Speed, an Ongoing Project

This topic contains 3 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by  Stiofan O’Connor 7 years, 11 months ago.

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  • April 12, 2017 at 7:10 pm #373199

    RAMON COLE
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 89

    Hi guys,

    I thought it was about time I threw something back in the pot for anyone that’s interested, regarding the speed of a Geodirectory website.

    I think we’ve all been on Google Pasespeed Insights, wondering how to get rid of ‘Leverage Browser Caching’ ‘Minification’ and ‘Eliminate Render Blocking JS and CSS’ warnings, and after not being able to use my trusty Autoptimize how I’d ideally want to, I thought it was about time to find alternatives.

    This is what I came up with –

    To solve the Leverage Browser Caching issues (yes I know you can do this straight through .htaccess), I used Browser Caching With HTAccess and set up the various times for caching resources, and coupled this up with Cache External Scripts to put a halt to Googles own JS scripts slowing my website down.

    Next was the alternative to Autoptimize, and I’d been wanting to try this one out for a few weeks now. Fast Velocity Minify was a little tricky to set up, and I’ve still not got the JS sorted out yet, but it’s just a case of going down the checkboxes one by one to taste.

    Finally, I grabbed a copy of Comet Cache (which looks suspiciously similar to the GDBooster software) and just activated GZip and set it running.

    At present, my Google Pagespeed is hovering between 90 – 97 on mobile and desktop, so a class act all around – especially as I’ve still got some JS minification to do.

    Hope that this helps a few of you out!

    April 13, 2017 at 11:30 am #373281

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    Hi Raymon,

    Thanks for sharing your findings, there are just a few points i would add to this.
    #1. We only support either GD Booster or WP Super Cache + Autoptimize, this does not mean you can’t use others it just means we will only help resolve problems with our supported ones.
    #2 I would not get hung up too much on Google pagespeed, i prefer to use https://tools.pingdom.com which will tell you the actual loading times of the site, and both of my sites running each of the two supported caching both load and score higher than your site there where as your site scores much higher in google page speed.
    #3 I would also suggest a CDN, it can be a bit expensive per month for one site but makes more sense if you have a few.

    Thanks,

    Stiofan

    April 13, 2017 at 11:53 am #373286

    RAMON COLE
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 89

    Hi Stiofan,

    I’ve got this thing whereby I HATE WP Super Cache with a passion, as there’s no way to work out what its doing, or where its doing it. OK I can understand some people wanting a plug and play caching system, but its not for me.

    Autoptimize got the boot after you pointed out that ALL css must be inlined for it to work properly.

    I take your point about Google PSI, but it’s the main yardstick that everyone goes to – and then Pingdom, GTMetrix and WebPageSpeedTest for the fine tuning.

    As I said, I’ve still got to minify my JS at some point today, AND set up Cloudflare, so we’ll see what happens after my juggling!

    April 13, 2017 at 11:59 am #373288

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    I’ve got this thing whereby I HATE WP Super Cache

    lol 🙂

    For Autoptimize, the inline CSS part is a recommendation, we found it increases load speed as it reduces the number of calls, you can unset that if you want.

    When setting up CF remember to disable rocket loader, this is known to cause issues.

    Also this is a good read: https://wp-rocket.me/blog/the-truth-about-google-pagespeed-insights/

    Thanks,

    Stiofan

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