Cookie Consent by Free Privacy Policy Generator

The Best Of

Go to the Best Of the SEO Community.

Kyle Faber
Kyle Faber
Dec 7, 2024, 8:33 AM
Great overview of caching / performance improvement options for WP
Forwarded from another channel:
Forwarded thread from another channel:
Noah
Noah
Dec 4, 2024, 2:51 PM
what caching plugin do we all love for WP right now?
@David Schargel @Renee Bigelow
Renee Bigelow
Renee Bigelow
Dec 4, 2024, 2:55 PM
Thanks Noah! Who can help me out? I inherited a site with slow page load and need to do a few improvements myself. This is not my normal domain. Last time I installed one was pre-pandemic and it was W3 total cache.
Kyle Faber
Kyle Faber
Dec 4, 2024, 2:58 PM
Performance cannot be fully solved via a plugin, as it’s dependent on hosting, other plugins used, theme (and the way it’s built), etc.
That said, the only things I use besides building the theme correctly and minimizing plugin use, is and cloudflare.
The latter is obviously an infrastructure thing, and is often included with hosting.
Noah
Noah
Dec 4, 2024, 2:59 PM
I hear great things about @Renee Bigelow. It’s also on @David Schargel’s must install list too.
Renee Bigelow
Renee Bigelow
Dec 4, 2024, 3:08 PM
Thanks both! I know I can’t fully fix it, but hoping I can do a couple tweaks to improve some. @Kyle Faber even though it says personal for one site license I can buy that for a business site right? I don’t need more than one.
Kyle Faber
Kyle Faber
Dec 4, 2024, 3:08 PM
Yep! It’s really just restricted to use by domain.
Derek Perkins
Derek Perkins
Dec 4, 2024, 3:39 PM
we're using + Cloudflare
Derek Perkins
Derek Perkins
Dec 4, 2024, 3:42 PM
at least from this article, WP-Rocket is the third most popular plugin period based on 140k Kinsta sites
Jon Henshaw
Jon Henshaw
Dec 4, 2024, 4:39 PM
I went from WP Rocket *→* WP Rocket + Cloudflare *→* Cloudflare only *→* Nothing.
Well, technically, not nothing. I'm using Pressable's built-in cache management, which is superb.
Kyle Faber
Kyle Faber
Dec 4, 2024, 6:40 PM
Yeah, I just use perfmatters for resource loading management, some lazy load stuff, etc. The rest is just kinsta base plan, which has great caching and cloudflare built in.
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Dec 4, 2024, 8:00 PM
With cloudflare is great if you can make the site nearly completely static and edge cache it. That will fix most WP related issues other than extra scripts, etc.
David Schargel
David Schargel
Dec 5, 2024, 1:12 AM
You know me. I'm going to give you a in-depth answer to a simple question. ????
If it's a high volume site you want to minimize the hits on the database through an object cache combined with a page cache. Great hosts will use redis for both. Also, for high traffic website that are delivering video (an you should almost always deliver video on-page, but not on-site), you should take advantage of various services on Google Cloud, Azure, or, my preference, AWS CloudFront.
If the users are geographically diverse, then you can use a higher end paid Cloudflare plan (as the free plan is not a true edge CDN but rather a pull-based temporarily distributed caching reverse proxy - say that 3 times), or use a true CDN with being on the lower side of the paid spectrum. There is a free "CDN Enabler by KeyCDN" plugin that allows you to connect with pretty much any CDN. I take advantage of a feature within paid Perfmatters instead of that plugin.
Most of the high-end or well configured hosts (like WP Engine, Kinsta, Pressible, Excess, and Pantheon to name a few) have multiple levels of caching built-in so there is effectively no need for any plugins. Bonus...great hosts eliminate the need for a lot of security add-ons which often further slow down websites. The only real security plugin that is needed is something that gives you 2FA. (Okay, maybe PatchStack for those who are not quick to do updates.)
If your site is low or medium volume and you are looking for a free solution, then I suggest the Cache Enabler plugin (version 1.4.9 specifically) together with some cache inclusions that I can provide if anybody goes that route. It makes static HTML files of frontend pages that are ready to be served up. You can run the site through Screaming Frog SEO and it will prime the cache by making all the pages ready to go.
If you inherited a site with crazy huge images (or still have users uploading from their phone), then using an adaptive and/or responsive image delivery system like Polish from Cloudflare (no plugin) or ShortPixel Adaptive Images or their new FastPixel service which I have not used.
Also, has a streaming platform so you can serve videos transcoded to the target platform as well. Sadly, their video player does not do video schema well so I would add on something like PrestoPlayer, which also has reasonable accessibility to boot. PrestoPlayer also serves up from other video platforms, including YouTube without allowing the user to click out.
In the end, I still strongly recommend perfmatters as it does a whole bunch of other things that will help out page speed. It's not a panacea against heavy pages or poor hosting, but it's a low hanging boost to mobile and desktop PageSpeed scores.
tl;dr: Get a better host. High volume sites should use different features within redis. Lower volume sites should use CacheEnabler 1.4.9 plugin. Add in a true CDN plus image processing if you are serving up images, videos, or have diverse geographic location needs.
Renee Bigelow
Renee Bigelow
Dec 5, 2024, 8:00 AM
Thank you. Fairly certain it’s a low volume site, but as I mentioned in the room. The site didn’t have any analytics tracking either. It’s a local/regional business too. (First one I have had as a client in a long time.) will install Perfmatters and go for the low hanging fruit. It’s got a passing score on desktop so hopefully that will help us get across the line for mobile.
Anne Hennegar
Anne Hennegar
Dec 5, 2024, 8:22 AM
The Admin Bar YouTube channel has a number of webinars with Brian Jackson on how to use Perfmatters.
Get your sites running at top speeds with our favorite optimization plugin, Perfmatters!
David Schargel
David Schargel
Dec 5, 2024, 9:17 AM
Those videos are great and will get you deeper quickly. Also, you want to use two other more recent features within "Local Google Fonts": Display Swap & Limit Subsets.
Boris Kuslitskiy
Boris Kuslitskiy
Dec 5, 2024, 10:27 AM
Another bit of advice here: start with the server hosting. Its own caching solutions are going to be operating at a lower level than whatever WP does. And, more importantly, they might be interfering (even by default) with whatever WP is doing. So look at those first and then fill in the gaps with WP plug-ins. Also check to see if your hosting solution has its own WP plug-in for easier management.
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Dec 5, 2024, 10:52 AM
Yeah, if you can fix this from infrastructure forward, that's the best way long term. Everything else is a bandaid layer, but sometimes a quick tourniquet is what you need first.
Boris Kuslitskiy
Boris Kuslitskiy
Dec 5, 2024, 10:55 AM
I mean, it might have a good, free solution that's already available and easy to implement.
Mika Lepistö
Mika Lepistö
Dec 5, 2024, 10:57 AM
Very good point to check for that.
Arnout Hellemans
Arnout Hellemans
Dec 6, 2024, 1:30 PM
Ohhh @Renee Bigelow I'm a big fan of using the litespeed plugin combined with a free Cloudflare and quick.cloud account. Completely free image optimisation, caching, combining of js / css and pushing the caching to Cloudflare. Especially for smaller sites an ideal setup.

Our Values

What we believe in

Building friendships

Kindness

Giving

Elevating others

Creating Signal

Discussing ideas respectfully

What has no home here

Diminishing others

Gatekeeping

Taking without giving back

Spamming others

Arguing

Selling links and guest posts


Sign up for our Newsletter

Join our mailing list for updates

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. We may send you occasional newsletters and promotional emails about our products and services. You can opt-out at any time.

Apply now to join our amazing community.

Powered by MODXModx Logo
the blazing fast + secure open source CMS.