1. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
WordPress Performance
Key learnings from hosting 1000+
WordPress sites
Thomas Audunhus
Country Manager @ Servebolt
6. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
Rendering and browser code
HTML, CSS & .js
Server-side code
PHP
Database
MySQL
What affects load time?
7. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
Time to first byte (TTFB)
Time from the server receives a request,
until the first byte is delivered.
Recommended: <600ms
8. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus
What do most developers do to speed up WordPress?
1. Minification of code (grunt, gulp etc)
2. Install a plugin with “performance” or “speed” in the title
3. Set up caching everywhere
4. Adjust the code again, and again, to achieve a Pagespeed insights score of 100/100
10. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus
Implementing the suggestions should improve the
relative performance of the page.
“
- Google
We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a
site relative to other sites.
“
- Google
14. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
With Autoptimize Without Autoptimize
15. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
Running more code != Better performance
Doing more never results in faster finish
16. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
0ms
1250ms
2500ms
3750ms
5000ms
Them
e:2017
Them
e:Jupiter
Dem
o
content
Plugin:VC
Plugin:Autoptim
ize
Added
100
postsPlugin:W
oocom
m
ercePlugin:W
ordfence
17. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
So, what to do?
…and what not to do
18. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus
Be lean and mean with plugins
1. Plugins you don’t really need shouldn’t be installed.
2. Ensure that new plugins don’t mess with your time-to-first-byte (TTFB)
3. Kill page-builders like Visual Composer if you can
4. Kill security plugins (they are a security hazard anyway)
5. Kill slider plugins
19. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
I’m focused on performance, so I use caching on all sites“
Cool, the site is faster now! But.. it’s not Varnish fast.“
20. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
Using page caching for
performance
25. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus @ Oslo WordPress Meetup
Caching == A scaling tool
If you use caching for performance, you will not be able to use it for scaling.
36. WordPress Performance by Thomas Audunhus
The takeaway
• Check if your changes to the site had an impact on ttfb
• Make the error log your todo list
• Don’t rely on caching for performance
• Move to PHP 7
• Remember that performance is a continuous task