WordPress Hosting & Performance

by Alex James Bishop

Performance is a loaded word!

Many facets to performance

Performance Cont..

  • Many talks focus on just one facet of performance
  • Too often with WordPress the conversation becomes about plugins
  • PHP performance is only part of the issue
  • In today's world, hosting is usually part of the conversation due to integrated services

How fast is your website?

Step 1: Measure

Establish a baseline

Pingdom

Web Page Test

GT Metrix

Google Page Speed

Pick a couple

Being consistent is key!

Optimizing your site

  1. Establish a baseline
  2. Use results to try and locate problem areas
  3. Make 1-2 changes to fix the problem
  4. Test again and compare..
  5. Repeat!

Sounds Easy right?

😅

Advice for getting started

Big  / long items on the waterfall first!

If TTFB is high, then server / PHP is struggling

Time To First Byte - the time between when the browser requests the page and it receives the 1st byte of the response

Speeding up the Server

  • Use a great host!
  • Full page caching if you can
  • An Object or DB cache can help (redis)
  • You won't find the above on shared hosts

If TTFB is < 1s, your greatest wins will likely be on the frontend

Optimize your images!

Reduce unnecessary assets!

Reduces Asset Blocking

Inspecting Front-end performance

CDNs

Content Delivery Networks

CDNs move your content closer!

The CDN model

CDN's take some setting up

Totally worth it if you can!

Managed Hosts can do this for you

If you don't want to go managed..

If you're a bit more DIY...

Remember, test!

Work out what's 'good enough'

Get expert help if required!

Q & A

Thanks for listening!

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What's a CMS?

Content

Management

System

In the beginning..

Websites were all HTML, later CSS and Javascript were added..

You had to know HTML to publish content on the web

There was usually 1 HTML file for each website page

The CMS Way

  • Use a dedicated interface to input our content
  • Store the content somewhere, like a database
  • Have a templating system where HTML pages have sections for content to go
  • Combine the content we have created and the page template to make a page

 

 

Backend

Frontend

We ❤️ CMS!

  • Allows anyone to make a website
  • Make changes across the entire site easily
  • Can often be extended for different content types or functionality
  • New themes or templates can be added to give a fresh look and feel to existing content

WordPress as a platform

WordPress extensions

  • WordPress plugins for functionality
  • WordPress themes for look & feel
  • Custom plugins and themes (your own code!)

Example: WooCommerce

Example: Elementor

Example: Ninja Forms

Refresh with new themes

Lots of themes out there..

But be careful..not all are what they seem

Advice for getting started

  • Work out what you need, then look for it
  • The more "general purpose" a theme is, the less optimised it is for your purpose
  • Avoid commercial themes until you're sure you need them
  • The best place to begin looking for themes and plugins are the wordpress.org repositories
  • If you want things for free, be prepared to spend time

wordpress.org

dot org

  • The home of the WordPress open source community
  • Download WordPress
  • Plugin Repository
  • Theme Repository
  • Codex & Documentation
  • Links to lots of other things

There's also a wordpress.com

WordPress.com

  • Get started really quickly
  • No need to find hosting, set up website etc
  • Very responsive support, including live chat and email
  • Lots of features built in that you would have to install plugins for on .org
  • Restricted in terms of customisability
  • Pay per site for premium features
  • Limited eCommerce, business functionality

WordPress.org

  • More DIY / Less hand holding
  • You need to find hosting when publishing your website
  • No direct support - though freelancer, service, agency etc can provide thus
  • Generally will need a few plugins to get required functionality
  • Unlimited customisation potential
  • No restrictions on custom themes or plugins
  • No ongoing licensing fees (for WP core, plugins differ)
  •  

Meetups focus on WordPress.org

Supporting the Open Source project & Users

not the commercialised Saas version on WordPress.com

WordPress is

open source

WordPress powers 32% of the web!

*based on Alexa top 1 million site index

Large market share means..

  • Lots of information online, like tutorials
  • Lots of people building things for WordPress
  • Lots of people can help you build things with Wordpress
  • Opportunity & In demand skillsets for both admin and development

Getting Started

Clearly define your result

Go for minimal themes & plugins

When choosing plugins & themes

  • 🥇 WordPress.org repo first
  • 👀 Read reviews & look at the screenshots
  • 👮🏼‍♀️ Don't install "cracked" or "nulled" versions
  • ⚙️ Try to keep functionality to plugins
  • 🎨 Try to keep look & feel things in the theme
  • 🤷🏽‍♀️ Gutenberg has muddied the water here.. 

Some good resources

wpbeginner.com

wordpress.org/support

bobwp.com

eCommerce / monetisation focus

Search is your friend!

We learn by doing

No better time to start than now

Thanks

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