This document summarizes a webinar about optimizing websites for holiday traffic. It discusses why website speed matters, and provides tips for keeping sites scalable during peak traffic periods. These tips include improving server requests through minification, concatenation, caching, image compression, and using a content delivery network (CDN). It also recommends balancing workload across dedicated services and keeping sites updated. The webinar then focuses on how CDNs like MaxCDN can increase speed by distributing servers globally. Attendees are encouraged to test site speed using tools like PageSpeed Insights and WebPagetest.

1. Optimizing Your Site for Holiday Traffic
Is Your Website Ready?
#wpeholidays

2. Your Presenters
Terell Moore
Operations Engineer,
WP Engine
❖ Native Austinite
❖ Site Speed Guru
❖ Wannabe Tennis Champion
Taylor Dondich
VP Engineering,
MaxCDN
❖ Obsessed With Speed
❖ Wordpress Performance
Hacker
❖ Semi-Pro Rock Band Rockstar
#wpeholidays

3. What you’ll learn:
❖ Why speed matters
❖ Best practices for keeping your site scalable for peak
traffic
❖ How CDN can take a load off your server and
increase speed
❖ Actionable tips and tricks to optimize your site
#wpeholidays

4. Why Speed Matters
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5. Why Speed Matters
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6. Why Speed Matters
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7. How to Prep Your Site for the Holidays
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1. Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
2. Balance the Workload
3. Updates

8. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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What is a server request?
❖ Each asset loaded on your site
➢ Images, CSS, Javascript

9. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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Why is improving your site’s server
requests important?
❖ Browsers have a max parallel requests
limit
❖ More requests = more time

10. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
#wpeholidays
❖ Minification & Concatenation
❖ Cache
❖ Image Compression
❖ CDN

11. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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What is minification?
❖ Removal of unneeded data or
whitespace in text files (CSS,
Javascript, HTML, etc)
What is concatenation?
❖ Combines multiple text-based files into
one for more efficient loading

12. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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How can you minify?
❖ WordPress plugins
➢ Better WordPress Minify
➢ Autoptimize

13. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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What is cache?
❖ Storing previously generated data for
faster subsequent loading

14. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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How can you cache?
❖ WordPress plugins (not needed on WP
Engine)
➢ W3 Total Cache
➢ WP Super Cache

15. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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What is image compression?
❖ Removing unneeded bytes from image
files
➢ Lossy : Degrades image quality
➢ Lossless : Does not degrade quality

16. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
#wpeholidays
How to compress your images?
❖ WordPress Plugins
➢ WP Smush
➢ EWWW Optimizer Cloud
❖ Through your photo editor

17. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
#wpeholidays
What is a CDN?
❖ Distributed servers to balance web
requests

18. 1. How to Improve Your Site’s Server Requests
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How to enable CDN?
❖ WordPress Plugins (not needed on WP
Engine)
➢ W3 Total Cache

19. 2. How to Balance Your Site’s Workload
#wpeholidays
❖ Balance your workload using dedicated
services
➢ CDN for images, CSS, Javascript
➢ Video host (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo,
etc)
➢ Comments (Disqus)
➢ Popular posts (Jetpack)

20. 3. Updates
#wpeholidays
❖ Why are updates important to speed /
stability?
➢ Updates are usually bug-fixes to
address performance or stability

21. Why CDN Matters
#wpeholidays
Taylor Dondich
VP Engineering,
MaxCDN
❖ Previously @ Yahoo
❖ A constant tinkerer
❖ Obsessed with your site’s
speed

22. About MaxCDN’s Network
#wpeholidays
❖ WP Engine users already benefit from
their partnership with MaxCDN
➢ Smarter technology for faster routing
➢ 19 global “PoPs” (Points of
Presence) for shorter routes
➢ Servers built for speed

23. About MaxCDN’s Network
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24. Review Of Previous Tips
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❖ Smaller requests
❖ Minification (review)
❖ Concat CSS and JS files (review)
❖ Smaller images (review)

25. Additional Tips
#wpeholidays
❖ Optimize your theme
➢ Less reliance on images
➢ Less widgets/helpers
❖ Reduce 3rd party Javascript libraries
➢ Async vs. sync libraries
❖ Visit MaxCDN One for more WP tips

26. I Feel The Need. The Need For Speed.
#wpeholidays
❖ Test your speed
➢ PageSpeed Insights (Google)
■ See overall page speed
■ Mobile vs. desktop
■ Offers actionable suggestions

27. PageSpeed Example
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28. Getting Into The Details
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❖ Test your performance
➢ WebPagetest
■ Waterfall detailed graphs
■ Tests from global locations
■ Test different browsers

29. Getting Into The Details
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30. Getting Into The Details
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31. Always Be Testing
#wpeholidays
❖ New changes can skew your
performance
❖ Always test after plugin updates!
❖ Do you need that new Geewhiz?

32. Resources
#wpeholidays
❖ Infographic: How Website Speed Impacts
Performance
http://wpengine.com/blog/site-speed-infographic/
❖ In-depth 3-part Webinar Series: How to Handle Peak
Capacity & Speed Up WordPress Sites
http://wpengine.com/speed-up-wordpress/
❖ Prepare for Holiday Traffic Tips/Links from MaxCDN
https://www.maxcdn.com/wpengine-webinar-holiday-
traffic/

33. More info:
WP Engine MaxCDN
Call Lizzie Villarreal at Live chat with Support
512-827-3585 x3431, or Team at maxcdn.com
Chat with a rep at wpengine.com
Want to follow today’s speakers?
Terell - @tee_rail
Taylor - @TDondich
Q&A
#wpeholidays