Search Results for 'optimize'

Thanks, that was the workaround, not activating minify. Unfortunately without minify activated the site doesn’t have optimized speed. There is no other solution that we can do and have minify enabled?

Additionally, I use the WP-Optimize plugin to regularly optimize my WP dbase. Cutting 800kb out of your dbase once a week, or after a large number of posts/pages, also speeds up your system overhead.

Typically, we post several stories, then do backup of WP dbase for safekeeping, then run WP optimize to clean house of all the temp files, overhead, etc.

Much like SEO, “Page Speed” is a program and not a plugin. It requires research, implementation and support ticket with your hosting provider, or if you have a VPS or full dedicated box, they don’t turn anything on for you by default — you have to tell them what you need to make it go. We had to test our server cache settings as the first time they were too broad, and we dialed that back (you don’t want to have your home page cached for a week, obviously, but images can be cached for a month or year, for example as they don’t change).

Enabling gzip or similar compression on web server is mandatory, and this is good for 20+ points on Page Speed (SERIOUSLY!). What this does is compress the files sent to the web browser which the web browser decompresses on the fly (modern PCs and Macs are mini supercomputers after all); so instantly almost everything sent from the page to the browser is cut by 50-80% — THAT speeds up the page immensely.

THE TAKEAWAY:
1) web server compression MUST be enabled and setup — this is good for 20+ points on Google Page Speed !
2) proper expiration headers must be served for static content like local hosted fonts, favicon, apple icons, images — this also impacts page speed as it tells browsers like Chrome and Google’s caching server not to keep loading content over and over again.
3) images must be properly optimized before upload to your blog/publication — don’t upload a 50kb file if a 25kb file will do —
4) avoid bad behavior plugins such as those which load additional style sheets not needed, or loading too many ad units (10 ad units on a page will slow it down!)
5) consider using a caching plugin like W3C which can fix things like combining CSS, moving JS to footer

TEST, modify, review, TEST, review, adjust.

Obviously Radu, Marius and co need to setup a FAQs/knowledgebase page for all their themes on this topic or folks will keep posting again and again asking why their WP page doesn’t get 99. The theme is part of the picture, not the only item in the picture.

Sharing all of this as this topic has been the #1 thing I’ve been working on with our other sites, including our main business site which I have up to 99 PageSpeed and 96 YSLOW, using a CDN on top of our own dedicated server, but NOT using WordPress. It’s a complex subject, but Radu and co have done a freaky good job in making this theme work with all the other pieces — and I bought about 10 other themes before this one — and they all sucked, as we say here in the states.

Peace and hope all of that helped somebody 🙂

Just for a point of reference on our test site under development, with 1.7.2, and no caching or tagdiv/optimizer plugin enabled. This is neither a complaint, nor solution, just an indicator of another look at “speed” on a “typical” review article page online, based in U.S.

Test article page
http://ga-ga.com/785/discwatcher-watching-films-at-home-spring-2013-a-good-day-to-die-hard/

Google Page Speed = 96 / YSlow 73* (desktop; not showing mobile results)
Page load time: 6.46s
Total page size: 2.19MB
Total number of requests: 106
*NOTE: huge number of “errors” due to GOOGLE ads/cookies/etc. with embedded YouTube video and two AdSense ads (top/right) and social media crap. Unrelated to theme.
PAGE HAS: 3 large images in article; two content blocks right side with 3 thumbnails each (6 images) and the 2 related content items below story. Total 11 images plus gravatar, and 2 logos.

14 images, 2 ads, youtube video; Google Page Speed “96” — not too shabby!

Main issues have to do with Google elements, and social media stuff. One javascript file could be compressed; YSlow hates the @style load of CSS via child theme (sigh). Images could be slightly more compressed (option to set compression level via functions file?).

For those looking at Google Page Speed vs “load time” or “payload” … ALWAYS test your “page speed” with AdSense stuff removed or you will always get upset with any WP site ranking/rating/testing. In our case, the above “96” with Google Page Speed is pretty amazing, frankly. 6 second load time, not so much (anything over 4 sec would be considered “bad” these days), but caching plugin and CDN may help with that immensely. Yslow pretty much “demands” a CDN for top speed ranking.

Our goal is 3 sec. max time for a page like that (avg 2.6 sec would be acceptable based on how some of our other sites work) and if/when I get to that, I’ll share our method of optimization, if anybody will want to know.

— PLUGINS:
* all jetpack OFF
* WP-Optimize (speed up your DB by optimizing it!)
* Akismet with site license
* Limit Login Attempts (a must!)
* Regenerate thumbnails
* WordPress SEO by Yoast
* bare minimum tagdiv provided plugins (e.g., animated GIF resize)

• This reply was modified 12 years by simchris.

Just heads up to folks worrying about page speed, one great resource you may already be aware of is my friends at GT in Canada who built a neat testing tool years back, here: http://gtmetrix.com/

Paste in any page URL from your site, such as a post page, and it will tell your speed scores with Google PageSpeed and Yahoo Yslow – but also give you suggestions on various things you can fix; particularly useful is looking at number of calls for some plugins that “dial out” for avatars, social media, etc.

Keeping in mind that most WP themes may have too many calls to CSS files, and some plugins add more, which they shouldn’t (I’ve got one called ‘external links’ right now, and not using any of the CSS in the plugin, but he still loads another style sheet, not needed – having to bug him to remove that …) …

Anyway… it’s a good reference to some of the issues folks run into prior to optimization. YOu can create free account, then run a scan, and then when you tweak, you can come back and rerun test, and see improvements over time.

It’s more useful than running Google Page Speed insights, as it actually provides tips and exmaples on how to actually address each issue, along with explanations – which Google does in a roundabout or confusing way or not at all (meaning Google penalizes your page speed for their own AdSense content … which is hilarious … “you should fix this” – and it’s their content that needs fix!).

I’ve spent 3 months optimizing our main business site (not using WordPress) which has been an adventure; now starting on the WordPress stuff.

I can tell you from experience that Radu and co are doing an amazing job with optimization within the confines of the WordPress setup which inherently has numerous flaws for SEO, like the method for CSS redirect used in the child themes (WP core devs keep using a method not recommended by the rest of the universe … for example).

So, there is a *lot* going on with WP, which *no* theme maker can fully address, only tweak and you need to research common problems and workarounds for *ALL* WP based installs when concerned with Page Speed.

For instance, I do *NOT* use JetPack myself as it “phones home” all over the place and slows things down. SO, every little spinning widget and flashing light and cannon blasting all slow down the page. If you want the most speed with WP, you need to have the simplest layout possible, ala Newspaper, for this kind of site, and then optimize the heck out of all your images, minimize anything that calls out to other sites (like FB comments box), certain JetPack things, and anything that doesn’t run in async with javascript, and avoid plugins which add more CSS style sheets and can’t inherent code, or properly write custom CSS into the head INLINE, not as yet another external style sheet!

Just some suggestions, somebody may find useful as a WP user since 2005, and webdev since 1994.

Well… you may have some other plugin that creates or registers a “twitter” field for managing that data.

In my case I’m using Yoast SEO, NOT using Jetpack, and in my user’s account setup, I put in the full URL, and it shows up on both the author page and the posts with correct link.

by way of example:
see this old article on the site in progress to revamp with Newspaper:

post:
http://publishersnewswire.com/2013/08/29/PNW2766_163853.php/whilly-bermudez-talks-new-illustrated-childrens-book-wb-10-good-things/

note link on page is:
https://twitter.com/tophersimmons

on author page/index
https://twitter.com/tophersimmons

and on the post in the head meta data, note the bug

<meta name=”twitter:site” content=”@neotrope”/>
<meta name=”twitter:domain” content=”Publishers Newswire”/>
<meta name=”twitter:creator” content=”@https://twitter.com/tophersimmons”/>
<!– / Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. –>

In my user account I have this in the twitter field:
https://twitter.com/tophersimmons

I’m using the latest version of WP, latest version of Newspaper.

Only plugins I’m using are Yoast, WP-Optimize, our house ad module turned off, and I think we have Recaptcha running. Maybe something else, but it escapes me at the moment.

I don’t use any minify plugin. My home pagination does not work either. I’ve disable each but nothing changed.

Those are the plugins I use:

Customize Admin
Disable All WordPress Updates
Disable WordPress theme updates
Duplicate Post
Facebook
Google Analytics for WordPress
Google XML Sitemaps
Jetpack
Plugin Activation Date
Post List Featured Image
Shortcodes Ultimate
tagDiv Social Counter
Wordpress Seo
WP-Optimize
WP Clone by WP Academy

w3C cache does implement many of the tricks for optimizing your site. Note you can also do some of that yourself using your htaccess file and make sure you optimize the heck out of your featured images (mine are about 16-24kb max for 700×406). There are quite a few great articles out there on implementing some of the W3C stuff without using the plugin, if you only want to test bits of that. Also setting up an Amazon CDN (S3+cloudfront) and hosting your JS/CSS and fonts there will also speed up your site. You can’t entirely rely on the “theme” to manage your site optimization, as a bunch of that is related to hosting, optimization of images, and minimizing using plugins and fancy jetpack stuff (basically anything that calls out to another site slows yours …). Putting more than two ads on the page from AdSense really slows it down, using anything connected to facebook or twitter “on the page” slows it down. Etc.

Hi, Marius
yes, as noted, when I try to “hide” the superuser account (changed from admin to another name), it still shows up when placed into the default sidebar using the td author widget. Alternately, if I use visibility to only pick 3 out of the 4 authors to make visible, it still shows the 4th superuser account.

The superuser account should not show up in the author widget, even though the superuser is technically an author of perhaps a “page” when they are created.

The only plugins I have active beyond your core set is the Yoast SEO properly configured, the WP optimize, recaptcha and akismet. I also tried disabling jetpack, which I’m not using at the moment anyway.

(I’ve been a WordPress dev since 2005, so not a newbie.)