MainWP Blog - optimization

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...

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...

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...

Removing bloat that is being stored in your site’s database can help improve your site’s performance and it is worth taking the time to make sure that you perform database optimization weekly or at least monthly. If you have added tags on your posts or on products in WooCommerce in the past, then chances are high that there are some tags that you do not use anymore but they are still part of your site’s database. An easy plugin option Continue reading the post...

When you are auditing your WordPress website speed with the performance audit tools such as Lighthouse or GTmetrix, one of the most challenging recommendations that will show is to remove unused CSS that is being loaded on your WordPress site. There are several WordPress plugins that claim to remove unused CSS but many fail. Here are the two easy plugins to be able to remove unused CSS that is loading on your WordPress website. 1. Core Web Vitals & PageSpeed Continue reading the post...

Image optimization services and plugins are most commonly known on which ones work well. But it is not as common to know how to optimize site assets that happen to be PDF files. When normally creating a PDF or exporting a PDF that will be uploaded on your site the file will not be optimized and depending on the images or the number of pages that the PDF file is the file could be 14-30 MB in size. PDF files Continue reading the post...

The WP Meteor plugin is a very easy way to improve your site’s load time and it will help improve the site’s load time for site visitors. After the plugin has been installed and activated on your site it will add a new admin menu to; Settings > WP Meteor The plugin works by delaying the loading and firing of scripts until after the page is rendered. The WP Meteor plugin will help improve your Google PageSpeed score and the Continue reading the post...

One of the easiest ways to improve your Google Web Vitals site performance is to use the just out beta Jetpack Boost plugin on your site. After you have installed and activated the plugin it will add a new admin menu item called; Jetpack Boost In your order to use Jetpack Boost you will need to connect it to your WordPress.com account for making the Jetpack connection. After you have connected Jetpack Boost you will see what the performance results Continue reading the post...

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up very soon one of the easiest ways to improve the front-end load times on your sites is to make sure that all site images have been optimized. There is a pretty recent new service and plugin for WordPress called CompressWP. After you have installed and activated the plugin it will add a new menu called; CompressWP CompressWP will be able to optimize JPG and PNG images which are two of the most Continue reading the post...