5 ms·

How I reduced Page Load Time by 75% - WordPress Optimization

62 points by kadavy 17y ago

WillyF 17y ago
W3 Total Cache really is a fantastic plug-in. It's significantly reduced my server load, and hasn't caused any problems as far as I can tell.
- pavs 17y ago
  Yup, I have been using it with maxcdn (PULL) and other custom optimization; was able to go from ~8sec load time to less than 2 second load time on average.
- kadavy 17y ago
  I just wish that they had support for rotating through multiple subdomains, so I wouldn't have to do it manually.
volomike 17y ago
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chennai-central/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chennai-central/ FTW
- wanderr 17y ago
  What does that actually do? All the description says is that it saves you bandwidth.
  - jleader 17y ago
    The "FAQ" link below the description leads to: "Chennai Central is a bandwidth saver plugin that makes your wordpress site support conditional GETs by search engine crawlers , feed readers and more." (followed by more detail about what conditional GETs are, and why they help)
    - wanderr 17y ago
      For me the FAQ was empty, maybe a compatability problem with Android's browser. I'll check it out on a real computer.
      - kree10 17y ago
        Never mind the FAQ, the "Download Now!" link is a 404. I'm kind of surprised that in 2010 stock Wordpress would not have this kind of cache-friendliness built in.
thedevelopment 17y ago
What an excellent post, and easy enough for someone without tech experience to follow. This will definitely be forwarded to friends wanting to get into the more serious side of web publishing.
mdolon 17y ago
If your problem is CPU usage rather than bandwidth overage, consider switching from Apache to nginx. I found my LAMP WordPress blog (hosted on a small VPS and using W3 Total Cache) was having trouble with concurrent users - traffic spikes would make my CPU usage skyrocket. I've since switched to nginx and the results have been great under moderate to high traffic, and without the use of any caching plugin.
- kadavy 17y ago
  I heard that advice about nginx, but was concerned about lack of a mod_rewrite module for smart URL structure. Is there a way to have search-engine-friendly-urls easily with nginx?
  - patio11 17y ago
    Nginx configuration is about as powerful as Apache, and personally easier for me to grok, but you have to be able to get past the lack of documentation. Here's the configuration file from my new project -- with the domain name removed. I've marked the magic bits that gets you Wordpress pretty URL compatibility. If you're actually asking about more complicated rewrites, those are all possible too -- look at the Nginx rewrite module docs. http://www.pastie.org/929223 http://www.pastie.org/929223
    - kadavy 17y ago
      That's a much more attractive configuration file than an Apache one. I see that you're using FastCGI. Something I didn't mention was that I attempted to use FastCGI, but gave up because my memory usage kept snowballing until I had to reboot my server over and over again. I don't know for sure whether it would have made things any faster.
      - pierrefar 17y ago
        Use php-fpm with enginx and you're golden. I ran a website getting millions of requests daily and it worked a treat on a small EC2 instance.
MichaelApproved 17y ago
Great tips. The most useful one for me is to put images and script files on a subdomain. Doesn't adding CSS and JavaScript inline hurt your google rank?
- kadavy 17y ago
  I'm not sure about that inline issue - I hadn't heard that. I actually got that advice from Yahoo, I think. The inline Javascript and CSS makes the page load faster, so in theory it would help.
  - Isofarro 17y ago
    That is true if you have a one page site. Bundling all the JavaScript and HTML in with the CSS means downloading one HTTP resource instead of three. This is good for sites like the "Yahoo Homepage" - basically just one big page, Netvibes, Facebook. But if you have multiple pages sharing the same styles, yes for once off load times, having the CSS and JavaScript inpage is better, but for a visit of more than one page, having the CSS and JavaScript as separate cacheable resources is far better, since the differences are now the page size of the pure HTML plus images, saving at least the packet sizes needed to transfer the same CSS and JavaScript on each page. So the major multi-page properties of Yahoo use primarily one external CSS and one external JavaScript file on each property.
    - kadavy 17y ago
      Thanks for that explanation. Based on what you said, I think I'm approaching it okay. On a few posts that have really high bounce rates, I use the Custom Post Template to serve CSS and JS inline on those pages (amongst other customizations). The rest of the site, I load them from external files.
- moultano 17y ago
  >Doesn't adding CSS and JavaScript inline hurt your google rank? Why would it do that?
c00p3r 17y ago
Moving to Xen-based VPS with fast connection from dedicated server. Big deal. For me it looks much better to rent a dedicated server and divide it into several KVMs and resell them. =)
jusob 17y ago
"A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy". In reality, it is 6 in IE 8, 8 in FF 3.x, Safari and Opera
- kadavy 17y ago
  Thanks for that. I heard something similar but couldn't find records of specifics. I suppose that means that its 6 in Chrome as well. And of course, there is IE7, which is still what many of my visitors use.

62 points by kadavy 17y ago

W3 Total Cache really is a fantastic plug-in. It's significantly reduced my server load, and hasn't caused any problems as far as I can tell.

pavs 17y ago
Yup, I have been using it with maxcdn (PULL) and other custom optimization; was able to go from ~8sec load time to less than 2 second load time on average.
kadavy 17y ago
I just wish that they had support for rotating through multiple subdomains, so I wouldn't have to do it manually.

volomike 17y ago

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chennai-central/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chennai-central/ FTW

wanderr 17y ago
What does that actually do? All the description says is that it saves you bandwidth.
- jleader 17y ago
  The "FAQ" link below the description leads to: "Chennai Central is a bandwidth saver plugin that makes your wordpress site support conditional GETs by search engine crawlers , feed readers and more." (followed by more detail about what conditional GETs are, and why they help)
  - wanderr 17y ago
    For me the FAQ was empty, maybe a compatability problem with Android's browser. I'll check it out on a real computer.
    - kree10 17y ago
      Never mind the FAQ, the "Download Now!" link is a 404. I'm kind of surprised that in 2010 stock Wordpress would not have this kind of cache-friendliness built in.

thedevelopment 17y ago

What an excellent post, and easy enough for someone without tech experience to follow. This will definitely be forwarded to friends wanting to get into the more serious side of web publishing.

mdolon 17y ago

If your problem is CPU usage rather than bandwidth overage, consider switching from Apache to nginx. I found my LAMP WordPress blog (hosted on a small VPS and using W3 Total Cache) was having trouble with concurrent users - traffic spikes would make my CPU usage skyrocket. I've since switched to nginx and the results have been great under moderate to high traffic, and without the use of any caching plugin.

kadavy 17y ago
I heard that advice about nginx, but was concerned about lack of a mod_rewrite module for smart URL structure. Is there a way to have search-engine-friendly-urls easily with nginx?
- patio11 17y ago
  Nginx configuration is about as powerful as Apache, and personally easier for me to grok, but you have to be able to get past the lack of documentation. Here's the configuration file from my new project -- with the domain name removed. I've marked the magic bits that gets you Wordpress pretty URL compatibility. If you're actually asking about more complicated rewrites, those are all possible too -- look at the Nginx rewrite module docs. http://www.pastie.org/929223 http://www.pastie.org/929223
  - kadavy 17y ago
    That's a much more attractive configuration file than an Apache one. I see that you're using FastCGI. Something I didn't mention was that I attempted to use FastCGI, but gave up because my memory usage kept snowballing until I had to reboot my server over and over again. I don't know for sure whether it would have made things any faster.
    - pierrefar 17y ago
      Use php-fpm with enginx and you're golden. I ran a website getting millions of requests daily and it worked a treat on a small EC2 instance.

MichaelApproved 17y ago

Great tips. The most useful one for me is to put images and script files on a subdomain. Doesn't adding CSS and JavaScript inline hurt your google rank?

kadavy 17y ago
I'm not sure about that inline issue - I hadn't heard that. I actually got that advice from Yahoo, I think. The inline Javascript and CSS makes the page load faster, so in theory it would help.
- Isofarro 17y ago
  That is true if you have a one page site. Bundling all the JavaScript and HTML in with the CSS means downloading one HTTP resource instead of three. This is good for sites like the "Yahoo Homepage" - basically just one big page, Netvibes, Facebook. But if you have multiple pages sharing the same styles, yes for once off load times, having the CSS and JavaScript inpage is better, but for a visit of more than one page, having the CSS and JavaScript as separate cacheable resources is far better, since the differences are now the page size of the pure HTML plus images, saving at least the packet sizes needed to transfer the same CSS and JavaScript on each page. So the major multi-page properties of Yahoo use primarily one external CSS and one external JavaScript file on each property.
  - kadavy 17y ago
    Thanks for that explanation. Based on what you said, I think I'm approaching it okay. On a few posts that have really high bounce rates, I use the Custom Post Template to serve CSS and JS inline on those pages (amongst other customizations). The rest of the site, I load them from external files.
moultano 17y ago
>Doesn't adding CSS and JavaScript inline hurt your google rank? Why would it do that?

c00p3r 17y ago

Moving to Xen-based VPS with fast connection from dedicated server. Big deal. For me it looks much better to rent a dedicated server and divide it into several KVMs and resell them. =)

jusob 17y ago

"A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy". In reality, it is 6 in IE 8, 8 in FF 3.x, Safari and Opera

kadavy 17y ago
Thanks for that. I heard something similar but couldn't find records of specifics. I suppose that means that its 6 in Chrome as well. And of course, there is IE7, which is still what many of my visitors use.