am working on anyway but i am not too sure how to work around this issue.

 

[ranga]

Hi, I have to do speed optimization for one of my client. THe issue there is the landing page has a lot of images, and all of them come through API because of which we cannot compress them. Can someone give me a solution to this. There are other standard things which i am working on anyway but i am not too sure how to work around this issue.

Some thing which may help:

Use a prefetch to the website sending images from API, it will help make connection at start of page loading, which should increase the speed at which images are visible. Also, if image display size is decided you can use either a placeholder or specify the dimension to reduce layout shift. Other than that you can do not much if the images are dynamically changing and loaded from third party

 

[Bicycle Crash]

Damn that looks delicious! I have to set aside some cash to hire somebody.

 

[DigitalJedi]

Some thing which may help:

Use a prefetch to the website sending images from API, it will help make connection at start of page loading, which should increase the speed at which images are visible. Also, if image display size is decided you can use either a placeholder or specify the dimension to reduce layout shift. Other than that you can do not much if the images are dynamically changing and loaded from third party

Thanks a ton, i was thinking of something like, storing the images in a DB and then compressing them before using it on the website, so the website sends requests on the API regularly and cchecks if there is a change in the image(they usually changes once or twice a week) everything there is a change, we can update it. This way we will have latest images but at the same time we will be able to compress. Do you think this will work? How can i implement something like this. Have i made myself clear?

 

[ranga]

Thanks a ton, i was thinking of something like, storing the images in a DB and then compressing them before using it on the website, so the website sends requests on the API regularly and cchecks if there is a change in the image(they usually changes once or twice a week) everything there is a change, we can update it. This way we will have latest images but at the same time we will be able to compress. Do you think this will work? How can i implement something like this. Have i made myself clear?

I am not a technical person, but I think it can be done easily if images don't change frequently, you need to just download a copy somewhere, create a script that runs every minute through cron job and check image hash, if it matches does nothing, if it doesn't it download new image and replace it in cache folder. Your website loads images from that folder always, so the website will be atmost serving old images for one minute.

 

[DigitalJedi]

I am not a technical person, but I think it can be done easily if images don't change frequently, you need to just download a copy somewhere, create a script that runs every minute through cron job and check image hash, if it matches does nothing, if it doesn't it download new image and replace it in cache folder. Your website loads images from that folder always, so the website will be atmost serving old images for one minute.

Well this looks like an experiment that we can create a thread about. Let me implement it and see the results. Thank for your advice, appreciate it

 

[Monymony]

Great post! I use Siteground now. Do you think there is a big difference between sitegorund and Cloudways/Vultr

 

[ranga]

Great post! I use Siteground now. Do you think there is a big difference between sitegorund and Cloudways/Vultr

Price

 

[Monymony]

I've tried most of the things you mentioned in your guide. Probs for the amazing guide btw. My desktop speed went up to 96 which I am very happy with. My mobile speed is stuck in the 50s though, and statically.io actually slowed it down further(Could be because of Cloudflare CDN. I am using Elementor Pro with the Astra theme on a site that runs woocommerce. Did you do anything specific in order to increase the speed on mobile?

 

[ranga]

I've tried most of the things you mentioned in your guide. Probs for the amazing guide btw. My desktop speed went up to 96 which I am very happy with. My mobile speed is stuck in the 50s though, and statically.io actually slowed it down further(Could be because of Cloudflare CDN. I am using Elementor Pro with the Astra theme on a site that runs woocommerce. Did you do anything specific in order to increase the speed on mobile?

Best thing is to implement AMP, otherwise use perfmatters to remove scripts not used on a page. You can disable different scripts in desktop and mobile. If possible have separate critical css for mobile view.

Pagespeed insight uses a very slow mobile connection, not easy to get good scores unless use a good cdn or do custom work on mobile view.

Use webpagetest.org to analyse in detail

 

[Monymony]

Have you also experienced AMP messing up the custom headers from Elementor?

 

[ranga]

Have you also experienced AMP messing up the custom headers from Elementor?

Got a fast sites, so I haven't implemented AMP on any

 

[SK993]

What is your traffic and RAM usage?

FastCGI is faster, but with higher load, it uses more RAM than PHP-FPM. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

 

[johnxxcena]

Will be interested to know more about AMP implementation. Are there any other providers

 

[seoedi]

Hi,

I am not a Wordpress developer or expert, just a fellow black hatter trying to speed up my site. With the new Google Page Experience update coming its more and more important for the site to be ultra fast.

This is how I achieved this

View attachment 170641

Pagespeed Insights

Desktop

View attachment 170642 View attachment 170643

Mobile

View attachment 170644 View attachment 170645

This is for my home page which has lots of images and elementor stuff and also elementor epic news elements. There are few more things I can optimise to improve it even further, but I am ok with having a slowish site then have a bad user experience.

This is my own experience and trying to get the speed up without being too technical and how I achieved that step by step

Stop using Shared Hosting

With new and easy cloud hosting solutions, stop using shared hosting for your sites. You will have some issues adapting to new interfaces but if it means faster site, so be it.

This site is hosted on Vultr $5 droplet with Runcloud, if you want more support can go with cloudways, if you have multiple sites can look at gridplane for good support. I have only used runcloud, its plan with unlimited servers is around $15 pm.

These are the steps in short what I did to achieve such speeds

1. Cloudflare DNS (I only use DNS and not their CDN)
2. Runcloud + Vultr $5 Droplet (you can use high frequency droplet with NVMe for even higher speeds at $6)
3. NGINX Native + FastCGI - don't worry about technical terms its just click and go with Runcloud, its Runcloud hub plugin automatically does cache
4. Redis Object Cache - Do this only if you have heavy DB frontend like woo commerce or your backend is slow and you want to speed it up
5. WP Rocket - This plugin is great, I have used Lighspeed cache plugin earlier, which was also good, but it doesn't cache on NGINX. If you have litespeed server try litespeed cache instead of WP Rocket
6. Statically.io Free CDN - This website does not use this CDN, but I have used it on another site and it increases your score, especially if you have worldwide audience. Its really simple to integrate and have easy to use plugin with few options

Thats it. other than that you know general guidelines for having a fast website i.e.

1. Use Fast Theme - Currently using Kadence, Astra is also fine, I am also digging Neve as it doesn't require jquery
2. Use Minimum Plugins - Self explanatory, I am using elementor and pro and few block plugins on this site

Other Plugins for Optimising
1. Perfmatters

Additional Service Required
1. Mxroute - For emails. I use $45 per annum plan to handle all emails or all domains
2. Rackspace Email or any other email provider if you are ok with paying per email

I hops this is helpful

How many sites are on the server your site is on?
Shared hosting - what you mean?

 

[ranga]

How many sites are on the server your site is on?

I generally keep 1-3 sites depending on traffic on the site

Shared hosting - what you mean?

shared hosting is generally cpanel hosting where same server is shared with multiple small accounts

 

[Professor7]

Best guide for optimising websites. Thanks buddy