MainWP Blog - Sebastian Moran

Now is the time of the year to clean up WordPress site for better performance and security. One of the easiest ways would be to remove unused plugins and themes. It is very easy for a site to have several inactive plugins on it. This could happen when plugins have been replaced with better-coded plugins, but the original plugins were not deleted on the site. Also if you have been testing plugins on a site for a specific feature but Continue reading the post...

Improving your site server’s Time to First Byte (TTFB) is key to fast a performant site. A slow TTFB will cause site users to experience a blank screen whilst the site then loads. Expected server TTFB times would be between 200 and 500 milliseconds. Some of the reasons why the TTFB could be over 500 milliseconds can be down to a high load on the site server, server infrastructure issues, and high latencies between DNS servers. TTFB slower than 1 Continue reading the post...

One of the most commonly known tool for website performance testing is GTmetrix but it allows only one location, Vancouver in Canada, to test from. To access more testing locations, you need to create an account so that you can select a testing location that is nearest to your targeted audience. The free plan includes seven locations but with the Pro plan, you have access to another fifteen test locations to select from. All of the covered performance test site Continue reading the post...

Being in the industry for nearly two decades, WordPress still does not allow SVG files to upload directly due to security reasons. However, there are several ways to upload SVG files to your WordPress websites. The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format is commonly used for site logos and other vector-based graphic files. SVG files can be rendered at any size, making them an excellent option for your site. A well-optimized SVG file will be smaller than using a PNG Continue reading the post...

If a client site is already using the Simple History plugin for activity logging then it can be possible that the plugin is causing some database bloat. The activity log retention time for the Simple History plugin is 60 days, and this limit can not be changed. In most cases when the plugin is deactivated and deleted then it should automatically remove the custom database tables it uses. Simple History Plugin for WordPress The Simple History plugin stores the activity Continue reading the post...

With Spring coming up sooner than you would think now is a good time to make sure that your site’s database has been optimized. One of the newest plugins for database optimization is called SweepPress. The plugin uses SQL-optimized queries to find the data in the site’s database and then remove it. The free version of the SweepPress plugin supports the following database optimization options; Posts: Auto Drafts Posts: Spam Content Posts: Trashed Content Posts: Posts Revisions Posts: Posts Orphaned Continue reading the post...

With the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks leveled at sites and hosting providers, it is essential to know how to protect your site. DDoS could be explained as a method an attacker uses to target multiple host servers or a specific site server by sending more data than it can respond. During a DDoS attack, bandwidth can be very heavily increased on the site server since it will consume all incoming and outgoing bandwidth. If the DDoS attack is Continue reading the post...

WordPress plugins do have a habit of adding admin notices and upsells that can be hard to dismiss and then they end up taking up much of the content space when in wp-admin. There is a new plugin that treats admin notifications in wp-admin like an ad blocker and it is called Clarity. Clarity Plugin Installation The Clarity plugin has no settings or configuration needed for it to work it will remove upsells and admin notifications from active plugins on Continue reading the post...

If you are focused on making sure that your site is loading as fast as possible it is important to watch for slow POST admin-ajax.php requests being made on your site. Two tools to use for testing the front-end performance of the site would be GTmetrix and WebPageTest. Looking in the tested sites waterfall for slow requests will show you if one of the active plugins on the site is using admin-ajax.php for a function. An example would be if Continue reading the post...

When you are testing your site’s front-end performance using an online tool such as GTmetrix or WebPageTest you will notice the 3rd party domains that are being connected to on the site. One way to improve the front-end performance for site visitors is to set 3rd party domains to be preconnected by the visitor’s browser. Third-party domains that are worth setting as being preconnected to would be CDNs, Image CDN, Web font-s, Facebook Connect, Google Analytics, etc. Picking the most Continue reading the post...