Presentation on how to optimize your WordPress website and improve its performance.

1. Need for Speed
Gear up Your WordPress

2. Hristo Pandjarov
@pandjarov
Work at SiteGround
doing:
WordPress Tutorials
WordPress Themes
WordPress Plugins
WordPress Optimization
Trying not to look ridiculous in
front of people

3. Why bother optimizing
Better user experience
Better rankings
Lower hosting expenses

4. Make a plan
… and follow it!
Benchmark loading times
Pinpoint performance issues
Prioritise problems
Start optimizing

5. Benchmark and find issues
http://gtmetrix.com
http://tools.pingdom.com

6. Common problems
… completely unordered!
Too many posts on the homepage
Too many Social widgets
Too many external fonts used
Large/unoptimized Images
Themes with too many unused features
Too much CSS/JS
No static content compression
No caching
No CDN

7. Prioritise problems
Sort performance issues by their severity
Sort them by the time you need to fix them
Cross-reference the two lists

8. Page size
… matters!
Make a scroll map test ( crazyegg.com )
Reduce the number of posts per page
Progressive page loading (infinite scroll)

9. Social media widgets/plugins
… use them wisely!
Avoid using iframes
Try not to use “Share on 100 social networks” services
Avoid using more than one social plugin

10. External fonts
… trust me, you don’t need 8 fonts on your site!
Include only fonts you use, on the pages you use them
Put fonts on your local server and include locally
Sacrifice the usage of a font for a better site performance

11. Images
… the right size and the right quality
Use images with the right size and specify their dimensions
Smush your images: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
Use sprites in your themes

12. Avoid bloated themes
… really, cut the fat!
Avoid themes that support every possible website idea
Don’t use all theme features on the same page
Make sure that the JavaScript and CSS is loaded only when needed

13. Minify your CSS and JS
… the smaller the size, the better!
Try using WP Minify: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-minify/
If you’re already using it, enable minify options in W3 Total Cache

14. Enable gZIP compression
… for HTML, CSS and JavaScript!
Use .htaccess rules instead of plugins:
http://kb.siteground.com/enable-gzip-via-htaccess/

15. Leverage browser caching
… whatever that means!
The .htaccess rules: http://kb.siteground.com/
leverage-browser-caching/

16. Use a CDN service
… but do it wisely!
Measure if your site is working faster
Even local business can take advantage by the CDN
Bonus: “Always Online ” service

17. Cache your content
… if you don’t cache your content that’s bad and you should feel bad!
Use opcode caching - АPC, xCache
Use Memcached object caching
Use reverse proxies like Varnish, nGinx

19. Thank you!
@pandjarov / hristo.p@siteground.com
Read this presentation on
SlideShare:
http://www.slideshare.net/siteground

20. Resources:
http://tools.pingdom.com
http://loadimpact.com
http://gtmetrix.com
http://crazyegg.com
http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-smushit/
http://kb.siteground.com/enable-gzip-via-htaccess/
http://checkgzipcompression.com
http://kb.siteground.com/leverage-browser-caching/