The document discusses optimizing WordPress performance. It recommends minimizing frontend assets like images, implementing caching for assets and application chunks, optimizing themes and plugins, and choosing efficient server setups. Specific plugins like W3 Total Cache and a CDN can improve performance by up to 10 times by caching static content. Nginx is presented as a faster alternative to Apache. Overall, the key takeaways are to simplify code, minimize requests, optimize caching, and reduce payload sizes to improve perceived and actual performance.

1. WordPress Performance
Timothy Wood @codearachnid
www.ImagineSimplicity.com || www.codearachnid.com

2. How do you percieve performance?

3. Change behavior to influence perception
Percieved Performance: Actual Performance:
Responsive ● Optimize
● Feedback ● Cache
● Progressive ● Minimize
● Escape or Distract ● Workflow
● Describe

4. Low hanging fruit for WordPress:
● Frontend
○ Minimize
○ Sprites
● Caching
○ Asset delivery
○ Chunking
● Application
○ Theme
○ Plugins
● Server Setups
○ OS choice & tweaking

5. Battle of the brawn
● Process based ● Event based
● Req increase RAM ● RAM use is stable
● Gobs of features ● Speed > features
● More use cases ● no .htaccess
Like Apache, Nginx has all the features you
would expect from a leading Web server. It is
stable, secure and very easy to configure.

6. Real world comparisons:
9794 req/5 min
32 req/second
Only site on fresh VPS install,
with minimal graphics, scripts,
css.
17479 req/5 min
60 req/second
One of several sites on VPS,
photographer portofolio, heavy
Stress tests by http://loadimpact.com graphics, minimal scripts & css.

7. Real world comparisions (cont.):

8. But wait... There's more!
- WP Plugin: nginx Compatibility
- Pretty URLS:
/etc/nginx/sites-available/nginx.conf
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^ /index.php last;
}
Performance

9. Tips for optimizing application layer
Theme: Plugins:
● Simplify & Reduce ● Delete Unused
● Combine Functionality
● Keep Code Updated
● Avoid Bad Plugins
● Repair MySQL DB
● Log Slow Queries
● Move CSS to top &
Javascript to bottom

10. Caching with static content + CDN
Plugins: Benefit:
● W3TC ● At least 10x
improvement in site
● WP Super Cache
performance
● Hyper Cache ● “Instant” second page
● DB Cache Reloaded views
● Reduced page load time
● Improved web server
CDN: performance
● Amazon S3 & ● Up to 80% Bandwidth
savings
Cloudfront

11. W3 Total Cache (setup walkthrough)
1. Sign-up for Amazon S3 & Cloudfront
2. Install W3 Total Cache Plugin within
WordPress
3. Follow W3 Total Cache Instructions within
WordPress admin panel
4. Log in to Cloudfront control panel and create
a Distribution for your newly created bucked

12. CDN explained & expounded
A content delivery network or content
distribution network (CDN) is a system of
computers containing copies of data placed at
various nodes of a network.
* The optimal number is somewhere between 1 and 5 hosts (1 main host plus 4
hosts on which to parallelize cacheable resources). As a rule of thumb, you
shouldn't use more than 1 host for fewer than 6 resources; fewer than 2
resources on a single host is especially wasteful. It should never be necessary
to use more than 5 hosts (not counting hosts serving resources over which you
have no control, such as ads). (source: Google Page Speed)

13. Interface polish & performance
● Yslow, Page Speed, Speed Tracer
● Minify and combine all CSS and JavaScript
● gZip, image sprites, smush.it
● Cleanup your markup
● Improve wait messaging

14. What did we learn?
● Build on a good foundation
● Pull the weeds of unnecessary code
● Optimize browser rendering
● Minimize request overhead
● Minimize round-trip times
● Minimize payload size
● Optimize caching
● Change perception

15. Find me online:
@CODEARACHNID