Currently I am doing a lot of work behind the scenes on the website to optimize it for the future I want for it. As I said in a previous post I want big things to happen with this website but before I continue on that journey I want a solid base to work on.
What is that solid base? That solid base is the plugins that I need for the website to function and the theme that I want to use for the website but also general configuration and speed.
That speed is a big part of the story however the speed of a WordPress website comes pretty much down to the other parts of what I call the solid base. Now I am no WordPress expert but I gave myself a task to at least score 90 on the performance tests available on the web considering the noob that I am in the vast ecosystem of WordPress I would think that would be achievable.
Well after tweaking the settings, removing every plugin from the website and installing only what I really needed I am happy to report a score of 100 on the performance tests on the web. Now of course this doesn’t mean a lot the website isn’t filled yet as much as I want it to be but still a great achievement.
Now what did I do to make this happen. Keep in mind that this can vary depending on your setup of your (shared) host. And as I am using a shared host the most things I could do are plugins and settings. So that’s what I did and here is the list.
– I removed the Emoji support from WordPress (sadlife)
– Installed a caching plugin to handle my mostly static pages anyway, WP Fastest Cache is great
– Removed most of my plugins that I did not deem ‘required’
– Disabled Gravatar support as it increased the website response time even tho I didn’t use it
– Get a theme that is light and only use what you deem required for the website and nothing more
Those were for me the main changes I made to the website but as I said I am no WordPress expert.
I am continuing to better the website and if any major things do appear expect a little post about it.
Also here the results of the Performance test I did online:
https://tools.pingdom.com/#!/ehJIHp/perplexity.nl