GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 27 - February 2014

of its resources, are the best option. They are somewhat expensive but are worth the price. Smaller websites may find that virtual private servers (VPS) offer a more afford- able alternative. On a VPS, the resourc- es of a virtual machine are shared with other tenants, but each is guaranteed a certain amount of resources. VPS is ba- sically the same as a dedicated server, but with a fraction (something like 10- 15 percent of a full server) of resources available. Prices differ, but a decent VPS can be yours for $20 per month. Make sure the VPS is fully managed, otherwise you’ll be expected to do server mainte- nance yourself. Don’t choose any plan which doesn’t state explicitly how much RAM you’re getting, because that’s a shared plan no matter what they call it. When it comes to a VPS, the question to ask is how much share of the specified CPU are you getting. Remove unused stuff Chances are, you’ve got tons of plugins and templates installed on your site. Get rid of the ones you aren’t using and the ones you can do without; they’re both a security risk and are adding to the loading time of the site. This is a very important aspect of speeding up a website, especially if it has been live for a long time and acts like a trash can for unused plugins. New sites can benefit as well, as they’re includ- ing a mix of plugins designed for gen- eral use, and many of those can safely be switched off or uninstalled without chang- ing site behavior. Fewer plugins mean less database work and a leaner website. Externally hosted content Affiliate banners are hosted on an exter- nal location, and the visitors are actually downloading them through your web- site with each page load. Since they’re in Flash, they’re slow, so a large number of banners on a page will definitely slow ev- erything down. The solution is to balance the number of banners on a page with the page loading time and the projected in- come. Are three banners from rival com- panies really necessary on the same page? Is a banner from a specific operator tak- ing too long to load? Could some of those banners be replaced by a PNG logo you’re hosting yourself? Could you replace a Flash banner with a GIF banner or just a static logo? Graphic content The number of images on a Web page and the size of the images play a role in the loading speed of a page, with the former being much more important as each new image adds another HTTP request (the number of times the signal is going back and forth between the user and the serv- er). Page size doesn’t matter that much, but it sure doesn’t hurt if images are opti- mized for type, size and quality. There are plugins that do the job for you, and the most popular one for WordPress is WP Smush.it, and it automatically op- timizes every new image you upload to your site. However, it doesn’t always work properly and you should avoid it. Use one of the online image optimization tools such as tools.dynamicdrive.com/ imageoptimizer. File type affects the image size and quali- ty, and different types are used for various purposes. As a rule of thumb, use JPG un- less you need transparency or high qual- ity, in which case you’ll choose a PNG. GIF is used for tiny images such as icons. Image size should reflect what the im- age size on the site will be. If you intend to display it to the user as 400x300, then the native image size should be ex- actly 400x300. Anything else, smaller or bigger, and the browser will be re- sizing it each and every time the page is loaded. Also, it doesn’t make sense to send a large image to the user, only to have it resized into a smaller one. Each image can be perfectly optimized with some advanced tricks but they offer minimal gain as the number of HTTP requests is more important than the image size. Focus on the number of images instead. Images are not just photos. The vast ma- jority of images on any given site are vari- ous small images used for the template, such as module borders, background tile, icons, logos, buttons, shadows, prog- ress bars, Facebook faces and the like. Everything that’s not text is most likely an image. While the problem with these small images can be resolved by creating CSS sprites, that’s a complicated thing to do properly. As a quick fix, avoid having too many images. Examine your website and understand that everything you see which is not pure text is an image in one form or another. Eliminate unneeded icons and remove the background. Always choose the same module (e.g., light) and try not to have many different types of template graphics on the same page. Landing pages Your homepage, and any landing page where you’re getting first-time visits, should be optimized for speed and us- ability. As a rule of thumb, don’t give your customers information they didn’t ask for. The homepage should be kept simple; if the user willingly clicks on a topic he’s interested in, then give him all you’ve got. He’s prepared to wait two seconds longer to get that information – because he asked. This concept is called encapsulation; you’re hiding the unnecessary/unwanted information from the user and therefore making the important information stand out. When it comes to landing pages, loading speed, simplicity and conversion potential boil down to pretty much the same thing. A simple encapsulated land- ing page will be fast and will have high conversion potential. Speed test A fresh WordPress install with full demo content, hosted on my dedicated server, loaded in 1.52 seconds from Europe ac- cording to tools.pingdom.com. It’s al- ready good because the site doesn’t have tons of plugins and because it’s hosted on a good server, but the performance can be even better. “Your homepage, and any particular landing page where you’re getting most first- time visits, should be optimized for speed and usability. As a rule of thumb, don’t give your customers information they didn’t ask for.” 36 Speed up your WordPress site