Search Results for: speed

…if you’re a noob. There’s a reason why TONS of experts tell you to ignore page scores! I wrote my own guide as well: Why Google Pagespeed, Pingdom, and GTmetrix scores don’t matter And don’t take my word for it…read from other respected experts: Chasing the Perfect Rainbow  – WordPress Speed Up Facebook group Speed Performance Grades don’t matter – Freelancer tools 5 Speed Optimization Myths – WP Rocket Fuck Pagespeed – Glueckpress Do Not Use Google Pagespeed Insights – WPFixIt Are you educated yet? If so, you may continue. Common Google Pagespeed Insights optimizations…

…most. LiteSpeed Enterprise (paid version) is maybe 3-5% faster at most. If even that. And sometimes, I swear NGINX is faster. However… LiteSpeed can do many things that produce faster end result in real-world use. Caching dynamic requests, security features (that decrease resource drain from DDOS attacks), and more. What’s the real benefit of LiteSpeed/OpenLiteSpeed over NGINX? The #1 reason for me is the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin (compatible with only LS/OLS servers). It’s a freaken amazing plugin with dozens of performance features to speed up your site in so many ways. This plugin alone…

CDN’s are becoming all the rage nowadays ever since CloudFlare offered their free plan. But now, there are all kinds of micro-CDN’s popping up everywhere. Each with a different set of pricing and services. I won’t go over the differences…all I care about is speed, reliability (HIT frequency), coverage, and ease-of-use. Here’s a list of CDN’s I’ve experienced and my thoughts on each: Akamai – fast, but expensive. Amazon (CloudFront) – annoying name with same initials as CloudFlare. Fast and works well! I use it for loading large files (videos) from S3 buckets. BunnyCDN –…

…need (CPU/RAM/HD/etc). Some companies have better hardware and reputation than others and charge more for the same resources. Fast speed – although speed is dependent on your configuration and systems administration skills, expert sys-admins can get much more performance. Slow speed – dishonest providers may not give you dedicated resources, and your servers run slow because your supposed “dedicated resources” are still being shared with other clients on the server. This is especially the case with many managed VPS providers. (Why Are MANAGED VPS Servers So Slow?) Inexpensive – you can serve as many visitors…

Welcome to the new era where cloud-caching goes mainstream (vs server-caching). What is NitroPack? What does it do? And why do people rave about it so much? How does it help speed up sites and improve page scores? And more importantly (for my fans), does Johnny like it? Where should I start first? The good or the bad? Ok…let’s start with the GOOD! NitroPack features: 1. It really does speed up sites. The sites feel fast. Most of the time, instant load upon a single click. Then again, it IS a caching plugin/service and this…

Load Google Analytics faster on WordPress! If you’ve ever been addicted to speed-testing your site on Pingdom/GTmetrix, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. That GA JS request lags your site costing you an extra 100ms-2seconds of load time. Below are my favorite methods to prevent the Google Analytics JS from slowing down your site. Here’s how to speed up that annoying Google Analytics javascript on WordPress:   Why Speed Up GA Script Load? How important is it to speed up the GA script? Most of us are only thinking about it because we…

These clients will NEVER reach their dream website speeds for these reasons: 1. LOW BUDGET They have a $200 budget, using tons of crappy bloated plugins running off a crappy $5 shared hosting plan. But they want their site to be as fast as their competitor’s site…which was professionally built for $5-10k, has a custom theme, and much faster webhosting plan. 2. NO COMPROMISE They tell me they “absolutely need results!” but when I tell them exactly what’s causing the biggest slowdowns. They come back with “but I can’t get rid of that…can’t we do…

…be for subdomain as well if it leads to a website. Don’t enable proxy for your control panel or anything that points to an external server. SSL/TLS > SSL – set to “Full”. SSL/TLS > Always Use HTTPS – ON. Automatic HTTPS Rewrites – ON, unless you have some things that still need HTTP. Speed > Auto Minify – check all 3 (JS, CSS, HTML). Speed > Brotli – ON. Speed > Rocket Loader – leave it OFF. DETAILED Cloudflare settings guide Overview: Under Attack Mode – usually off. Only enable if you’re getting hacked…

LiteSpeed Cache BEATS Varnish…EASILY! I am by no means an “expert” sys admin or dev ops but after dealing with both for low-load and high-load servers, I will say LiteSpeed cache feels better. Here’s why…   REASON #1 – LiteSpeed Cache is easier to use BOOM! Done. I could just walk out right now with that statement alone. LiteSpeed cache is just flat out easier to implement, easier to configure. I have to give a huge shoutout to their on an incredible product. And btw, kudos to the Varnish team as well for setting the…

…remodeling your whole kitchen. Comparing LiteSpeed to NGINX For a someone wanting to host just websites and custom-written applications, NGINX was favored for its performance and free-cost. The performance difference between NGINX and LiteSpeed was comparable. If I had to guess, NGINX probably had the edge. But for someone wanting to host software specifically written for Apache (which was many web software at the time), LiteSpeed was the only easy option if you wanted higher performance. Either switch out Apache for LiteSpeed and you get to keep your software…or get NGINX and you may have…

After moving nearly a dozen WordPress speed-up clients away from “managed VPS” hosting services this past month, I’ve decided it’s time to state loud and clear: MANAGED VPS sucks! It’s slow as hell and way over-priced! And don’t think I’ve haven’t tried them all! A2 MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80-160/month) InMotion MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80/month) LiquidWeb MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80/month) And a dozen smaller lesser known ones as well. Let me tell you all the reasons why they “suck”. Managed VPS Hosting is Usually SLOW! “But how can this be?!” you ask. Or the ever popular,…

…stack is generally good performance, although not the fastest VPS. (Apache with Nginx/Varnish as reverse proxy, pre-configured VCL and custom setup for maximum speed. Also perfect with their proprietary Breeze Cache plugin.) Most people coming from shared hosting will appreciate the speed boost. Apache & NGINX is not my favorite – but it works well and htaccess-compatible. It’s a great solution for people coming from shared hosting. Other hosts may be faster but harder to configure if you’re coming from typical shared hosting with cPanel. Lighter websites will feel like Cloudways is fast. Heavier sites…

…firewall features (security) – if you pay more, they give you extra security like protection against DDOS layer 7 attacks. Most people don’t really need this level of protection. Common questions about Cloudflare services: So all I need is the FREE plan? It’s not worth it to pay more? Exactly, the FREE Cloudflare plan is enough. You can pay more but you probably won’t notice any difference. I’m as much of a speed fanatic as any and I don’t use Cloudflare’s paid plans. How does Cloudflare help speed up websites and servers? It speeds up…

…client’s name). What if i wanted to quickly migrate the entire server to another physical node? Or backup the entire server all once? Or how about to restore the entire server from a backup? Trust me…you will see a clear separation right away. Speed & productivity: cPanel has decent speed in every sense of the word. Things load fast. The server loads fast. I get so many things done faster in cPanel than with any other panel. One argument against cPanel used to be that it was “slow”. That it either slowed down servers (too…

…brand name. You can manage 1 server for only $6/month, and unlimited servers for $12/month. FAST – RC stack performance is on par with all the fastest cloud panels out there. Of course they all advertise that they’re faster than each other but really the best ones are all the same speed. Maybe 2% difference, tops. LITESPEED SERVER – it’s widely known that I’m the biggest fan of LiteSpeed servers, great performance and comes with my favorite cache plugin (LiteSpeed Cache). So obviously, I love that RC has OpenLiteSpeed (and being one of the few…

…coming from say, RunCloud, you’ll think CloudPages is right on par. Very similar feature-set to other managed cloud panels. Features are more or less the same. Prices are more or less the same as other managed cloud panels out there. But of course…there ARE things that set CloudPages aside from the rest…so let’s talk about that next. (No more wasting time listing features everybody has!) CloudPages (differences) vs other managed panels 1. LiteSpeed server CloudPages offers LiteSpeed server! My favorite freaken web-server. High performance and compatible with LiteSpeed Cache plugin. Which is my favorite cache…

Shared hosting is back! I bought into SiteGround as a total skeptic. I weaned myself off of shared hosting 8 years ago. But I came back because I heard great things and figured it was a lot easier to have a nice $12/month shared hosting plan with cPanel, staging, SSL, and all the little goodies than to manage my own micro-VPS at that price point. The speed, uptime, and support have been fantastic. I’m enjoying shared hosting again thanks to siteground and happy for the 10 months I’ve been with them. Great speed, uptime, convenience,…

…of caching needs ram. The fastest type (static page caching) needs only fast disk space which is perfect for the SSD-era that we live in now. Apache has htaccess compatibility – this is nice for folks migrating over from shared hosting and not yet comfortable with NGINX commands and don’t have a sys-admin around to help them. Apache can be easily replaced by LiteSpeed – LiteSpeed works faster while using less resources (like NGINX), has built-in caching mechanism, and also htaccess compatible. Apache uses more resources than NGINX – but it’s only a bit more,…

What’s a content delivery network and why do you need (or don’t need) it? I’ll cover the basics of what it is, how it’s used, and how it may benefit or impede your website. I also explain the difference of traditional CDN’s which were made for speed and the confusing Cloudflare service which is a DNS-caching service that does similar things as traditional CDN but also provides extra security and DNS management. https://youtu.be/2G5eLA2whVo What’s a CDN? Content delivery networks are service providers that clone your website files to their servers, in order to serve them…

People keep asking me how I feel about WP Engine… …and what comes to mind is: slow limited over-priced I’m not the only person complaining either. Here’s my full breakdown on things they should improve: 1. Slow performance Slow page load speed. Slow processing for heavy sites. For all the hoopla about them being a high-performance host, I don’t consider them to be very fast. Dare I say it, I think they’re “the GoDaddy of performance-hosting”. If you want a faster host in the same tier, go Kinsta. It annoys me to no end that…

Managed WordPress hosting seem to be all the rage nowadays but are they the best webhosting option for you?! Let’s compare their advantages and disadvantages against other popular webhosting options like: Shared hosting Managed control panel VPS hosting Dedicated server   PROS of Managed WordPress Hosting WordPress-specific – friendly UI and support specifically catered to WordPress. This is refreshing compared to those old-school cluttered webhosting panels full of options you never use. Good performance – much faster pageload speeds for frontend users and also backend admins. Many of them come with server-side caching already enabled…

…rank higher on Google and that’s not true. Tons of top-ranked sites are slow as heck. Google penalizes you for being very slow, they don’t reward you for being fast. They also don’t penalize you for being a little slower than your competitors. HOWEVER….your site speed will affect your user experience and that certainly affects Google rankings somewhat. If your site is so slow that users leave often or don’t click through as many pages, that will reflect on your SEO a little bit. Ultimately…site speed affects user experience and sales, more so than SEO….

…single physical host—and for very good reason! Clustering really isn’t a speed optimization but a load-balancing optimization…or I would also say, a “load mitigation” mechanism. It doesn’t speed you up. It just prevents you from slowing down. Just like how having more cash registers at the grocery store only means less wait time in the checkout line…but the actual transaction time of your checkout will remain the same. Even more so is the potential conflict of interest in the PAY-PER-USE business model. How do I know a company billing by resources used will always optimize…

I think the same about it as I did with the previous Google Pagespeed Insights. Has some useful metrics to help you optimize your site for performance, SEO, performance, accessibility, and proper coding standards. But also has some misleading or inaccurate metrics. Not a helpful overall context of asset load and what things are going right. Try measuring your site at https://web.dev/measure/ and let’s go over what we see. Overall, I’m not a fan. This is the Web Vitals report for wpjohnny.com If you like it and it helps you, by all means keep using…

…this firewall function on a separate server. This separated firewall function was run from a firewall proxy device (could be an actual server or a network switch with firewall capabilities) and sit right in front of their web-server. The advantages are having dedicated resources for handling firewalls. The disadvantage is extra cost, management, and speed impact (having more proxies will slow down request-processing times.) The largest companies or those with extremely specialized demands may go with a paid “firewall service” from a big company like Sucuri. They are similar to the firewall proxy idea except…

…from Linode and was happy with that for a couple months. But then it became a pain to manage. Every little thing required an email requests to my sys admin. Creating emails, cron jobs, upgrading PHP, changing php settings, setting up SSL (such a pain!), setting up emails even! The $10 server was great in terms of speed and functionality but a hassle to manage. Some friends told me they loved SiteGround’s $11.95 GoGeek plan because it was a nice server that wasn’t oversold. I tried it for several months and found it to be…

Yes, you should definitely use object caching for your webserver…especially for dynamic page generation. It speeds things up incredibly and can do wonders for page speed performance. Redis and memcache are more or less interchangeable. Redis is considered the newer/faster option but real world performance hasn’t always reflected that sentiment. I naturally would try Redis first and see if it’s super fast, no weird issues. If Redis isn’t totally smooth, go straight to memcache. (Or for a totally hassle-free option, just go memcache first.) And then if you want to venture further, go with APCu….

…seconds or more to load. Ok fine, so pick a new webhost. But now we have the new big players like SiteGround, CloudWays, or the new premium hosts like WPengine, FlyWheel. Or how about your local tech guy’s webhosting company?   Well, it depends… Most webhosts specialize somewhere. Either they have great server performance and reliability, or great service, or great pricing. GREAT PERFORMANCE – these are systems engineers, with lots of experience in server configuration. Is your contact a speed specialist with lots of experiencing tweaking different servers? Do you have an established site…

…IMO. Speed: RunCloud – is fast. But can be faster once you setup RunCloud Hub caching. GridPane – is slightly faster! Right away with just blank default installs….comparing RC-NGINX to GP-NGINX, I could see that GridPane was clearly faster. I was shocked about RunCloud’s performance to be honest; I was expecting more from their NGINX-only stack. Sure, I could have done more testing and tried more complicated configurations but that was enough for me. Do note that GridPane’s stack has caching activated right off the bat whereas RunCloud doesn’t. GridPane’s stack has way more load…

I’ll give a quick rundown on these 2 managed panel hosting services and how they compare for developer-grade clients. Speed, features, pricing, ease-of-use. What I like and dislike about both. We’ll go over all that. Cloudways vs Runcloud – hosting comparison Ease-of-use for noobs (CW) – they have support and easy to set up without touching the CLI. Ease-of-use for devs (RC) – clean UI where you don’t get lost between server vs application settings. I think the one thing that kills their ease-of-use here is having to connect the server to RC. Non-techies will…

Cloudflare’s Argo feature claims: Speed up average network latency by 35%. Decrease connection errors by 27%. Let’s see how much of a difference that even makes! About network latency and connection errors Network latency is just the DNS part of your pageload time. It’s only a sliver of the actual pageload process. Usually there are multiple steps, the DNS connection, the SSL handshake, the WAIT for the request, then the DOWNLOAD. I wasn’t so exact but it’s pretty much that. So this Argo stuff only speeds up one tiny aspect of your page load. Connection…

…that initial visit. Your total CSS is so small that splitting it into more parts slows down your site (adding extra HTTP requests) without actually producing perceived faster render times. You have so much critical CSS that the added complexity doesn’t give you any noticeable speed increases. CSS should be render-blocking! I’m sick of newbies trying to deploy CSS optimization tactics (like CSS combination/merge or critical CSS)! Let’s get this straight -> CSS by nature is supposed to be “render-blocking”. It has to be so that you don’t get FOUT/FOUC issues. (Flash-of-unstyled-text or flash-of-unstyled-content is…

…don’t know how they did it but the project was so perfect. Things look nice and work well (really great user interface catering perfectly to current trends). I’ve had very little issues setting things up and figuring out how it worked, even though I never used it before. It’s clean, it’s simple. It’s lightweight, thanks to it being created just recently. And best of all, it works with my favorite web server (LiteSpeed!). Oh and that’s not all…CyberPanel with OpenLiteSpeed is TOTALLY FREE! Yes, free! Free even for unlimited accounts and websites! YES, I AM…

…domains work? – ServerFault (read the recent answers) But here’s why you don’t gotta worry about any of these cookie domain stuff. Modern browsers allow you to set cookies specifically for bare domain. Most people don’t share cookies between sites anyway. End of story. It’s a non-issue. This whole guide was a total waste of time. My verdict – stick without the WWW Use the bare domain! Looks better. No speed issues. No DNS hassles. No weird cookie issues between bare domain and subdomains. Any technical inconveniences that you might have had from a bare…

…style of configuring for client sites. Some admins like to optimize a certain way, using more memory to boost speed but others prefer to save memory and optimize by closing connections sooner. Some admins like absolute lockdown security, others like it more open (not to annoy real visitors) and then manually ban as needed. It really depends on your style of server management. Is this YOUR server that you’ll be in everyday? Or for a client that you want to be more hands-off? As with anything…overly aggressive or “strict” settings will require more manual tuning…

…(or sites) gets too big for one server or maybe you have so much traffic that one server can’t handle it, then it’s time for a server cluster. See image below. It’s an overly simplified diagram but basically shows how services are split out onto different servers. You have one as the load balancer (like a traffic conductor) deciding which of the 2 web servers to send visitors to. The web servers don’t even hold the database, it’s stored on two separate database servers. Each of them have a copy of the database thereby speeding…

…in about 8 seconds. WPCloudDeploy is the webhosting industry’s 1st true WHITE-LABELING solution It was immediately what came to mind the moment I tried it out. Forget about how the product sells itself. Forget about the usual webhosting comparison criteria (speed, features, ease-of-use)…WPCD got my attention in a very different way! For me, this is easily it’s #1 feature. WPCD reminds you what white-labeling truly means! Most webhosting services and panels simply don’t allow (much) for whitelabeling. If you’re an agency reselling Cloudways or cPanel-based webhosting to your clients, you have very little control over…

…decrease file-size…just make sure the quality doesn’t get too ugly/grainy. Be careful about CDN. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t. 5. Use caching Seriously. Caching will improve your server response times, both human load times as well as page scores. And most caching plugins can also do CSS/JS optimizations that improve your score as well. The only catch is you have to know how to setup your cache plugin or else things could get real messy. 6. Hire a speed optimization expert A true professional will know exactly how to optimize your site for performance…

…request because your HTTP response header told it not to. Don’t allow the browser to use the computer’s microphone or camera. So again…in the event that your website is ever hacked, security headers basically protect your users (and their browsers) from inadvertently compromising themselves or executing malicious scripts/commands. Security headers do NOT protect your website or web-server from being hacked. How security headers are applied (or configured) to your website: Security headers are applied differently depending on your web-server (Apache/LiteSpeed vs NGINX). Basically…Apache/LiteSpeed allows global server-wide configuration as well individual overrides for each site (via…

…from your work. It’s good if you’re a newbie client and love having 50 new toys to click on in your hosting panel. The HA cPanel is truly loaded to the max. They got all the usual cPanel stuff AND (non-WordPress) script installers AND WordPress theme installers AND a proprietary site-cacher (it’s actually Memcache object cache). LiteSpeed web server & .htaccess LiteSpeed server is awesome and high performance. HTaccess feature is useful (and even necessary) for certain plugins. These things are nice to have and depending on your level of skill and type of us,…

…UI might appear “messy” compared to modern panels but it’s easy to use and arguably faster to use (since all features can be reached from the main page)…whereas other panels have more settings screens and tabs to click through. LiteSpeed/OpenLitespeed web server – depending on which options you choose. I love LiteSpeed because of its performance gains and compatibility with my favorite WordPress cache plugin (LiteSpeed Cache). Backups – daily scheduled backups. Free SSL – standard feature. SShield Cyber Security – not sure if this is their WAF or malware scanner or maybe both. But anyway, they have…