WordPress Speed Optimization Made Easy!

The logons we need are a WordPress administrator level password, FTP or Cpanel access and domain registrar logon for your Cloudflare migration.

If you’re not comfortable sharing your domain registrar logon (which is completely understandable) we can give you the DNS servers to point your domain at once we’re ready to switch over to Cloudflare

We’ll typically also need Google Tag Manager access as often we move 3rd party embed codes to GTM. If you already have a Cloudflare account we’ll usually need access to that to review settings and tweak accordingly.

We have over 150 steps in our process so it’s impractical to give you finite detail on everything we do.

If you have a large site that’s mission critical we recommend you look at the Consult Service. With this service we audit the site to start with, create a detailed action plan and then work with you on the implementation of the plan. This service provides the most detail on changes we make.

Generally the first step in our process is to identify the key problems that are slowing your site down, fix them and then work on general best practices. We’ll explain what these problems are and give you an explanation of why they’re problematic as well as provide before and after speed reports.

More broadly, here are the things we do:

WordPress Best Practices Review & Optimization
Most sites we work on have configuration errors or problems simply because the sites have been worked on by several people over time. We review your entire site and hosting configuration and ensure it’s configured in a best practices fashion.

Browser & Page Caching Configuration & Tuning
Caching is one of biggest improvements you can make to your WordPress site speed. Caching setup is a lot more complex than simply installing a caching plugin and turning everything on.

Each site is different and as such caching needs to be customized specifically to each site. On top of that, often caching settings are counter intuitive and on some hosts turning on things like Database Caching will actually slow your site down.

You’ll also find that many of the improvements that speed test tools on the web recommend such as removing query strings from static elements can actually create problems.

Database Optimization & Cleanup
If your site has been around for a while there may be garbage in the database that is slowing it down. For example, expired transients on Woocommerce sites can be a huge problem as well as using the older MyISAM storage engine for database tables.

As part of our service we cleanup and optimize your database to ensure it’s running as fast as possible.

Redis or Memcached Object Cache setup (where possible)

Object caching is a type of database caching that speeds up areas such as the WordPress backend, Woocommerce checkout and generally anything in WordPress that relies heavily on CPU or database lookups. Not all hosts support object caching but where possible we’ll get either Memcached or Redis installed and configure Object Caching.

Edge Caching setup using Cloudflare

Edge caching is a type of page caching where the site or pages are cached on CDN edge nodes. This significantly reduces the load on your hosting and largely eliminates the impact of geography on your site speed. We strongly recommend all compatible sites use the Cloudflare APO Edge Caching service. It’s $5/USD month (purchased from Cloudflare) but makes a significant impact on site speed.

HTAccess File Optimization
HTAccess is one of your web server’s key configuration files and it often contains code that is slowing you down or causing problems in some way. We review your HTAccess configuration and ensure that it’s configured in a best practices format.

404 & Bad Request Review & Repair
It’s not unusual to find spelling errors in code or some other issue that is causing images or break or bad requests to your server. We review all elements that you site loads to ensure they’re not timing out or resulting in a 404 error.

Plugin Review & Pruning
Duplicated and outdated plugins are a huge problem when it comes to WordPress speed. Often this is something as simple as having multiple SEO plugins installed which is bad for both speed AND your Google rankings.

We review all your plugin to make sure they’re actually all required or being used, that none are providing duplicate functionality or causing conflicts somewhere in your site.

Server Compression Tuning
Many website servers don’t have compression turned on by default. We make sure your server compression settings are tuned for maximum performance.

Before and After Reports
We all the work we do we take before and after speed snapshots so we can show you exactly what improvements to site speed have been achieved.

Image Optimization & Compression and NextGen Image Optimization
Images are usually the largest component or your website and by using lossless compression we can often significantly reduce the size of your image files without any difference to the quality.

We losslessly compress all images on your site and will also resize images where appropriate.

Content Delivery Network Setup (optional, powered by Cloudflare)
Cloudflare.com is a fantastic service and we recommend it to all customers (even the free service will give you a significant speed boost).

Cloudflare speeds up your DNS hosting (very commonly overlooked when it comes to speed), provides a content delivery network and several other acceleration features that no other provider or plugin offers.

HTTPS conversion if you’re not running HTTPS yet (you should be!)
The entire web is moving to HTTPS and it’s a good thing too. HTTPS ensures all data transmitted between your website and your visitors is encrypted.

When your site runs in HTTPS web browsers will use the newer HTTP2 protocol which requires less connections to the server and overall improves the render and load speed of your site.

As well as speed up your site, Google have stated that encrypted sites running in HTTPS will get a slight rankings boost.

PHP7 upgrade (if compatible)
PHP7 is the latest version of PHP and is 2-3x faster than PHP5.X which is the version of PHP your website is probably running (there’s no PHP6). This translates to approximately 0.5 seconds faster load time which is great for getting under that 1 second total load.

Each subsequent PHP version is faster than the last, so v7.1 is 10-20% faster than 7.0, v7.2 is 10-20% faster than 7.1 and so forth so running the highest PHP version possible will give you the fastest possible speed.

Each speedfix service covers a single site, we do offer bulk discounts if you need several sites worked on. You can see the various discounts in the checkout << click the link and then click the bulk order link at the top of the checkout.

Sometimes, not always. It depends how many sites you have in your network. We count each site on your network as a standalone site so you’ll need to purchase a Speed Fix service for each site you want fixed. Some of the changes we make as part of our speed optimizations will have an impact
on your entire network (a positive impact).

If you have a question about your multisite environment, shoot us an email at questions@wpspeedfix.com and we can discuss in more detail.

We weren’t happy with the speed test tools on the market so we built our own!

Check it out at SiteSpeedBot.com

In the past we used Pingdom and GTMetrix and while they’re both good tools, they had huge gaps in their recommendations. GTMetrix servers can bequite slow and report slower load times that they should.

We also use Google Pagespeed Insights or Google Lighthouse.

Typically we focus on improving Core Web Vitals metrics and related speed timings.

Ideally we want our speed timings looking something like this:

-TTFB 0.1-0.2 seconds (this is where is should be in the country where the site is hosted, 0.2-0.5 internationally)
-FCP at or under 1.5 second
-LCP under 2.5 seconds but ideally as close to the LCP as possible, generally within 1 second of the LCP is fast
-load time 1.5-3 seconds
-fully loaded time can vary a lot depending on the third party code being used. Generally we’d expect to see it 1-2 second higher than the load time but this largely depends on the type of site, eg with a Woocommerce site this could easily be 3-5 seconds higher depending on the marketing code in use

You’re asking the wrong question!

A 100 score in Pagespeed Insights is not the goal you should be aiming for. Instead, Google Core Web vitals metrics is where your focus should be which are the timings Google uses in it’s algorithm and are what show up in Google Search Console and at the top of the Pagespeed Insights test in the “field data” section.

Most people looking at Pagespeed Insights scores are looking at the homepage only (in reality, all your pages matter) and test from one location, one time only.

Pagespeed Insights score is not a fixed score, it varies on each test. It’s a metric computed from the load time scores at the time of the test.

Ideally we want our speed timings looking something like this in order to get a “good” score in core web vitals:

-TTFB 0.1-0.2 seconds (this is where is should be in the country where the site is hosted, 0.2-0.5 internationally)
-FCP at or under 1.5 second
-LCP under 2.5 seconds but ideally as close to the LCP as possible, generally within 1 second of the LCP is fast
-load time 1.5-2.5
-fully loaded time can vary a lot depending on the third party code being used. Generally we’d expect to see it 1-2 second higher than the load time but this largely depends on the type of site, eg with a Woocommerce site this could easily be 3-5 seconds higher depending on the marketing code in use

Note that the mobile test on Pagespeed Insights is testing on a slow device using a 1.6mb/second connection (very slow) which means that unless your page size in a 0.5mb or below you will not score above approximately 60 out of 100 on this test.

On our Advanced Speedfix we focus on the size of all pages across the site as well as specifically focusing on Pagespeed Score. We cannot guarantee a 100 score because as per above, the score heavily depends on the size of the page tested. Anyone promising you a 100 score is either lying to you or will want you to remove all content from your pages.

That depends but quite often you will. We migrate hosting for roughly 30% of our customers.

If you’re using Bluehost, Godaddy, Hostgator, A Small Orange or any other EIG owned company you’ll probably need to move to get your site
loading super fast. The only way cheap companies make any money on those $3/month hosting plans is to stack 10,000 other websites on the same
server and run the server as hard as possible.

We find that we can get sites running on these services down to a passable 3-5 second load time BUT the site will struggle to handle more than a handful of simultaneous users at a time.

When it comes to hosting you get what you pay for – it’s unreasonable to expect a high quality service when you pay more for a coffee than you do for an entire month of hosting or 1-2 clicks on your Adwords or Facebook
ads.

Typically we’ll recommend Cloudways for customers on a poor quality web host but any of the hosts on our Fastest WordPress Hosting list will have your site loading fast.

Using a content delivery network like Cloudflare will help a lot as it picks up a lot of slack from the hosting and using their $5/month APO edge caching service will take this to the next level. If you cannot move hosting providers for whatever reason this is probably the next best thing.

Yes!

Nearly half the sites we work on are Woocommerce sites that are running slowly.

If you’re on Bluehost, Godaddy, Hostgator, A Small Orange or any other hosting company owned by EIG you’ll probably need to upgrade to get
consistently fast speeds especially fast checkout, cart and My Account section as well as things like Add to Cart function.

Typically we recommend CloudWays for Woocommerce hosting but any of the hosts on our Fastest WordPress Hosts list are appropriate.

Yes, occasionally we get a site that we can’t fix. Usually the site has one of the issues listed below. In many cases we can work with you to resolve the issue. Most often the issue is related to the hosting the site is sitting on and in that case we can advise what needs to be done to resolve the problem and can migrate the site for you.

If we hit a major roadblock after you order that means we can’t speed up your site we’re happy give you a refund on your service.

It’s running on a Windows server.

While WordPress can run on Windows it’s designed to run on a Linux or LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) system which means you’ll never get a Windows server to perform as well as a LAMP setup. If site speed matters to you the site should not be running on a Windows server.

It’s running on a complex WordPress Multisite setup

Wordpress Multisite isn’t the best for performance, especially if you’re running a Multisite setup with a huge number of plugins or large number of sites. Multisite is often more convenient but the tradeoff is flexibility and sometimes performance.

The site is running on a VPS and the VPS has issues

Fixing VPS and server issues is outside the scope of what we do. The speed of your WordPress site is limited by how well the server is configured and most cheap VPS setups are poorly configured. Unless you have a specific reason to use a VPS, a managed WordPress host is often a better option because the server has been configured and tuned specifically for WordPress.

The hosting plan is poor quality

Your site is not going to perform if you’re on bargain basement hosting. There’s no way around this, cheap hosting is poor quality, ultimately you get what you pay for. As part of our service we can migrate you to a better quality host.

You have too much traffic for your hosting plan 

Your hosting plan needs to be matched well to the level of traffic your site is getting. If you’re getting 5000 visits a day you’re going to need to be on a higher grade hosting plan that a site that gets 50 visits a day. Using tools like Cloudflare will dramatically improve performance for high traffic sites but at the end of the day your site speed is limited by the performance cap on your hosting. In cases like this quite often the solution is to move up to the next level hosting plan.

The IT department wants to host the site internally

IT departments are generally not commercially motivated and aren’t focussed on what’s best for business – after all, if things run smoothly they have nothing to do, if they have nothing to do then they don’t have a job. Often an internal IT department will want to host the site internally rather than using a dedicated WordPress host that can do a far better job. If your site is hosted on internal IT infrastructure then we might be limited in how we can help.

Your site has custom dev work done or is running an obscure or poor quality plugin

Occasionally we come across a site that has had custom development work done that is very poor quality or is running a WordPress plugin that conflicts with other plugins or is simply just rubbish. Most often in these cases the plugin or development work is trying to do something WordPress was not designed to do and it’s breaking the site or causing performance issues.