Maximizing Performance and Speeding Up WordPress

So let’s speed it up

I’m Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner, Uzzz Productions, Awesome Motive Inc., and more to come .

Why Performance Matters
Decreases Bounce Rate
Increase Time Spent on the Page
Often increases pageviews
SEO Benefits
Increases Indexing Rate

Our #1 Problem
Hosting Providers
Memory Usage Limits on Shared Hosts
Potential of Account Termination if you exceed limits.
Most importantly site crashes during peak times (such as hitting front page of Digg or other social media networks) thus hurting your brand’s reputation.

Solution(s)??
Getting a better and more reliable webhost
Install Caching Methods
Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
Minify
Database Maintenance
Limiting HTTP Queries
Proper 3rd Party Integrations

I recommend MaxCDN They were kind enough to give a 25% coupon code: wpbeginner

Best Caching Plugin is: W3 Total Cache

Decrease Page Size
Use Excerpts instead of Full Posts.
Show a maximum of 10 posts per page.
User smaller images (optimize them) - use Smush.it

Database Maintenance

Limiting HTTP requests

Plugins are Great, But...
They can increase your site’s load time when they add custom stylesheet(s) and JavaScript(s).
One or two plugin does not mater, but when you have 8 plugins, each adding a CSS and JS file, you got yourself 16 HTTP requests which can/should be limited.

Oops, the theme is broken

Yes, I know so lets FIX it.

Merging CSS Files
Copy the plugin’s CSS file, and paste it in your theme’s style.css file.
So in this case, we will copy “cleaner-gallery.css” file and paste it into our theme’s style.css file.
Repeat this STEP for all plugins that are adding additional CSS files.

In a Perfect World

Proper 3rd Party Integrations

Facebook the right way

Enable XFBML Support http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-open-graph-meta-in-wordpress/

Asynchronous Loading < body > < div id = "fb-embed" ></ div > < script > window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({appId: 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX', status: true, cookie: true, xfbml: true}); }; (function() { var e = document.createElement('script'); e.async = true; e.src = document.location.protocol + '//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js'; document.getElementById('fb-embed').appendChild(e); }()); </ script >

Analytics the right way

Asynchronous Loading < body > < script > var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push( ['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X'], ['_setDomainName', 'domain.com'], ['_trackPageview'] ); (function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? ' https://ssl ' : ' http://www ' ) + '.goog le-analytics.com/ga.js';document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(ga);})(); </ script >

Don’t forget the BASICS

Add scripts in the footer

Update Core & Plugins REGULARLY

Tools to check Performance
Yahoo YSlow
Google Page Speed
Pingdom Tools

Additional Resources
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-wordpress-plugins-affect-your-sites-load-time/
http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags
http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-install-and-setup-w3-total-cache-for-beginners/
http://www.tutorial9.net/web-tutorials/wordpress-caching-whats-the-best-caching-plugin/
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/18-useful-tricks-to-speed-up-wordpress-boost-performance/
http://line25.com/articles/wordpress-fat-loss-diet-to-speed-up-ease-load
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-web-optimization-tips-best-practices/
http://www.w3-edge.com/weblog/2011/02/optimize-social-media-button-performance/

I’m Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner, Uzzz Productions, Awesome Motive Inc., and more to come.
Twitter: @wpbeginner / @syedbalkhi
Facebook: http://facebook.com/wpbeginner
Email: [email_address]

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Maximizing Performance and Speeding Up WordPress

by Syed Balkhi

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