How to Reduce DNS Lookup in WordPress
The speed and performance of your WP website play a significant role in the overall impression. In fact, it indicates how successful you are and how you care about your visitors. After all, your visitors aren’t going to like the long loading time of your website.
Due to the slow loading time, your site will reduce conversions along with tons of traffics. Even if it takes a few seconds more than the other side, some people will avoid your site entirely. That’s why a fast loading site bears higher chances of becoming more profitable and standing out amongst others.
Well, there are a bunch of things that can slow down your WordPress site. There can be several things that can be responsible for slowing your website down from too much traffic to too many photos and videos.
One the other hand, there is another thing that can slow down your site’s speed, remaining unnoticed most of the time. These are DNS (Domain Name System) lookups. Much like TTFB and network latency, it’s also an essential piece of the game that needs to be put on a correct position.
But the question is, how to reduce DNS in WordPress? What do you think is it going to cost you more and take the lion-share of your time?
Nah! It’s not; in fact, some simple and convenient steps can solve this problem permanently. Wanna learn? Okay, we’re gonna show you, but before we dive deep, let’s see what DNS actually is?
What is DNS Lookup?
In simple words, DNS (Domain Name System) is actually the bass of the internet. DNS lookup usually takes place when a visitor enters your website by searching your domain name on the internet.
Every domain is marked with an IP address. So, when anyone searches your website, it sends a request to the DNS, and then the server sends those requests back to the IP address.
Let’s make this clear with an example. When you type google.com in the address bar of your browser, the nameservers linked with that domain will be requested by your ISP. In this case, if you aren’t having any DNS, you’ve to type 216.58.212.110 (the IP address of google) to reach the site.
This method of translating and discovering which IP belongs to a website is the main purpose of DNS. This means a DNS lookup will have to look for every information provided by the domain before viewing or downloading any website’s resources through your browser.
But each DNS lookup takes more than one second to complete the entire process, and that’s around ten times longer than Google’s recommendation. This is the thing you should really be worried about.
What’s the Appropriate DNS Response Time?
The perfect answer to this question is 40ms. If a DNS lookup takes 40ms to load, then it’s acceptable. So, make sure to achieve that or try to make it better.
Every website is different from one another, so this time frame isn’t going to fit all of them. The timeframe can be extended or reduced based on the website.
As an example, if you’ve got local visitors and a small number of audiences, you can make the job done with the higher DNS lookup times. But if you’ve targeted a global audience and your website has a large number of traffics, you must reduce the DNS response time and make it under 40ms.
In order to test the DNS response time of your website, you can use different tools, namely Pingdom, BIND, etc.
But it’ll be better if you keep in mind that Pingdom shows the exact DNS response time through the first test. Your site remains cached in Pingdom after that, so from the second test, it may show you zero ms. Therefore, it’s recommended to follow the first test when you’re using Pingdom specifically.
Okay, now, let’s see how to reduce DNS lookups.
Methods for Reduce DNS lookup in WordPress?
There is basically 3 ways to reduce dns look up in wordpress. Such as:
- Preload
- Preconnect
- Prefetch
What is Preload?
Preloading is telling the browser to load the static resources earlier. Like JS, CSS and etc. You can use preload tag to your scripts or styles as relation and implement preloading method. Add this code to your functions.php to add preload in your WordPress website
function add_rel_preload($html, $handle, $href, $media) {
if (is_admin())
return $html;
$html = <<<EOT
<link rel='preload' as='style' onload="this.onload=null;this.rel='stylesheet'" id='$handle' href='$href' type='text/css' media='all' />
EOT;
return $html;
}
add_filter( 'style_loader_tag', 'add_rel_preload', 10, 4 );What is Preconnect?
Preconnect is something you load from other domains not your files. Like google analytics. You are loading google analytics from google’s cdn. So you have to add preconnect relation in script tag. This will boost dns lookup reduce.
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://anothersite.com">What is Prefetch?
The latency of DNS lookups can also be reduced by running a DNS prefetching process in the background.
It’s way more essential for Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Font Awesome, and much more.
So, if you’re willing to enable DNS prefetching on your website, just copy and paste the following codes:
<!-- DNS Prefetching -->
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//asset1.com">
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//asset2.com">
Make sure to replace the “asset1 and asset2.com” with your appropriate URLs. You can repeat the lines according to your needs and requirements.
What domain name to prefetch?
Now you know what is DNS prefetch and how to configure DNS prefetch in WordPress. Now question is how do you know what domain names you need to prefetch?
Well in that case, take the list of domains or use tools such as Pingdom to figure out what domain name you need to prefetch. Head over to Pingdom, enter your website and run the test.
How to Reduce DNS in WordPress?
So, have you tested your site? After the test, if you find that the DNS lookups time is longer than it should then follow these simple steps to resolve the issue:
Tip 1 – Use CDN or a Speedy DNS provider
There are several DNS providers out there, similar to the hosting companies. Some of the domain registers provide this DNS service for free. But a question remains about its reliability. After all, the quality varies with different providers, so you’ve to ensure a perfect one first.
Anyway, if you manage to find a reliable DNS provider, switch to them without any delay. It’ll help you to reduce DNS lookups. You can check the speed of your providers by using DNSPerf or DNS Speed Test.
In this case, some reliable CDNs (content delivery network) like Cloudflare, also works great for reducing DNS lookups.
A CDN is one type of connection between the browser and the website that serves as an intermediary. It uses a network of high-performance servers instead of just one available with usual hosting plans.
In addition to that, you can also use it to cache your website’s content. With the advantage of that, you’ll be able to optimize your WordPress site’s performance and improve its loading speed.
Tip 2 – DNS Caching and Its Advantages
Actually, this process is close to caching your WordPress site. You can use DNS caching to minimize the amount of DNS lookups. It’ll reduce the number of additional lookups for every corresponding page load.
Well, the settings of DNS caching can be achieved by adjusting the DNS record’s TTL (time to live) values. The TTL value indicates the length of the DNS cache. The higher TTL will lower the chance of another DNS scanning through the browser.
But this method may not suit all types of setups. For example, if the MX records of your website are set at higher values, it won’t allow you to receive the emails as quickly as needed. If this creates an obstacle for your business, then make sure to set the value lower than 12 hours.
Tip 3 – Enable Keep-Alive
Enabling Keep-alive is also an effective way to reduce DNS lookups. It establishes an active connection between the server and browser to reduce the load times.
Without the keep alive setups, there will be separated requests for different resources files, which extends the load time even though all the resources are in a single domain.
But when you’ve enabled keep-alive, all these files will be loaded within two requests only. Thus, the additional times will be saved, and the users will get a fast browsing experience.
Most of the browser supports keep-alive, and it’s found to be enabled by default. But if it’s not enabled, you can check out our article for proper guidance on how to enable Keep-Alive in WordPress site.
Tip 4 – Relocate to Use Fewer Hostnames
Once you’ve activated keep-alive, you can merge or relocate as many services as possible under fewer hostnames.
You may not be able to combine everything under one hostname, indeed. But still, you’ll be able to relocate some of them, like stylesheets and more.
Tip 5 – Using Plugin
This is an advance technique for speed optimization. That’s why most of the speed optimization plugins doesn’t offer this feature as free in their’s free version. But I found two free plugins these are really effective for reducing DNS lookup. They are:
Wrapping Up
A fast loading website has greater benefits. It not only provides the users with their desired browsing experience, but it also benefits your SEO rankings. Even it also reduces the bounce rates of your website.
According to Google, around 45% of visitors never return to sites that take longer time to load. This means if your site is having this issue, you’re surely losing tons of visitors, especially the one who loves your content.
That’s why you must pay proper attention and solve every single aspect responsible for extending your site’s loading time. So, you can’t also ignore DNS lookups. So, how to reduce DNS in WordPress? Is it clear to you now? Hope the above guidelines will be helpful for you to clear the facts. If you still got any questions, feel free to comment on us below.
How to Enable Keep-Alive in WordPress
Well, most of the time, Keep-Alive gets automatically enabled on the web servers. But in some cases, you’ve to do that manually. In order to activate the keep alive, you have to add the following code to the HTTP header in your server.
“Connection: Keep-Alive”
You can also do that by using .htaccess in WordPress or by editing the configuration file of your Apache/ NGINX servers.
In fact, there are several other ways to enable Keep-Alive in WordPress. Wanna learn how to do that? Come with us, and let’s provide you with some best practices to Enable Keep-Alive in WordPress. But first of all, let’s see what actually Keep-Alive Is? And how it works?
What is Keep-Alive?
Keep-Alive is a method for enabling a TCP link to access several server-to-web files instead of generating new links on each specific request. Keep-Alive is also called a persistent HTTP connection.
As your visitor’s browser just needs to open one persistent HTTP connection instead of multiple connections, the browsing speed will increase significantly.
Okay, now let’s see how it actually works!!
How Does Keep-Alive Work?
Probably, you’re familiar with the connection and the coordination process between the browser and the server. Okay, let’s make this more clear for you.
A connection between the server and browser is established when you visit a website. At the same time, the browser asks the server to access a particular file, and the server allows it to the browser.
Thus, your browser will start downloading the file. This cycle repeats for the second file, and the process goes on.
Suppose that your web server needs ten files to display a particular webpage. In this case, the browsers have to build ten different links for each download and ask OK to view each file one by one.
But when you’ve enabled Keep-Alive, the browser can accomplish this entire task with a single connection. The browsers will be able to use this connection and access all the files with a single OK from the server. As the number of requests reduces, the server load gets decreases too. Consequently, the page loading speed of your site will improve considerably.
How to Enable Keep-Alive in WordPress
Your page-loading speed bears the utmost importance for several factors, either you’re an owner of a blog or a website. With the simple techniques of enabling Keep-Alive in WordPress, you can boost your webpage and its loading speed.
But before using any methods, it’s recommended to check your webpage if Keep-Alive is already enabled or not. It’s because many renowned Hosting Companies provide Keep-Alive by default.
Whatever, if the Keep-Alive isn’t enabled, then add this following code .htaccess file.
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Connection keep-alive
</ifModule>
Find out the last line of your .htaccess file and add this code in it. It’ll enable Keep-Alive by adding the Keep-Alive HTTP headers.
In some cases, the .htaccess didn’t is unlocated because it wasn’t created automatically with the installation of WordPress. Then you’ve to create one by yourself.
Enabling Keep-Alive in Apache
Apache servers are usually enabled with Keep-Alive. But if it isn’t for yours, find the Apache HTTP server configuration file.
You can get them from here- /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Once you’ve found the file write the code below
# Set it On to enable Keep-Alive, Off to disable Keep-Alive KeepAlive On # Set maximum requests per connection, set 0 for unlimited request, 100 request per connection is ideal MaxKeepAliveRequests 100 # Set per connection timeout for next request KeepAliveTimeout 15
Enabling Keep-Alive in NGINX
NGINX servers also come with Keep-Alive enabled by default. But if it’s not, check for the same files by locating ‘keepalive_disable’ in NGINX core module (ngx_http_core_module).
Conclusion
So, do your website is Keep-Alive enabled or not. If you aren’t sure, make sure to check it. However, if it’s not, then follow the above methods to enable Keep-Alive and make your webpages faster than ever. Hope the above guide will be useful for you.
If you love our tutorial then you will love our support. For any kind of speed optimization feel free to contact us!
How to Avoid a Bad Request in WordPress
What is Bad Request?
The resources of your website will eventually be moved or deleted with its changes over time. But when these deleted files are created once again by malformation of different resources or by the click of a user, that’s what actually a bad request is.
In simple words, a bad request usually takes place when an unlocated file or malformed resource is created or clicked on by separate users.
Look, if it were a conversion between your browser and server, it would look something like this: –
Browser- “I need this file.” Server- “I don’t have this image.” Browser- “Sure? According to this document, you’ve it.” Server- “Well, I don’t.”
Honestly, these types of requests create a great hassle for the users. Moreover, it maximizes the page loading time.
Let’s make this clear with an example. If an HTML page is launching a CSS file that has changed its path, the server will require an additional round trip and fetch the resources and locate the unspecified location.
It happens more than you think and mostly when you’re about to make some changes to your website from a saved template. Your CSS will ask for something unusual that you haven’t used at all. Haven’t you faced that?
What is the 404-error message?
We are all familiar with the 404-error page, right? This is also a contribution of a Bad Request, which takes the user to 404 or not found error page.
Actually, this is a standard HTTP response code which shows that the client was connected with the server, but the server couldn’t locate the exact file. Thus, a “404 Not Found” page is automatically generated, and when the users follow the broken link, the server shows it to them.
What is the 401-error message?
The 401 error message is similar to 404. But 401 error message means “gone”.
In Terms of Google : “The server returns this response when the requested resource has been permanently removed. It is similar to a 404 (Not found) code, but is sometimes used in the place of a 404 for resources that used to exist but no longer do.”
How to Avoid Bad Requests in WordPress
So, now you know what is 404 and 401 errors. It’s time to fix those. Bad requests are quite obvious and can be seen several times like you can see an unusual image that’s not supposed to be there.
On the other hand, they can take place in the background for which your page speed can go downwards dramatically.
They don’t even give the visual indication sometimes. That’s why it’s also a smart practice to delete any unused CSS to make it appropriate for the pages and the resources they use. In this case, you can simply use a page speed tool to examine if your pages are calling the resources that don’t exist. You can check your site through GTmetrix and Pingdom because they can identify the bad requests and allows you to know which URL is needed to be fixed.
How to Fix Bad Requests in WordPress
Well, that’s more convenient than finding one. No matters if you’ve got one or more bad requests, simply eliminate the unnecessary code that’s calling the resources or provide them with the missing resources. That’s all; you won’t have to be a coding ninja for doing that.
Wrapping Up!
You can easily fix the “Avoid Bad Request” speed optimization issue by following this tutorial. We are now gathering up all speed optimization issues and listing them in one blog. And if you need any help with speed optimization feel free to shoot us a message.
Measure your mobile website speed
Most of the internet user browse the internet through mobile devices. So it is important to have good speed on your mobile version of the website.
If you have a responsive website you must have mobile versions of your website. Do you know how fast is your mobile website?
In this post, we will tell you why mobile speed is important. And we will share some tools to measure.
Why Testing Mobile speed is important?
Most of the speed test tools test your desktop version (by default). They test:
- Load the desktop version.
- Heavy pages load faster when you have a fast internet connection.
- Powerful hardware load website assets quickly. Which means JS, PHP or any server-side programming request called upon very fast.
Whereas you cannot rely on these results. So if you want an accurate test of your mobile version of the website you need to consider:
- Load the website using 3G or 4G.
- Browsing on a low-powered device.
Tools to Measure Mobile Website Speed
1. ThinkWithGoogle
ThinkWithGoogle is a set of collection tools of Google. One of the tools is “Test My site“.
This tool has unique features for testing your mobile version of the website. It has features of selecting a specific location and specific speed (like 3G, 4G).
All you need to do is input your website address and then it displays result.
You can see there is a location and network type. From the dropdown, you can change network and location.
In this screenshot, you can see when I change the location and network type the loading speed is also changing. So Google is actually using its bot and its data centre according to the country.
At the bottom you can find speed optimizations recommendation as well you can generate a report and send it to your mail.
2. WebPageTest
WebPageTest is a popular speed analysis tools. By this tool, you can analyse your website speed with a number of devices and network types.
For example, here’s how you could set it up to test using an iPhone 6 and a 3G connection:
To know more about WebPageTest. Read WebPageTest Speed Test Tool: Ultimate Guide for 2019
3. GTMetrix
GTmetrix doesn’t need any introduction by its popularity. By default GTmetrix only test your desktop version’s website speed test. But if you register (100% free) on GTmetrixthen you will able to select mobile.
By example, I am using a Galaxy Nexus in Vancouver, Canada:
How much Slow is Too Slow on Mobile?
By using tools you will able to find the loading speed of your website. So now the question is how much slow is too slow on mobile? Let’s share some data:
According to Akamai, 52% of mobile users want to load a website just in 2 seconds. And rest 58% of mobile users are abandoned users of slow network.
Another data shared by Google, Bounce rate and mobile page speed is connected respectively. So they made a chart. Where they showed how bounce rate increase for a slower website.
However, Google’s official recommendation for the loading speed of a website is under 3 seconds for both mobile and desktop users.
Tips To Speed Up Your Mobile Site
I think you got an idea on how to measure your mobile website and what is the minimum ideal loading time. Now it’s time for speed optimizing your mobile website. Here are some tips:
- Compress Images: One of the main reason for website slowing is images. So you need to optimize your image correctly. Furthermore, you can read this article: Why Image optimization is important for SEO.
- Optimize Javascript: Probably this is one of the reasons for website speed. Cause in mobile Javascript took so long time to load according to the server configuration. Which is why Google PageSpeed Insights usually yells at you to “Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript in above-the-fold content”. A possible solution is Defer Parsing of your Javascript.
- Include AMP: AMP is the best option for speed optimization of your mobile website.
Wrapping Up
Nowadays 95% of internet user browse the internet through mobile devices. So you understand how much important is your mobile speed.
If you are having a very bad speed on your mobile site. We are offering you a very good Speed optimization solution.
WebPageTest Speed Test Tool: Ultimate Guide for 2020
In speed optimization to determine our client’s website speed, we often use WebPageTest. There are other tools available for measuring the speed of a website, but this one we use for determining the duration and better waterfall understanding.
Today we want to dive into how to better use and understand the data from the popular website speed test tool WebPageTest.
WHAT IS WEBPAGETEST?
WebPageTest is one of the most popular and free tools for measuring website’s speed performance. In WebPageTest you can see web performance tests on your site from a number of different locations across the world in a number of different browsers in a number of different devices.
It enables several options. There are Advance Testing and Simple Testing. In advance testing, you can measure the website’s speed performance with so many features that you won’t find in other speed analysis tools around the internet.
WHY CHOOSE WEBPAGETEST?
This is a very question as a speed optimization expert. As I told you earlier There are some features in this tool what available in other tools. One of the main reason is it runs three tests by these three tests and provide you with a summary with three tests, by that you can determine how your caching is working. Another reason is its waterfall analysis model is pretty good rather than Pingdom and gtmetrix.
It also provides several screen shots of your website according to google’s page speed tool (lighthouse). So then you can get the image of your website in seconds by seconds.
RUNNING A TEST IN WEBPAGETEST
To run a test in WebPageTest there are two options. Such as:
- Advanced Testing
- Simple Testing
Advanced Testing
Honestly there are too many options in Advanced Testing to cover. This section of this tool is structured powerfully for the developers. But there is simple testing for beginner.
At the very beginning, there are so many locations to choose with a variety of devices with different types of browsers.
If you want, you can select your location from the map. Once you have picked your location, you can select which browser you would like to use for the test, and in the Advanced Settings, you can choose the connection speed.
You can run up to 9 consecutive tests. You can check the first view or for the repeat views. Also, you can capture video of your website loading. There are a bunch of features available for the developers to customize their tests.
To run test in Advanced Testing you need:
- Your website URL
- Test Location.
- Select A Browser.
- Connection.
- Keep Test Private.
- Capture Video.
- Click Start Test.
Simple Testing
The simple Testing interface is a pretty simple interface. You can select whether the test configuration with Desktop or mobile using Slow 3G, Regular 3G, or 4G. Also, You can select a repeat view of the site, and run a Lighthouse audit.
THE SPEED TEST RESULTS
WebPageTest’s result is breakdown into 9 sections. But we don’t need each of the sections. Though we will understand the definition of each section for a better understanding of this tool. So the sections are:
- Summary.
- Details.
- Performance Review.
- Content Break down.
- Domains.
- Processing Break Down.
- Screen Shot.
- Image Analysis.
- Request Map.
Summary
When the test has completed, WebPageTest will show a Results Summary. WebPageTest displays a custom set of speed optimizations recommendation and each of those grades from F to A. You can click each of the recommendations and read in details.
As you can see in the screenshot there are six-speed optimizations recommendations with grades. As you understand each grade means the current situation of your website loading speed is either good or bad in each recommendation.
The recommendations are:
- First Byte Time – the time it takes for the server to respond to a client according to the page.
- Keep Alive Enabled – it is a communication between the web server and the web browser that says “you can grab more than just one file at a time”.
- Compress Transfer – this is basically gzip compressor.
- Compress Images – it is actually a summary grade that shows how many Images are optimized.
- Cache Static Content – it is your website’s contents like css, js storing in the user end.
- Effective Use of CDN – if you are using CDN then it will reflect here as grade “A”.
Under the initial summary area there is a Performance Results. In performance Results you can see bunch of informations according to your load speed.
Below the Performance Results there are remaining summaries of test results in a clunky interface. There is a table that shows waterfall, Screen Shot and Video across the top for the first view, and below that, the same information for the repeat view.
Details
In the details tab there is Waterfall View, Connection View and Request Details.
Waterfall View
Waterfall View actually the presentation of load time and stuck time of your resources in a chronical structure.
It provides several colors with time. And different colors has different meaning.
Basically the waterfall is a cascading chart of each resource loaded by a browser – and in a nutshell the shorter the horizontal lines are the better!
The Colors meanings
As you can see in the image below everything is colour coded and every colour has a significance.
The colours that appear above the actual waterfall – blue, orange, green, purple, green, red and grey are all reflective of the type of content on your website.
For example, if you see a red line in a row – you will know that is a font file is loaded if you see green – then you know it is a CSS file that is being loaded.
Connection View
The Connection View is similar to the waterfall view. It shows the contents load from all other sources.
Request Details
The Request Details section provides details of every request, and if you click on a particular one, you will be taken to the corresponding expanded entry in the Request Headers section.
Performance Review
The Performance Review tab demonstrates the page requests, set a Full Optimization Checklist. This covers the 6 recommendations WebPageTest has tested for.
Below there is the Details section, showing the scores of each of the six sections. And the scores are graded from 0-100. So as you understand if your score in each test is 100 it is perfect!!
After Details section there is the Glossary section. It explains six tests, what objects are applicable for each test, and what is checked.
Content Breakdown
Content Breakdown is a very informative tab. In this tab, it shows each file type with bytes using in your website. It provides a chart where it shows files and bytes contents using specific colours.
Domains
This tab is similar of content breakdown. It only displays the assets or files coming in your website from other sources.
Processing Breakdown
Processing Breakdown displays verious processing categories and processing events. Such as JS, Server-side programming and etc.
Screen Shot
Screen Shot tab displays the screen shot of your website when it is fully loaded with time and there is an options for creating video how your website is loading.
Conclusion
WebPageTest highly recommending a speed analysis tool for speed optimization. With its unique toolset for developers and advanced users, it can be easily measured your website’s loading time or your website’s speed factors.
Autoptimize Settings for the Best result in Speed Optimization
Autoptimize is another caching plugin what nowadays becomes famous in speed optimization. Some speed optimization factors of Google can be eliminated through Autoptimize easily. One them is “Eliminate Render Fold Above Content”. So within a short time it became so popular.
Even Autoptimize never does caching. So why everyone is using it?
Autoptimize author tweeted that :
Autoptimize works best when combined with a cache plugin
In my Opinion Autoptimize works well along with wp rocket.
Configure Autoptimize Settings
Autoptimize has four options to configure. So we will discuss step by step the configuration.
Installing Autoptimize
- 1. Login to your WordPress admin panel.
- 2. Click on Plugins-> Add New -> Search for Autoptimize.
- 3. Click on Install-> Activate.
Folding Advance Settings
After installing Autoptimize. Go to: Plugins-> Installed Plugins. Find Autoptimize there. Then click Settings.
After clicking settings it will appear Autoptimize Settings Dashboard.
On the Autoptimize Settings Dashboard Click on Show Advanced Settings.
Optimize HTML
To minify HTML tick the box: “Optimize HTML Code?“
Optimizing Javascript
To minify/defer parsing of Javascript this is one of the most important steps. In order to configure this, tick the box “Optimize Javascript Code?“
If you have inline javascript then tick “Also aggregate inline JS”
Optimizing the CSS Code.
This is also another important part of Autoptimize configuration for speed optimization. To configure this you need to tick the “Optimize CSS Code”. If you have inline css then tick “Also aggregate inline CSS”.
If you face any error after this settings then you can exclude the CSS files from minification, optimization and aggregation by including the file name in the “Exclude CSS from Autoptimize”.
Extra Settings
In Extra Settings, there are several options we need to configure for speed optimization. We will see in the step by step.
Google Fonts
Most of the WordPress themes use google fonts. Cause it’s easier to use. But the third party can slow down your website. Select “Combine and link in the head“.
Remove Emojis
Enable this. Emojis are very bad for the load time of a WordPress website.
Remove Query Strings From Static Resources
Query strings often generated by plugins and themes. There is a post on our website we have discussed in detail about Query Strings and Why it is necessary to remove.
So you also need to enable this option. And leave other option.
Wrap up
This is the best settings for Autoptimize Plugin. I recommend use a caching plugin with Autoptimize for better performances.
If you love our tutorial then you will love our support. If you need anything relates to Speed Optimization feel free to send us a message!!!
How to Configure W3 Total Cache with Cloudflare Settings For Best Result
W3 Total Cache is one of the most popular plugins. There are more than 1 million active installs of the w3 total cache. Today we will discuss W3 Total Cache plugin and it’s settings for the best result in page speed
How W3 Total Cache and Cloudflare improve your page speed?
After choosing a good hosting you need to do the most important improvements for page load time is caching and CDN connection.
Caching speeds up your site by serving static documents rather than progressively rendered substance (which WordPress is loaded with). I realize that sounds a bit jargony, yet all it truly implies is that your web server needs to do less work and can, subsequently, displays your contents faster.
W3 Total Cache does this Caching part very nicely.
CDN increases your site speed by another strategy: content delivery optimization. Without a CDN, each visitor to your webpage needs to download the majority of your files from one area – your site’s data centre.
If they located in Paris, Munich, New York or Mumbai they get your website’s data from the same data centre. But CDN changes that by creating multiple global versions of your data. So then, visitors can download static files like images and videos from the nearest data centre to them, rather than your far-off web server. This physical proximity reduces download times and therefore speeds up your website.
If you Put W3 Total Cache and Cloudflare together it will be a super duo blast for your website’s speed.
How to configure W3 Total Cache
I think you already know how to install a plugin in WordPress and activate that. The reason I am avoiding the installation section because W3 Total Cache has around 13 different options. So you already understand that so many things to say.
I know it sounds crazy. But it is the truth that w3 total cache has a lot of functionalities which confuses users. Let’s Deep Dive into the configuration of w3 total cache:
Step 1: Configure General settings
At the very first configure general settings. In this tab you can enable/disable features of W3 Total Cache:
I’ll describe each and every options from top to bottom.
1. General
The first option provides you with the option for automatically enabling all features of W3 Total Cache.
You don’t need to enable all feature automatically because you don’t need every feature. Because not every feature is compatible with your themes and plugins. So you should uncheck this option:
There is also preview mode. Which allows you to see changes before deploying every feature.
2. Page Cache
This is one of the most important feature or option of W3 Total Cache.
You must Enable this option. And for the Page Caching Method Option, you should select Disk: Enhanced.
3. Minify
This option you should disable. Because doing minify through plugins could create a problem on your website. You should minify manually. If you don’t know minifying web assets. Then you should read: How to minify HTML, CSS & JS
Also Cloudflare supports minify. So do not minify through your W3 Total Cache. We will learn in the cloudflare section how to minify from cloudflare.
4. Database Cache
Database is heart of your wp site. In your Database all posts, pages and images are stored. So you should keep it clean for best speed performances.
There are several conflictions between speed optimization experts about Database Caching. Some say you should enable this some says you should disable this.
If you are using VPS then enable Database Caching.
If you are using Shared hosting disable Database Caching. Because database caching can actually slow down your site by offloading too much work to your server’s CPU.
5. Object Cache
Object Cache also doesn’t good for shared hosting. It offloads CPU too much. Some shared hosting Object Cache suits perfectly. It actually depends on your server. So you should Enable this and test how it fits in your server.
6. Browser Cache
This is the most important option of W3 Total Cache. You definitely Enable this option.
7. CDN
In this feature, you can add CDN. But it won’t have any good impact on the speed of the website. So you should disable CDN.
8. Reverse Proxy
Reverse Proxy actually needed for VPS Hosting. It is an advance concept. For non-techy guys, you should leave Disable Reverse Proxy.
9. Monitoring
We don’t need this section. Just ignore monitoring.
10. Debug
Also, the Debug section is not needed unless you want to test some feature. Unless you disable this.
This is all about General Settings Configuration. In the next step, we will configure each section in detail.
Remember we only need to configure which section we activated or enabled.
Step 2 : Configure page cache
First, go to Page Cache. In the Page Cache settings there are two sections to configure:
1. General
In the General Section of Page Cache Enable the following feature:
- Cache front page
- Cache feeds
- Cache SSL – CloudFlare offers free SSL certificates, so you can enable this box even if you’re not currently using SSL.
- Don’t cache pages for logged in users
2. Cache Preload
Under Cache Preload, make sure you have these settings:
- Automatically prime the page cache: Checked
- Update interval: 900 seconds
- Pages per interval: 10
- Sitemap URL: The actual link to your sitemap if you have one. Typically “yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml” for most SEO plugins.
- Preload the post cache upon publish events: Checked
You can safely leave everything else in this section as the default.
Step 3: Configure object cache
Whereas we already did not activate the Minify and Database Caching, so we can skip this two section and jump to the Object Cache settings.
You can leave everything default on this section. Make sure you see these settings:
- Default lifetime of cache objects: 180 seconds
- Garbage collection interval: 3600 seconds
Step 4: Configure browser cache
This is the most important section.
1. General
Under the General options, Make sure to check all of these options:
- Set Last-Modified header: Checked
- Set expires header: Checked
- Set cache control header: Checked
- Set entity tag (eTag): Checked
- Set W3 Total Cache header: Checked
- Enable HTTP (gzip) compression: Checked
You can leave other general options to default.
Step 5: Installing W3 Total Cache CloudFlare Extension
To install CloudFlare extension in W3 Total Cache follow the steps:
- Go to Extensions page and Activate CloudFlare.
How to set up and configure CloudFlare for WordPress
If you completed the configuration of W3 Total Cache now it is right time to configure CloudFlare.
Grab a Coffee or tea and keep going!!
Step 1: Sign up for a CloudFlare account and select your website
At first, you need an account on CloudFlare. So go to CloudFlare Website and create an account. Then Add your website and click Scan DNS Records:
Step 2: Verify your DNS records
In the next step you need to verify your dns records. I understand it seems complicated. If you are a beginnner what you need to do is:
Step 3: Update your nameservers
CloudFlare will provide you with two NameServer. All you need to do is just go to your domain panel and update nameservers.
Step 4: Activate CloudFlare in W3 Total Cache
- Go back to W3 Total Cache
- Go to Extensions and click the Settings link under the CloudFlare extension.
- Click the Authorize button under the Credentials:
- Enter the email address for your CloudFlare account as well as your CloudFlare API key.
- You can find your CloudFlare API key by going to My Account and finding the API Key section:
Step 5: Turn on CloudFlare Minify
Now this is the final step.
After you save your credentials on the new screen you will see a list of settings. All you need to do is scroll down to the minification and configure as follows:
And that’s it. Now enjoy a very good speed for your wordpress website.
This is a very good tutorial for beginner. If you are a beginner this will save your time and your money
If you love our tutorial then you will love our support. If you need any help for speed up your WordPress website feel free to Message Us!
Best speed optimized WordPress hosting
Are you looking best optimized WordPress Hosting Providers?
It does not matter if you are starting a new business or if you already have around for some time, speed is one of the keys to making sure your website can grow and stay healthy. Bonus point it will also keep your visitors active and improve Bounce Rate.
Lookout for the right Best/fastest web hosting can be a bit tricky, however, because every host differs. Everyone wants what is best for their business, whether or not it is a little or big one. Also, among the main things you can rely on is your rate.
Why is WordPress hosting fastest important?
The fastest WordPress hosting company can allow you to organise and create your content in a simple way. A slow server not slows merely the page download for the visitors but might slow down the admin panel also. This is going to make your job more laborious and much more time-consuming.
However, most of all, a quick hosting will create your visitors feel comfortable when they attempt to get your website and interact with it in some manner (such as commenting or seeking to click your social networking buttons). A site which fails to load quickly will lead them to go away.
Long story short, if you are seeking the quickest WordPress hosting that will not break your bank, it is definitely Bluehost, however, do not hesitate to determine which one is ideal for you by reading the analysis.
2019 Best WordPress Hosting Services Providers:
- BlueHost
- HostGator
- SiteGround
- A2 Hosting
- Site5 Hosting
- iPage
- Dreamhost
- InMotion Hosting
- GreenGeeks
- Arvixe
Top 5 fastest Hosting Providers Review
➤➤ 1. BlueHost.Com
Uptime Guarantee: >99%
Load speed Time: 420ms
Support: 5/5
Their Last 12-month typical uptime is >99.99percent and load period is 406ms. This implies they are definitely the most dependable web hosting with just 1 hour of downtime each year. Definitely a solid top 1 bunch.
BlueHost has 24/7 client support readily available for any questions that you might have regarding site installation. They are not cheap, however. Costs begin at $2.75 a month; however, they toss in a free domain name (such as 1-year) plus website migration for new balances, also.
➤➤➤2. HostGator.Com
Uptime Guarantee: >99%
Load speed Time: 422ms
Support: 5/5
Based on their site, they sponsor over 10 million domain names which make them among the most popular hosting providers in the world (alongside GoDaddy).
Their past 10-month typical load time is 421ms and uptime 99.97percent. Very awful, in, within the previous 12 months that they had been offline for just 3 hours. Additionally, they had been the third quickest web hosting agency, just crushed by A2 Hosting (using a decrease avg. Upgrades ).
To give you a much better summary of HostGator Cloud functionality, Have a look at the chart below (past 10 weeks ):
My HostGator Cloud”evaluation” website uptime and rate out of October 2017 to October 2018
Remember this is not a routine, HostGator shared hosting choice. It is a new and enhanced cloud hosting. They include a costly price — $13.99/mo, but they are currently discounted to $2.99/mo in case you opt to purchase 1 month or two 6-month plan. Following that, it renews into the normal cost.
➤➤3. SiteGround.Com
Uptime Guarantee: >99%
Load speed Time: 420ms
Support: 5/5
Since 2004, SightGround has become a massive network of over 800,000 domains around the globe. The majority of their employees is situated in Bulgaria, however, they have servers globally.
In this instance, the”Start-Up Strategy” (cheapest) is used to track uptime and normal load time.
Concerning uptime, SiteGround claimed that an average uptime of 99.99percent followed with a strong (maybe not the greatest ) load period of 714ms.
My SiteGround”evaluation” website uptime and rate out of October 2017 to October 2018
We also tested their customer service by linking with their live conversation and asked a few questions to rate their service staff. They have been friendly and helpful, answering inquiries fast.
Furthermore, SiteGround provides free transfers for the present site and they are officially suggested by WordPress.
➤➤4. A2 Hosting.Com
Uptime Guarantee: >99%
Load speed Time: 392ms
Support: 4/5
I checked out this by calling their live service and they responded immediately with easy-to-understand answers. My A2 Hosting”evaluation” website uptime and speed They became popular only recently. Regrettably, their uptime has skyrocketed over the last couple of months to a mean of 99.91percent (now 8 hours of downtime over a span of 12 weeks ).
They averaged 392ms at a span of 12 weeks. That’s essentially immediate page loading, making sure folks happy since they won’t need to wait for pages to load. A2 Hosting implements caching, that stores information in a customer’s browser, so that they will not need to ask information from your site each time somebody attempts to get it.
Note from editor: We have set A2 Hosting here since they had the ideal loading time. If we have a peek at their uptime, then they would not be recorded as #4th. They claim to be 20x quicker than their opponents. They were able to attain quicker load time compared to SiteGround or HostGator.
➤➤5. Site5Hosting.Com
Uptime Guarantee: >99%
Load speed Time: 704ms
Support: 4/5
After analyzing them for 12 months, Site5 delivered under average website load period of 704ms:
My Site5″evaluation” website uptime and rate out of October 2017 to October 2018
Their uptime is not anything spectacular. Uptime over a span of 12 months can also be 99.98percent (rated #6th).
They do provide decent support through live chat, email, and telephone support in the event you have queries, together with a 90-day money-back guarantee if you want to test them out anyhow.
Site5 provides 3 pricing strategies. The first
How to Choose Best fastest Hosting for you
Here is the incremental for choosing a hosting package that is likely to be quickly for you as well as your viewers:
⧭ Select among those firms Proceed through the firms listed above and get acquainted with what they supply. Take notice of every intriguing detail for their offerings.
⧭ Assess their server place to determine whether it matches yoursOnce you pick a business, you ought to check their accessible server places. This usually means you need to confirm if it is relatively near your viewer’s location. This aspect is critical, since it provides you with greater performance for the identical investment. More than a few businesses reveal their server places throughout the join procedure, others will need to be contacted right about this.
⧭ Pick a strategy Once you decide which firm is nearer and serves all of your requirements, you need to select among the programs they are offering. The plan you will need is the one which fits best your finances, your audience and your objectives.
How Speed Optimization Effect on Your SEO
Slow loading website pages can be an SEO challenge.
In today’s fast-paced world, 40% of internet users will abandon any website that takes more than three seconds to load, according to Kissmetrics. Typically, such visitors will look for the information that they needed from your website elsewhere. Other than this being a surprising percentage, the effects that slow load time has on your SEO efforts should be an issue of concern.
Since 2010, Google started including site speed as a metric for ranking websites. The goal was to not only make the sites user-friendly but also reduce the extra bandwidth that inefficient websites tend to need. If you find that your site takes too long to load, then it might be ample time to look into WordPress speed optimization.
Here is why you should concentrate on increasing website speed and how to do it best:
Site speed and bounce rates
Bounce rate is the percentage of times that users who have barely interacted with a single page on your website leave it. A site with a high percentage is perceived by search engines as an inefficient website with the impaired user experience. Furthermore, a lot of people will leave your website in search for one that offers them the information they need faster. As such, the higher your bounce rates are, the lower the chances of ranking highly on SERPs.
Slow pages and indexation
Slow pages also affect how well Google can index the different pages on your website. If it takes Google a number of days to index your pages, the chances are that these pages will suffer rank wise. On the flip side, it takes Google bots less time to crawl through a fast website and rank the various pages on the website.
This is especially true since search engines can optimally use the crawl budget for a fast loading site to download and rank more pages. Large websites can enjoy better organic traffic from their site speed while news website can have most of their latest pieces at the top of SERPs. As for e-commerce websites that typically have a diversity of duplicate content and products, a faster indexation of the pages improves visibility.
Slow page speed and conversion rates
Site speed affects the bottom line in simple ways. First of all, if your site gets ranked low on SERPs, the chances of a visitor finding a page are quite low. In fact, 75% of internet users might not even click past the first result page of Google. With less web traffic comes reduced conversion rates.
On the point about site indexation, slow site pages take longer to be indexed. For e-commerce websites, such pages are somewhat invisible to the customer when searching through different search engines, lowering the chances of a conversion.
What contributes to slow loading sites?
Slow page load times can be influenced by a bevvy of factors. Once you identify the culprit for your website, it becomes easier to circumvent the issue. Here are five aspects that will slow down your website:
Your choice of web host
Your hosting company and the servers that they use for hosting your website has a pivotal role to play in improving the speed of your website. If they fail to allocate enough resources to service your database needs, then it will take long to load any information to reach your site’s visitors. When picking between hosting plans, therefore, opt for one that suits the needs of your website.
Additionally, you should opt for a dedicated server- instead of a shared one- in case you have a huge database. It is also wise to use cloud-based hosting services if your website has high traffic levels or experiences spikes in traffic during peak season. This will allow you enough flexibility to switch to a better solution in times of peak traffic.
Uptime should also be a key consideration when picking websites to work with. A site with an uptime of 99.5% and higher is ideal for ensuring that visitors always have access to your website. You can work with a WordPress speed optimization service provider to offer you insights on how to pick the best host.
Plugins and widgets
Plugins and widgets are user experience boosters for most websites. Sadly, they might be the culprit behind your slow loading website. As you add more plugins into your website, it might take more time to load every single page since your site will need to access more files.
Since you cannot do away with the plugins completely, choose quality plugins from reputable sources. Additionally, work with the latest versions as most of them have bugs eliminated from them.
Heavy Javascript and CCS files
Javascript and CCS files are meant to bring the most out of your website’s functionality and styling while contributing to speed optimization for SEO. In order to do this, these files typically have to have many pages filled with lines of code. Sadly, the spaces and line breaks between these lines of code can lead to a speed problem for most websites.
The trick is eliminating all the unnecessary parts of the lines of code. While you can manually eliminate these speed killers, you should consider using specific WordPress speed optimization tools that help ‘minify’ these files.
Check: How To Minify CSS and JS For Speed Optimization In WordPress
The location of your server
It will take a person in Thailand longer to receive content from a server in the US than for someone in San Francisco. Although the difference in time for site load speed for both people is only but a few seconds, it can affect user satisfaction levels. The best option would be to bring the servers close to the typical user, which is a role best played by CDNs (content delivery networks).
At their core, they are networks of servers spread all over the globe to improve the delivery of information to the site visitor. This way, it will act as though the person is looking for information that is right within their location.
Image optimization
Images play a key role in speed optimization for SEO as well as improving the effectiveness of your website. For instance, images on a hotel website help to tell visitors more about the experience that they should expect once they visit the hotel physically. Sadly, images that are too big or too detailed will also affect the load speed of your site.
It might take longer for these images to load, which often leads to high bounce rates. The trick is to use quality images while trying to reduce their size. Ideally, you should compress your images before uploading them to your site.
Read this: Why Image optimization is important for SEO
Use Google Page Speed Insights for speed tests
If you aren’t sure about how well your website is performing speed wise, you should consider using the different sites that can help you determine why your site might be lagging for free. Google Page Speed Insights tends to offer both metrics for measuring performance as well as insights on how to improve the site.
Simply paste a link of one of your website’s pages and wait for them to analyze the performance of your website. Once you identify the issues, consider working with a WordPress speed optimization service provider to tweak your site accordingly.
Your site visitors need to access all the information they need from your website within the snap of a finger. The faster your site is, the more attractive it looks, not to mention that it will rank high. Consider the tips above to improve your site’s user experience.
WordPress Caching plugins comparison
How long does one assume you have got to create a sway on a web site visitor? Well, to grant you a plan, think about however long you may pay on a website’s home page once you land on that. The common time a visitor spends on a landing page is ten seconds before they attempt to continue or bounce. Ten seconds!
So out of that ten seconds, you don’t wish your web site to require up any longer time than is critical. You would like your web site to load as quickly as doable.
What will cause slow page speeds?
There are several things that may cause your WordPress web site to slow loading speeds. Over time, your web site speed will
Advertising Overload: guests don’t wish to see innumerable ads which is able to increase bounce rates and that they can even decrease load speed.
Plugins: These have the potential to significantly lower page load speeds. Employing a cache plugin will usually scale back your load speed times considerably, furthermore as reducing the number of plugins you’re victimization.
Hosting: it’s super necessary to decide on the correct hosting answer for your web site. Cheap shared hosting plans will harm your page speeds. Select a hosting supplier that values page speed and period of time.
Browser Optimization: You ought to be QA Tested on a range of browsers and mobile devices since they are doing not load your site within the same manner.
What is caching?
To begin with, allow us to take an instant to familiarize ourselves with the method of caching generally.
In straightforward terms, caching refers to the method of making static versions of your content, and serving that to guests. Static pages are usually rendered quickly in browsers. This ends up in the quicker performance of your web site.
In WordPress, rendering or winning a page needs back and forth queries to be sent to and from the information. Now, a lot of usually than not, you’ll produce a post or a page and so you won’t change it a day. Caching creates static copies of your post or page and serves that to guests. This way, the rear and forth queries to and from the information is avoided, thereby reducing the server load.
The importance of using caching plugins
There are varied advantages of caching in WordPress, such as:
First up, it enhances the speed and performance of your information processing system. Static cached files load faster than dynamic info queries, and this finally ends up in faster and better performance of your information processing system.
Caching may also facilitate cut back the load on your hosting server. This may save server memory and me/O operations. As a result, caching is quickly changing into a significant feature, particularly for folk with restricted hosting plans.
Faster websites don’t simply load quickly, however additionally get a positive rank with search engines. This, obviously, depends heavily on different metrics moreover, like the standard of your content and your SEO settings. However all different things being constant, a web site that hundreds quicker can getter a more robust PageRank than a slower one. Google has confirmed that it takes page speed into thought.
Cached websites offer for more robust user expertise overall. A quicker website helps user’s browsing higher. moreover, a cached website means the user’s information measure is additionally saved (albeit by a nominal margin) since static cached pages are less in terms of file size as compared to dynamic requests. To create this happen, your caching resolution should build use of combined and minified JavaScript and CSS, except for simple basic page caching.
Some of the best WP caching Plugins:
1. WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the preferred premium possibility in our comparison of the most effective WordPress caching plugins. It systematically scores well in side-by-side comparisons with different caching plugins for WordPress and is presently put in on over one hundred sites. Single-Site license prices $39, a three-site license $99, and a limitless license will be yours for $199.
According to GTmetrix, WP Rocket cut the loading time by zero.98 seconds, up the speed by thirty four.12%. In our Pingdom tests, it cut the loading time by one.27 seconds on the average, with a speed improvement of thirty-five .21%. These results create it the quickest plugin in our take a look at of the most effective WordPress caching tools.
2. WP Super Cache
Another extremely widespread free WordPress caching plugin, WP Super Cache earned its place in our guide to the simplest WordPress caching plugins because it has over 1,000,000 active installs and a user rating of 4.2 out of five stars. It’s particularly effective at keeping your server from speed to a crawl or maybe overloading throughout the massive traffic spikes that may occur if your web blog hits the homepage on Reddit or is featured on alternative widespread sites. WP Super Cache hampers the loading time by zero.85 seconds in GTmetrix, rising the speed by 28.07%. In our Pingdom tests, this plugin cut the load time by 1.03 seconds, raising the speed by 28.61%, creating it one among the quickest choices in our take a look at of the simplest WordPress caching plugins.
3. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is one in all the foremost fashionable caching plugins for WordPress, with over 1,000,000 active installs and 4.3 out of five stars within the WordPress Plugin Directory. It’s updated every few months and utilized by several major publications, like Smashing Magazine, Mashable, MakeUseOf, net Designer Depot, and lots of others. In our GTmetrix tests to search out the simplest WordPress caching plugins, W3 Total Cache smooth-shaven a mean of 0.62 seconds off the baseline loading time, with a mean improvement of 20.64% on page speed. In step with Pingdom, the plugin smooth-shaven a mean of one.06 seconds off the loading time, with a mean speed improvement of 29.16%.
W3 Total Cache Configure with Cloudflare
Pros and cons of WordPress cache plugin
There are some pros and cons of using cache plugins as follows:
Pros:
Faster loading time for your site
Improved SEO
Lower bounce rate
Increased sales
Cons:
Conflict with the WordPress theme or alternative plugins
Installation issues
Not displaying updates to your site
Security vulnerabilities
