Optimizing WordPress Performance on Shared Web Hosting

Performance Tweaks for

Shared HostingJon Brown

j.Brown Studios@jb510

http://jbrownstudios.com

Saturday, October 6, 12

Tweaking WP Performance in 3

actsAct 1 - Inside WordPress

Act 2 - On your Shared Server

Act 3 - O! your Shared Server

Saturday, October 6, 12

Prelude

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What am I going to cover today?

Performance Tweaks you can make on or with most shared hosting (not that

they won’t help on any hosting)

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What am I not going to talk about today?

Geeky tweaks that are only suitable to VPS/Dedicated servers

(ie. APC, Memcached, Hyper DB, etc...)

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Where to go for the advanced stu!?

http://wordpress.tv/

http://www.slideshare.net/

Joseph Scott

Barry Abrahamson

Ilya Grigorik

Iliya Polihronov

and many others...

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Measuring Performance

• It’s hard to impossible to measure performance on shared servers

• How to measure anyway...

http://www.webpagetest.org

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Why not use your browser tools?

• FireBug

• YSlow

• PageSpeed

• WebKit DevTools,

• etc...

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WebPageTest.org

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The challenge with shared hosting

• Con"gured to run just about any type of web site

• Generalized not optimized

• Many performance tweaks available to dedicated/VPS hosting can’t be made

• Some performance tweaks you can make... starting in WordPress

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The goal of all opitimization

• Reduce HTTP requests

• Reduce total data transfer

• Reduce CPU load

• Avoid Bottlenecks

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Act 1

Tweaking inside

WordPress

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Inside WordPress

1. Right size/compress images

2. Check for 404’s

3. Keep your DB under control

4. Caching inside WordPress

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Right sizing images

• Upload the maximum pixel size you want to display, not larger

• Compress JPGs to 60-70% (aka 7 out of 12 in PhotoShop)

• Use WP Smush.it on already uploaded images to "x your past mistakes

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Checking for 404’s

WebPageTest.org

or

FireBug / Webkit Dev Tools

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Keep your DB under control

• Optimize DB

Plugin - WP DB Manager

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager/

• Tame Revisions

Plugin - Revision Control

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/revision-control/

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Caching WordPress

• W3 Total Cache

• WP Super Cache

• WP Minify

• Others...

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W3TC Con"g Guides

• http://c3mdigital.com/reduce-page-loading-time-w3-total-cache/

• http://headwaythemes.com/screencast-tuesday-using-w3-total-cache-part-1/

• http://www.kidnapcustomers.com/how-to-make-a-website/w3-total-cache-settings-wordpress-speed/

Saturday, October 6, 12

W3TC Do’s & Dont’sfor shared hosting

• Do test settings

• Don’t assume turning everything up to 11 will work well... it won’t.

• Do take the time to "gure out minifying and combing "les it makes a huge di!erence

• Don’t forget to prime your cache

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W3TC Minify Settings

Try Auto (Performance>General Settings)

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W3TC Manual MinifyUse Manual (Performance>Min"y)

Lists all your CSS and JSfor easy manual additionand ordering

Lists all your CSS and JSfor easy manual additionand ordering

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After Mini"cation

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Before Mini"cation

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Act 2

On your Shared Hosting Server

Saturday, October 6, 12

On your Server

1. PHP Version

2. DB Cleanup

3. Cloud#are (if your lucky)

Saturday, October 6, 12

Switch to a newer version of PHP

“PHP 5.2 to 5.3 - WordPress 15% faster”

~ Dmitry Stogov http://news.php.net/php.internals/36484

PHP 5.4 is even faster

Saturday, October 6, 12

How to change PHP versions

• Ask your web host...

• In cPanel "nd PHP Con"g

• Sometimes set in .htaccess via AddHandler

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PHP 5.2 - 5.3 - 5.4

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Keep Your DB under control

• PHPMyAdmin to Optimize MySQL Tables if you didn’t want to use the WP DB Manager plugin to do it

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CloudFlare free awesomeness

CDN + Site Optimizer + Security

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Some Host Integrating CloudFlare with cPanel

• http://www.cloud#are.com/hosting-partners

(DreamHost, BlueHost, many more...)

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Enable CloudFlare in your cPanel

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W3 Total Cachecan control CloudFlare

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One Caveat

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Act 3

O! your Shared Hosting Server

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O! your server

1. CDNs (CloudFlare is Free)

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CloudFlare

CDN + Optimizer + Security

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Setup Cloud#are

1. Setup CloudFlare account (free)

2. Have CloudFlare scan your DNS records (check your records)

3. Repoint your nameservers

4. Done

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Why

• Reduces requests to your server

• Reduces requests to your CDN if you use one

• Adds security

• Optimizer features (I use W3TC)

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So where does it get us?

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Where we started

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W3TC Mini"cation

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W3TC + CloudFlare

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